Carl Levitian
member
I lost the toothpick from a SwissArmy Knife recently, so I went by a dedicated knife shop that had the tray of Victorinox replacement parts to get another one. While there, I over heard a conversation between a couple of younger guys admire ring some tactical knives. One guy said "Yeah, that'll ruin somebody's day of they get on ya," And another said something similar about some knife with a black blade with a very unusable shape.
NOw, I know I'm an old fart from another era, and things change, but the incident made me thing back to my childhood, and I now things were very very different then. Knives were not looked on as weapons when I was a kid, at least not by the grown up men I looked up to. We lived in a working class neighborhood in Northeast Washington D.C., and there was crime around. ONce in a while you heard about somebody getting rolled, or an assault.
But nobody carried a knife as a weapon. The men who did carry a pocket knife, which was most men, all had some conventional slip joint pocket knife of the day, like a small two blade jack of some type, a boy scout type of knife brought home from the war, or some such. This was not long after WW2, and a lot of men were carrying military issued scout type knives or the TL-29 type knives most of which seemed to be made by camillus. The only single blade knife with a lock on the blade was those Italian style stilleto's and switch blades, which were openly scorned by the men in our little neighborhood as a "punk's weapon."
But people being people, they did carry some non firearm weapons on occasion. My aunt, my dad's younger sister lived in an apartment building that backed to ours. When she came over for dinner, or whatever, dad always walked her back home across the alley that separated the two back to back apartment buildings. He always opened the little drawer in the table by the door and slipped his blackjack in his back pocket, and took a big flashlight in his hand. Back then, blackjacks seemed to be almost common. They were sold in stores with little problems, and came in a die variety of sizes and shapes. Long ones, short ones, round ones, and flat ones.
Mr. Briscoe, who lived downstairs was a TV repair man. Back in those days TV's had tubes and you could open up the back and figure out what needed to be replaced. M.r Briscoe had a tool kit he'd carry around that had testers and things to figure our what was bad. When he went out, a lot of times he was carrying a hammer handle, with the slim end the hammer head was supposed to goon, shoved down in his waistband. Since most people didn't have credit cards in those days, they paid in cash for things, so it was a summed that a repair guy had cash on him. The time a couple of inner city types tried to roll Mr. Briscoe, he ended up pullng his wood hammer handle and beating the ever loving stuffing out of the two would be robbers. Mr. Briscoe being a hefty built Irish guy bigger than the average bear, I wonder if he really needed the hammer handle.
But what I'm getting at, in my long winded way is, I never remember people carrying a knife as a weapon, or even seeing knives sold that were weapons, when I was a kid. Except of course for the James Dean wannabe's who had to have an e-tal-ian switch blade to be cool. If a weapon was needed, and a gun was not in the cards, some sort of impact tool was used or carried to be used just in case. Blackjacks, hammer handles, piece of pipe, even a cane. We had one neighbor who carried a silver headed walking stick that had a beautiful horses head on a knobby blackthorn shaft, and he openly called it his head bopper.
But there was no tactical knives, no lock blades, just normal little slip joit jackknives that people carried to cut string, open packages, whatever. Now we have multiple display cases of knives that look like they were designed by a Hollyweird special effects person to look dangerous with weird shaped blades and special black coatings. I remember when Buck came out with the to be famous folding hunter. Even that was touted as a hunting knife. It was adapted by construction workers, soldiers, and then bikers. It became the ubiquitous knife of the 1970's.
So what sociological event/events took place in the 1980's and 90's that the tactical knife became such a big deal? I confess that I don't really understand the current knife craze toward movie looking knives that seem to be getting more and more outlandish in design, and seem to be of little use for real world use. It seems to my thinking that any impact tool is way ahead if a knife. If I do have someone on me, I'd think that a blunt force truma injury would be more effective faster than a stab wound. I've heard that sometimes a stab wound is not even felt until after the fight. Andif I'm facing a knife wielding criminal, the very last thing I want is a knife. I ain't Jm Bowie, and have zero interest in trading slashes with some nut job. Having seen one real knife fight in my life, that was enough for me. The two GI's that got into it with Buck knives over one shorting the other in a sale of some pot, made the case against knife fights for me. One died, the other was in critical condition, and after he was well enough to leave the hospital, his next station was Ft. Levenworth for a long stay. They brought in a water truck to hose down the pavement where the fight took place.
It's too bad they made blackjacks ileagl. I remember a store that used be down on th corner where they sold some. Beautiful work, sometimes with two different color leathers braided in it. And I remember my dad saying how a broken collar bone or a smashed elbow ends a fight immediately. Then I think how it took 52 stab wounds to bring down Victor Frykowski in the Manson killing. Two of Manson's followers testified as to how Victor would go down and kept fighting, so they had to keep stabbing him.
I guess looking around that knife shop at all the tactical trendy knives, I wonder if there's something I'm missing because I'm dated, or are lots of people fooling themselves?
Carl.
NOw, I know I'm an old fart from another era, and things change, but the incident made me thing back to my childhood, and I now things were very very different then. Knives were not looked on as weapons when I was a kid, at least not by the grown up men I looked up to. We lived in a working class neighborhood in Northeast Washington D.C., and there was crime around. ONce in a while you heard about somebody getting rolled, or an assault.
But nobody carried a knife as a weapon. The men who did carry a pocket knife, which was most men, all had some conventional slip joint pocket knife of the day, like a small two blade jack of some type, a boy scout type of knife brought home from the war, or some such. This was not long after WW2, and a lot of men were carrying military issued scout type knives or the TL-29 type knives most of which seemed to be made by camillus. The only single blade knife with a lock on the blade was those Italian style stilleto's and switch blades, which were openly scorned by the men in our little neighborhood as a "punk's weapon."
But people being people, they did carry some non firearm weapons on occasion. My aunt, my dad's younger sister lived in an apartment building that backed to ours. When she came over for dinner, or whatever, dad always walked her back home across the alley that separated the two back to back apartment buildings. He always opened the little drawer in the table by the door and slipped his blackjack in his back pocket, and took a big flashlight in his hand. Back then, blackjacks seemed to be almost common. They were sold in stores with little problems, and came in a die variety of sizes and shapes. Long ones, short ones, round ones, and flat ones.
Mr. Briscoe, who lived downstairs was a TV repair man. Back in those days TV's had tubes and you could open up the back and figure out what needed to be replaced. M.r Briscoe had a tool kit he'd carry around that had testers and things to figure our what was bad. When he went out, a lot of times he was carrying a hammer handle, with the slim end the hammer head was supposed to goon, shoved down in his waistband. Since most people didn't have credit cards in those days, they paid in cash for things, so it was a summed that a repair guy had cash on him. The time a couple of inner city types tried to roll Mr. Briscoe, he ended up pullng his wood hammer handle and beating the ever loving stuffing out of the two would be robbers. Mr. Briscoe being a hefty built Irish guy bigger than the average bear, I wonder if he really needed the hammer handle.
But what I'm getting at, in my long winded way is, I never remember people carrying a knife as a weapon, or even seeing knives sold that were weapons, when I was a kid. Except of course for the James Dean wannabe's who had to have an e-tal-ian switch blade to be cool. If a weapon was needed, and a gun was not in the cards, some sort of impact tool was used or carried to be used just in case. Blackjacks, hammer handles, piece of pipe, even a cane. We had one neighbor who carried a silver headed walking stick that had a beautiful horses head on a knobby blackthorn shaft, and he openly called it his head bopper.
But there was no tactical knives, no lock blades, just normal little slip joit jackknives that people carried to cut string, open packages, whatever. Now we have multiple display cases of knives that look like they were designed by a Hollyweird special effects person to look dangerous with weird shaped blades and special black coatings. I remember when Buck came out with the to be famous folding hunter. Even that was touted as a hunting knife. It was adapted by construction workers, soldiers, and then bikers. It became the ubiquitous knife of the 1970's.
So what sociological event/events took place in the 1980's and 90's that the tactical knife became such a big deal? I confess that I don't really understand the current knife craze toward movie looking knives that seem to be getting more and more outlandish in design, and seem to be of little use for real world use. It seems to my thinking that any impact tool is way ahead if a knife. If I do have someone on me, I'd think that a blunt force truma injury would be more effective faster than a stab wound. I've heard that sometimes a stab wound is not even felt until after the fight. Andif I'm facing a knife wielding criminal, the very last thing I want is a knife. I ain't Jm Bowie, and have zero interest in trading slashes with some nut job. Having seen one real knife fight in my life, that was enough for me. The two GI's that got into it with Buck knives over one shorting the other in a sale of some pot, made the case against knife fights for me. One died, the other was in critical condition, and after he was well enough to leave the hospital, his next station was Ft. Levenworth for a long stay. They brought in a water truck to hose down the pavement where the fight took place.
It's too bad they made blackjacks ileagl. I remember a store that used be down on th corner where they sold some. Beautiful work, sometimes with two different color leathers braided in it. And I remember my dad saying how a broken collar bone or a smashed elbow ends a fight immediately. Then I think how it took 52 stab wounds to bring down Victor Frykowski in the Manson killing. Two of Manson's followers testified as to how Victor would go down and kept fighting, so they had to keep stabbing him.
I guess looking around that knife shop at all the tactical trendy knives, I wonder if there's something I'm missing because I'm dated, or are lots of people fooling themselves?
Carl.
), but over time people stopped so much as blinking. Last semester a guy started who is constantly playing with his knife in public - nobody seemed to find it offensive except me!
