I remember being 10 years old with my friend then John Odney from Norway cutting up a dead squirrel with one of these after school. We carried them to school and everywhere then. Since it was a jack knife that all the boys tended to carry then we were allowed to do this.
However, butterfly knives and switchblades were forbidden because these are what gangs carried then to cut each other up and to rob people with in the 1950s and 1960s.
Only the Mafia used guns. Even gangs didn't usually use guns then because it was thought unmanly to do this mostly. But, there were always a few crazy guys in gangs even then who carried guns. But mostly it would be something like a Police special .38 which is a snub nosed revolver then.
However, a jack knife was seen as a necessary tool for every boy older than about 4 to 6 years old then. I was given my first one at age 5.
I proceeded to test how sharp it was on my right thumb. I have a permanent scar across my right thumb from El Cajon on my birthday from then. My father also gave me a 24 inch bicycle. It was pretty big for me then because standard now is a 27 inch bike. I proceeded to drive that off a small cliff following another 5 year old and skinned off all my eyelashes on my right side and my eyebrow when I hit the pavement wrong jumping off a 3 or 4 foot high small cliff with my bike onto the street.
Luckily my very long eyelashes and thick eyebrows grew back pretty soon. Then my eyebrows were blond but they turned a darker brown by age 10. My hair was still moving from toehead blonde to light brown then too. My Dad was a toehead blonde too.
But, this was pretty normal then. bloody injuries happened to all of us because we were all out of doors outside without our parents for miles away from home by age 5. I got bit by a dog then across the street he was my best friend's dog then. His name was Danny Barsocks there in El Cajon then.
I realized I had bought a new one the last few years to add to my knife collection. As a young person I didn't have money to buy fancy knives but as an older adult I can collect things like several Swiss Army knives of various sizes and various knives I always wanted like Buck knives for camping and hunting and fishing. Even though I don't hunt or fish I'm always out in nature hiking or kayaking or 4 wheeling with my friends whenever the weather is good enough and my health is good enough to do this.
OH by the way my friend from Norway and I found the squirrel already dead. We just wanted to do a post mortem on it to see what mammals organs looked like then. Looking back I realize we were so young we didn't even try to wash our hands afterwords. Boy. Were we lucky or what?
begin quotes regarding Camper's knife by Sabre of Ireland:
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