The Whole Garage Catalogue: A Pocket Knife

Saturday, December 31, 2011

A Pocket Knife

It has a can piercer and a bottle opener in addition to the knife blade. (I just tried out the bottle opener -- it works fine.)

It was made by 'Richards' of Sheffield, England. (There's a logo of a beacon or lighthouse bisecting the 'Richards' name.) From what I've read of Richards knives on the internet, they're considered to be low-end tools of no great distinction, but this knife looks pretty decent to me. It's well-constructed, with solid, unambiguous open and closed seatings of the 'blades'. I'll keep it in the tackle box I have for miscellaneous bits of camping gear.

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As an adolescent, I always had a pocket knife on me -- a very slim one, like this.

Attending high school (mid-1960s), I'd have a brown-bagged lunch that my mom had packed for me. There was often an orange in the bag. I had a neat method for peeling an orange with the aid of a knife -- three shallow, circular cuts to the skin and it all came away nicely. I'd peacefully eat my sandwich in the school's lunchroom/cafeteria, take out my orange and my knife, peel the orange and eat it; no big deal, no threat to anyone, no cause for alarm.

From things I've read lately, I take it that a high school kid doing such a thing these days would attract a SWAT team equipped with tasers, automatic rifles, tear gas, pepper spray, fearsome dogs and possibly a grenade launcher. WTF!?

Who, pray tell, is responsible for that state of affairs? Is he or she still running around loose? Why hasn't he or she been hunted down and dealt with harshly? I'd like some answers.

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Introduction

This blog is in honour of my deceased father, Nick Gaspick.

It sprang from what had started out as merely a post on my workshop blog, Rouge River Workshop. Here's my introduction to that post:

"My son has been clearing out my deceased father's garage, so he'll have a place to restore an old car, and he's been finding all manner of stuff. I've begun one post about an old woodworking vise that I mean to restore. This weekend, my son brought me four toolboxes full of items. As a small honour to my father, I'll 'catalogue' them in this post, in no particular order, little-by-little as I go through the boxes."

The nature of the post was for it to grow ever longer, and that can be dangerous. Blogger has some quirks that I've experienced in the past, and I was getting tired of always backing up the entire post so I wouldn't lose it should Blogger vapourize an editing session. I finally decided to make a full-blown blog with an index out of the post. Here it is.

I'll leave the original post as it is, where it is, but I'll bring over all the items in it so far as individual, indexed posts here as well. Needless to say, new material will only appear here.

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A Little About My Father:

My father emigrated to Canada with his family from Croatia at about the age of seven. His family took on a homestead up Sudbury, Ontario way, and made a living there through the great depression.

My father loved school, and yearned to continue his schooling past grade eight, but that was not on. He had to leave school to make a living -- trapping, mining, whatever. Eventually, he and his made their way to Toronto -- the big smoke in Canada.

My father was built like a brick shit-house; he was a sturdy guy, unlike scrawny me. My father was a guy who could clear an acre of Canadian bush before breakfast, have it tilled and planted before lunchtime, with the plants sprouting before dinnertime.

Jesus H. Christ!-- a guy like my father ought to have lived forever!