Age is a funny thing. One one hand it takes things away from us, like our ability to what we used to do. Climbing mountains, motorcycling across the country, backpacking on the Appellation Trail for days at a time. Now I look at the mountains from the scenic overlook I pull the car into, and a few hours day hike is what I do now, and last time I crossed the country last summer, the better half and I did it in a nice almost new Toyota Camry with books on disc and a latte or a mocha from Starbucks in the drink holders. We gave away our backpacking gear years ago, and it's nice to be comfortable at night traveling on the open road by flashing the plastic and spending the night at a Holiday Inn with the free breakfast in the morning. The life of a senior citizen.
But…some things don't change, or if they do, it's only for a while. One may stray from our roots, but I have now found out that as we get "older" we sometimes like to go back to the roots where we started out from. My gun collection has been sold off and now I have just what I had 40 years ago. And my knife collection has went the same way. Most of it gone. When I was a kid, I started out with a boy scout knife my dad gave me, and I carried that knife from age 12 to when I joined the army not long after high school. I left it home, because it had become a sentimental object, and I didn't want to loose it in the barracks, plus in boot camp we we not allowed any knives anyways. Once out of the boot camp and on to my regular service, I got a hold of the army issue all steel scout knife that some call the 'demo' knife. Ki nd of like a cruder version of a SAK pioneer. The supply room handed them out and it wasn't a bad knife, so I used the heck out of the freebie.
But, things change, and while in the service, I saw a large colorful display of Victorinox Swiss Army Knives. Couldn't miss it really, it had a huge automated SAK in the window. It was 1969, and I became a SAK fan. Growing up from a 12 year old boy to a full grown adult carrying a scout knife and then a SAK, I guess I got used to carrying a knife that had a few basic tools on it. A screw driver for poking, light prying, scraping, whatever, and sometimes even dealing with screws. A can or bottle opener. Maybe even a second blade on some models.
Then fairly late in life, I got side tracked by 'other' knives. Pocket knives with more knife blades, like stockman models, peanut models, barlow models. NIce handle materials like jigged bone, stag, or wood. Looking back on it, it was a fairly brief period in my life, and it ran it's course. I collected more knives than I ever had need of, and after a while something struck me. None of them were anything but a one trick pony. A shallow single purpose knives that cut well, but were not worth a plug nickel if you had a loose screw or small repair to deal with, or a nice cold imported brew to open, or needed to make a starter hole for a wood screw on a small project. Then there was the broken nail to cut or file down, the little phillips screw that holds the whole word together these days, or the splinter that needs a fine tweezers to get out.
I noticed that I always had to keep a SAK around someplace to deal with the things my 'other' knives could not deal with. So, many times I found myself carrying multiple knives and pocket space was being taken up with more than I needed for my day to day life. I ended up going back to my roots in a big way. The non-SAK knives got the riff. The stockmen, the barrows, and even the peanuts got passed on down the road to other owners who would appreciate them, and all I was left with were my SAK's. A small handful of an accumulation, a few alox, a few 91mm cellidor, and a few keychain size 58mm's. A funny thing happened.
I felt free.
As we aged, the better half and I had downsized all our possessions so we traveled light. In the fall of 2015, we sold our house in Maryland and moved to Texas to be near more family and have a milder warm climate for our golden years. We both wanted to live where we didn't need a snow shovel or long underwear. It's been ten months now in Texas, and for that time, I haven't carried any other pocket knife but a SAK and been happy with it. It's been like a return to my roots to have a small pocket size bundle of tools in my pocket. to deal with life's little problems. I haven't missed any of the 'other' knives at all. In fact, looking back on that brief window of several years, it was like being in the grip of some kind of temporary insanity. Why was I carrying a three bladed pocket knife that was close to a hundred dollar knife, the size of a Victorinox tinker, yet didn't have 1/8 of the capability?
I guess as I got "older" I seemed to gain a new pragmatic outlook on life. I think it goes hand in hand with the more basic lifestyle the wife and I are trying live as senior citizens. Fewer things that have more capability. A SAK fits into that role perfectly. Like a shotgun as a main firearm. Depending on what you load it with, it can handle any game animal from rabbit to bear.
It's nice to have that one pocket knife that will cut open a package, slice a snack off a salami, adjust the carburetor on an old Vespa PX150, and then pop open a nice ice cold bottle of Becks. I've come home and I'm never staying again!
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