The Best Man

I’m carrying two knives with me into the woods this weekend to open the muzzleloading deer season.

One will be a Buck model 110 folding hunter I bought this past summer because I could. I’ve wanted one for a long time.

Buck knives have been in hunter’s pockets for a long time at least since the mid-1950’s.

They come out of the box with a good edge that will hold and hold and hold. They also come with a reputation for being a hard knife to put an edge on when it comes time to freshen them up. That’s true, too.

I own another Buck, a "mini-sword, belt-hanger" my brother took off a guy in Iraq back in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm.

I’d as soon gut a deer with a lawn mower blade as use the long Buck, but when he offered it to me one weekend when he showed up here at the house, I didn’t turn it down.

Sometimes late at night when everyone’s asleep, I take it out, turn it over in my hands and let the light catch its long blade and shaft, and wave it around over my head a little.

It wouldn’t do for you to walk in the room on me just at that moment. Who wouldn’t want a knife with a story wrapped around its handle? I’ve got several like that.

Speaking of which, the other knife I mentioned is going to be an old Boker Tree Brand, “Barlow” model, about three inches long folded, that most people wouldn’t think suitable as a letter opener.

It’ll do that, and a good deal more. Ask me how I know.

I bought it used, which is the way I like most of my knives to be. It’s personal and goes back to that story thing I mentioned a moment ago.

Who doesn’t like history? Dull people.

Actually, Ronny Gage bought it for me, my old college roommate and Best Man at Pam’s wedding.

When I first me Ronny, he was a nose guard paying his way through college by knocking people down. Now he buys and sells antiques, keeps his eye out for old knives because he knows I like them, and lacks only a double X tutu being a world class ballerina.

Make that a triple X.

I carry the old Boker with me everywhere I go, including places it’s not legal, just because I like the feel of it in my pocket.

I get nervous without it in my pocket. I got that, I think, from my grandfather, Austin, whom I first remember carrying one when I moved into his house when I was a little over a year old.

Since he was the first man I really knew anything about, I was imprinted early (like a young goose) with the notion that if you were a man, you had a knife on you somewhere, in the same way that all women carried a purse, no exceptions allowed.

It may have filtered that one outlook of mine about what constitutes proper manhood, but somehow, I’ve made it to be 60 years old.

That same guy is going to be in the deer woods this weekend with two knives on him, either one of which will gut a deer.

Something old, something new.

If Pam and I ever get a divorce, I’m going to marry the Boker. The Buck will be Best Man. The Iraqi one. The one with the story hooked to it.

© 2010 Conrad M. Vollertsen