Page 23 - Blade (February 2020)
P. 23
Editor’s note: It’s been a long time since
High Endurance Performance Knife
master smith/BLADE® field editor Ed
Fowler last wrote for BLADE—since th he
September 2017 issue, to be exact. Ill hea alth According to the author, a pocketknife like
forced one of our favorite scribes to att tend this one is what many used to sharpen
pencils back in the day.
to something much more demanding of f his
time than writing: his own well-being. H He’s
better now, though, and back—and you u’ve
got him! Enjoy!
ften I find myself wondering or sharp, thus I was always
r
where my desire to make kni ives in some kind of trouble. Up
Ooriginated. I often come up w with to that time, if I asked for a sharp
many little pieces of my personal hist tory pencil I got a crayon.
that pointed me in the direction I usually I did have a clandestine stash of
find myself. This article covers one t tiny pencils. When they needed sharpening I
piece of many experiences that led me to would wait until my grandfather came to
what I do. visit and let him sharpen them. Today I
can still see his hands working while he
EARLY LESSONS sharpened a pencil. I still do not feel that
One of my early knife recollections I can put as beautiful a point on a pencil
is seeing my grandfather open his as he could. Many times my mind turns selling pencils was 40 miles away from
pocketknife and sharpen his pencil. It was back to his work when I sharpen a pencil. my house and that posed a problem.
World War II. MyfatherwasinFranceand One thing I learned and continue to learn Back home I walked to the dime
my family was living in Denver, Colorado. is that the sharper the knife, the better store. It had unsharpened pencils for
I was just about in kindergarten. While point you can develop on your pencil. a nickel each. I earned a dime from my
my mother preferred I use crayons, I did After the war we all moved to Idaho
have access to a few pencils, but they were Springs, Colorado, where my fath her set up
t
all dulled on purpose. Being a nurse, my his medical practice and I got to b be a
mother was terrified of anything dirty kid. While Idaho Springs was
in the mountains, my mother
kept me pretty close to home,
which was in the geographical
center of town. U.S. Highways
6 and 40 ran right in front of
my house. I would sit on the
sidewalk and signal the universal l
“hello” to truckers, holding my y
closed fist up and pumping it up p
and down suggesting the trucker rs
hit their air horns. Many did. It
was fun until neighbors starte ed
complaining to my mother abo out
the noise and I had to stop (ju ust
one of the “joys” of living in the
city).
BIRTH of a BUSINESSMAN
Sometimes we went shopping g in
Denver. One day I saw a man sitting
on the sidewalk wearing a pa air of
dark glasses holding a tin cup f full of
pencils, and folks would buy them.
I noticed that the pencils wer re not
sharpened and thought, wow, I I could
i
As a youth in the 1940s, the author make some extra money sharpening According to the author, both John
borrowed his grandfather’s pocketknife to pencils if my grandfather would let me Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway wrote
sharpen pencils and sold them in a can. borrow his knife. Trouble was, the man their great novels with pencils.
FEBRUARY 2020 blademag.com 23
