All About Pocket Knives

Reading Jerry D's post on rememberin' when on the General OT forum brought back a memory that I may or may not have shared here before.
I was raised primarily by my grandparents and at the age of ten my grandmother passed away from complications of diabetes.This left my grandfather,who was 78 years old at the time to raise me. Although he had reared five children of his own(two others had died early)his child rearing days seemed to be over.
I didn't make it any easier as I was starting to fall in with a group who were somewhat less than honorable and my grades in school were plummeting as was my relationship with my grandfather. He decided that I needed a little,"direction".
He contacted his cousin who lived in rural New Hampshire on a farm and asked if I could spend the summer there working;figuring a little hard work would be helpful to my attitude. They agreed and one Sunday we jumped into the old Studebaker and headed to New Hampshire with my suitcase.
We arrived and I found out that Ed(my grandfather's cousin)and his wife Mae were still in the process of building their house!They were in their 70's as well but hardly acted it. The house only had one bed room so I was designated to sleep on the living room couch.Other than the couch and a chair the only other thing in the living room was a huge fieldstone fireplace that Ed had built with a double barreled shotgun(an Ithaca 10 gauge I found out later)hanging over it. I was instructed NEVER to touch it! I found out why the next morning.
I was sleeping soundly when I awoke to the sound of a shotgun going off about 10 feet from my ears! Ed was leaning out the window with it and cursing the deer in his apple orchard. After getting dressed and having a great breakfast that May fixed we commenced to go around the farm to see what chores I would be doing.
One of the projects Ed was working on was breaking up a large rock that was hindering the building of a wall around the farm.This was attacked vigorously with sledge hammers and chisels and occasionally a bit of dynamite! I found out later than the dynamite was purchased at the local hardware store in town about 5 miles away.
Another project was the cutting of wood for the fireplace.Ed had an old John Deere tractor(that he eventually let me drive)with a power takeoff on the side that he ran a huge circular saw with.The blade had to be about 3 feet in diameter and the whole table shook when it was running.I was scared to death of that rig and my job was to help supply the logs for cutting.
Ed's only vehicle was a 1941 Ford pickup with a faded green paint job and a 6 cylinder engine.After showing me how to drive it,he let me take it around the farm for various chores.More about that later.
While working on the wall,Ed would also bring along the shotgun in case he saw any deer. I must have asked him a lot of questions about it because one day he asked if I had ever fired a gun before. I said no and he said "Well I guess you are going to learn today". I can STILL feel the pain that thing inflicted on my shoulder when I finally got to fire it! Gave me a VERY healthy respect for firearms!
Anyway the summer passed very quickly and before I knew it the Sunday had arrived when my grandfather was coming to pick me up.That morning Ed said,Why don't you go into town and pick up the Sunday paper for May?" I replied,"Gee Uncle Ed it is a long way to walk!" He said,"Why don't you take the truck ?" I couldn't believe it! He was actually trusting me to drive the truck the five miles into town. I said,"But I don't have a license!" He replied," I don't think you'll have any trouble;I know the chief!"
As we were driving home,my grandfather asked how I had liked the farm and I said,"Great! Can I go back next summer?" I had learned to drive a car;shoot a gun;and work with dynamite all in one summer! Sadly I never did get to go back as May passed away that winter and Ed went to live with relatives.
A post script to the story: Fast forward to 1988 and I am antiquing one Sunday in New Hampshire and while waiting to get a coffee for the return trip home I'm looking at a vendor's display and I notice his business card.The last name is the same as is on a picture that I found of a woman while cleaning out my mother's apartment after she had passed. I hesitatingly asked him if knew that name and he replied,"That was my grandmother's name!"
We got to talking and it turned out we were related distantly. I mentioned about staying at Ed & May's place and the shotgun hanging over the fireplace and he said,"Yes and it is STILL there!" It turns out he and his wife bought the house after Ed passed away and they still lived there!
In a previous post I had titled it,"S**T Happens for a reason....." It just keeps proving itself over and over........

Good, good story Ray and well told. Excellent!

Ray

Excellent story. We should all have memories like that.

Great story Ray!

I love the story! i grew up on a small farm and can relate to a lot of the memories !

Guy

Ray, i very much enjoyed reading "Summer of '56". Wish it was a little longer.
thank you.
kj

Great read Ray thanks for sharing

Thanks for sharing part of your early days with us!
Treefarmer

Great story. Brings back a lot of memories. Just a reminder that life is short and it is time to get off this computer and make some (more memories) with the grand kids before they grow up.

Great story, i was fortunate to be able to spend my school holidays on a farm, and being a city kid was just a great experience and learning curve. Your story just exemplifies the disconnect between the city and rural in todays world. Thanks for posting, was a fantastic read.

Great story Ray. (if I may). Just an aside about an Ithica 10 ga.. I was a MACV adviser in Viet Nam in '67-'68. We issued surplus WWII weapons like M1's, M2 Carbines, BAR's etc to our Vietnamese village defense forces and we carried similar weapons as a courtesy to them. Anyway, I carried an "ancient" Ithica 10 gauge, sawed off pump loaded with 00 buckshot. It was almost bright silver from long wear. Not to put too fine a point on it but if I swung that canon off my shoulder it got the immediate and undivided attention of anyone looking down that barrel. They wouldn't react like that to an M16, but the Ithica opened there eyes and their jaws. I never used it in hostile action but I think it could have done some awful damage. Kicked like a p--sed off mule! I thought of a million ways to get it home but it just wouldn't happen. Often wonder what happened to it.
Enjoyed your story. J.O'.

P.S., If you ever get a chance to hear a song by Nashville writer, Larry Cordle, titled " THE WORKING END OF A HOE", I'm betting you'll identify closely with it from your summer "coming of age".

Ridgegrass wrote: ↑Thu Jun 10, 2021 1:37 am Great story Ray. (if I may). Just an aside about an Ithica 10 ga.. I was a MACV adviser in Viet Nam in '67-'68. We issued surplus WWII weapons like M1's, M2 Carbines, BAR's etc to our Vietnamese village defense forces and we carried similar weapons as a courtesy to them. Anyway, I carried an "ancient" Ithica 10 gauge, sawed off pump loaded with 00 buckshot. It was almost bright silver from long wear. Not to put too fine a point on it but if I swung that canon off my shoulder it got the immediate and undivided attention of anyone looking down that barrel. They wouldn't react like that to an M16, but the Ithica opened there eyes and their jaws. I never used it in hostile action but I think it could have done some awful damage. Kicked like a p--sed off mule! I thought of a million ways to get it home but it just wouldn't happen. Often wonder what happened to it.
Enjoyed your story. J.O'.

P.S., If you ever get a chance to hear a song by Nashville writer, Larry Cordle, titled " THE WORKING END OF A HOE", I'm betting you'll identify closely with it from your summer "coming of age".

Thanks for the kind words and your story. This Ithaca 10 gauge had twin exposed hammers so it was likely a bit older. Nothing like a shotgun to get someone's attention in a hurry. A quick story:
When I was married to my first wife I had a considerable arsenal in the basement of our home;not the least of which was a Savage model 69 XTR in 12 ga with an 18 1/4" barrel(just barely legal under Massachusetts laws).We were also foster parents who were emergency care providers in that we would receive calls at any hour of the day or night requesting to take in a child(or children)who had to be removed from a bad situation. They would usually only stay for three working days until a more permanent facility could be located.
Although we weren't supposed to have any kids long term,we had several as there not many foster homes available in our area.One of the kids who was staying longer than the three days was a 16 year old girl. She was a good kid and we allowed her to have her boy friend over for supervised visits.
One night I was downstairs working and I heard a commotion upstairs. I came up to find my wife(who was nobody to fool with being half-Irish and half-Sicilian)yelling at this rather large punk standing on the back porch who was obviously drunk. Apparently the girl's boy friend had said something to someone's girlfriend and he got this kid(along with four of his buddies)to come over and kick this guy's butt.
I told him that it would be in his best interest if he got off the porch now and go home and sober up. He said he wasn't leaving until this kid came out of the house. My wife had already called the police and I repeated that he better leave. His reply was to turn around and start urinating off the porch.
I then went downstairs and grabbed the Savage and threw a couple of #4 buck shells in it and returned and told him that if he wasn't off the porch in 30 seconds I would take his head off. He must have been really drunk because he laughed and yelled to his friends in the car to come up and help.
The only thing that saved me from killing him was the police car pulled up behind them and two officers got out. One of them was a sargeant that was a fellow member of the gun club I belonged to .When he found out what was going on he asked me if I wanted to press charges against them and I said no I just wanted them gone. I also mentioned that they got here just in time and there was my shotgun next to the door and I was about to use it.
He told me that if they did come back and I had to use it to make sure I dragged them inside after I did. Thankfully that was the end of that incident!
My wife asked me later if I would have pulled the trigger if he tried to enter the house and I told her that I wouldn't have hesitated one second. I often wonder what my life would have been like had that happened.

Dang good thing you didn't have to. Would surely have gotten ugly all around. I was just listening to some Delaware politician who is fighting the proposed redefinition for use of deadly force for police and private citizens. They are proposing that "review boards" will determine, after the fact, whether or not the force used was "reasonable to the average citizen". Looking back on your incident, bet you wouldn't want some uninvolved bureaucrat or appointee, second guessing the circumstances and attitudes of the moment. ( I'll still take my chances.)

You and I are in parallel universes! I had a lovely old, 12 gauge, Savage 30T trap gun for pheasant shooting. Joan and I had a street level apartment in the dead center of Baltimore years ago. The old house had thick walls so our doorway afforded about 15" of shelter. One night about 3 am two drunks were huddled in the doorway in a drizzle and were unwittingly leaning on our doorbell. Irritated, I got out of bed and opened the window, telling them to move on. One of them, responding for the pair, told me to, "Kiss OUR A-s". The Savage was leaning near the window and I picked it up and jacked the pump a couple times. That sound is unmistakable. You never saw two wet drunks running over each other, stumbling down Madison Street at full speed!

That Savage was a great field gun. Lost it later in a break-in. They were then out of production so I settled for a Remington 870 TC from the insurance company. Nice gun but I could never shoot it like the Savage. J.O'.