Mrs. KintlaLake and I were the first to arrive at our shop yesterday, as usual. When the first of our two co-workers strolled in a half-hour later I noticed that he was carrying some sort of flat parcel, wrapped in a white trash bag.
"I found this at my parents' place yesterday," he announced, pulling back the plastic. "I thought you should have it."
Without further fanfare, he presented me with his discovery: an original album cover from McGuffey Lane's self-titled 1980 recording, the band's first, complete with autographs. According to my co-worker, the members of McGuffey Lane were regular visitors to his parents' house, since (the late) Bobby Gene McNelly's back yard bordered theirs. The guys signed this particular cover while hanging out in the basement one day shortly after the album's release.
This is a bona fide keeper, of course. Preserved in a proper frame, soon it'll adorn the wall of my office.
Okay, so you think that "Chevy Runs Deep" commercial is sappy or cliché and yeah, maybe the acting won't win any prizes. But if you can't help dismissing it, whatever the reason, you don't get it. You wouldn't give your right arm for just one more ride in your granddad's truck. You're an incurable consumer, buying shiny new stuff rather than maintaining or restoring perfectly useful old stuff. You'll probably never understand the satisfaction I get from paring an apple with my late father's pen knife, hauling brush in his old wheelbarrow or turning soil with the shovel he used in his own garden. You haven't the faintest idea what akeeperis, do you?
It's a damp, overcast morning here at KintlaLake Ranch. Seems like a good time to catalog some unexpected finds. In one of my Urban Resources posts I surveyed The Other Economy, that rich source of goods and services operating outside the conventional marketplace. My family and I have been "shopping the roadside" a lot lately, turning up bargain after useful bargain. I've regretted parting with my Black & Decker Benchtop Workmate since leaving it behind when I moved back to Ohio ten years ago. Introduced in the late 1970s, the Benchtop model eventually was discontinued, so if I wanted to replace it I'd have to explore the secondhand market. I discovered this one (above) earlier this summer at a garage sale halfway down a narrow alley in our village. Other than a few stains and a little rust, I found it in excellent condition, complete except for a pair of original-issue L-bolts that clamp it to a bench. The price: just $3.00. Two carriage bolts, two flat washers and two wingnuts, purchased at the local hardware store, put it on my workbench for a grand total of four bucks. Because a man can never have enough vises (or vices, for that matter), at another garage sale that same day I picked up this "hobby vise" (left) for two dollars. It clamps to the work-surface with a thumbscrew and will come in handy for a variety of small projects. Speaking of The Other Economy, our village held its annual flea market last weekend. It's not a big event, just a coupla dozen canopied tables piled with household castoffs. My wife and I came home with a three-foot chocolate rabbit (brown plastic, actually) that'll grace our front porch next Easter, and a 1960s-vintage glass-and-chrome teapot. Together, the two items cost us two bucks. I spent one more dollar, that on an old Boy Scout "contest medal." These awards were introduced in the late 1920s, as I understand it, but they'd been retired by the time I became a Scout myself. Wanting to get a better fix on this medal's age, yesterday I examined it with a magnifying glass. Other than the word CAMPING cast into the front, the pendant bears no markings. Stamped on the clasp at the top of the ribbon, however, is PAT. NO. 2,795,064. A bit of web-sleuthing unearthed a copy of the original patent for the clasp -- applied for in 1953, granted in 1957. So the clasp, at least, probably is as old as I am. A buck bought me a keeper and a pleasant exercise in discovery. I love beer -- and I mean good beer. Sure, I'm willing to throw back my earthly portion of mass-produced barley pop, but I prefer beer that has actual flavor. In a corner-store lager, for example, I enjoy an ice-cold Rolling Rock. If I had to choose a favorite, without a doubt it'd be Rogue BreweryDead Guy Ale. And as you might expect, I'm especially partial to small-batch local brews, like those from Columbus Brewing Company.
Recently I learned of Rockmill Brewery, located in nearby Lancaster, and its Belgian-style ales. As the story goes, Rockmill's founder discovered that the well on his family's farm produced water with the same mineral content as that found in Wallonia, Belgium, and that served as the inspiration for four unusual ales. Mrs. KintlaLake and I savored a bottle of Rockmill Dubbel over a plate of summer sausage, sharp cheese and apple slices (this isn't a beer one serves with nachos), and we came away truly amazed. It's strong (6% to 8% ABM), full-bodied and fruity, as well as pricey ($16 for a 22-ounce bottle) -- and worth every penny. Great beer, brewed barely a stone's throw from home -- that's as good as it gets. There's a bottle of high-octane Rockmill Tripel in my fridge, and I can't wait to pop the cork. Finally, of course, our vegetable garden offers up discoveries almost every day -- take this green-and-yellow beauty (below) that sprang from one of the "volunteer" vines I mentioned last week. At about 12 inches long, it's the largest gourd that's set (so far). Our unintentional crop continues to spread, so there will be more.
(As I type this, the outdoor temperature here in our village is 95°F. Coupled with 64% relative humidity and a dew point of 81°F, the "feels like" temp -- that new-fangled "heat index" popular with TV meteorologists -- is a brain-broiling 117°F, and we haven't yet seen the hottest part of the day. Time to focus on something cooler.)
In last Saturday's post, I waxed righteous about re-using a vintage Ball canning jar. I've put up three more quarts of pickles since then, each in a jar left behind by our home's previous owner. I've also done a bit of sleuthing about their pedigrees.
That clear Kerr Self-Sealing Wide Mouth jar (above) arguably is the least interesting of the four. It offers no clues as to its age but, judging by the other jars we found, it probably was made in the 1960s in Sand Springs, Oklahoma.
The quaint-looking Mom's Mason jar was made in nearby Columbus by Home Products. a division of Ohio Container, in the mid-1970s.
This blue Atlas Strong Shoulder Mason was made in Wheeling, West Virginia by Hazel-Atlas, which ceased production in 1964. I suspect that this jar may date to the 1940s or 1950s -- but that wouldn't make it the oldest jar rescued from our basement shelf.
Nope, that distinction (so far) belongs to the blue Ball Perfect Mason mentioned on Saturday. Its markings testify that it was made between 1923 and 1933.
These vintage canning jars aren't just worth keeping -- they're damned well worth using.
When we moved here a year ago, the garden plot in our back yard was piled high with cut brush, yard debris and some trash. It looked like it hadn't been planted in ten years, maybe more.
While it would've been nice to put in a vegetable garden back then, we had plenty of other to-dos on our plate. (For evidence, note how many times I posted here last May.) So rather than rush things, we took a full 12 months to prepare the soil.
We've had a very rainy spring around here, and it wasn't dry enough to get gardening until last week. First, using our electric tiller, I turned autumn's mulched leaves, which had broken down nicely. Next I harvested the "black gold" from our compost bins and worked that rich organic matter into the soil as well.
Today I was back at it again, beginning with the tiller and finishing the job with an iron rake and my dad's old shovel. I worked the 200-square-foot plot for a good two hours, ultimately building five raised beds.
I'm thrilled with the way our garden-to-be is shaping up. Right now the aroma is absolutely amazing and the soil is full of big, fat, happy earthworms.
If I were green, this is where I'd want to live.
Some folks probably would screen this soil -- it's fluffy, still with recognizable chunks that haven't broken down completely -- but I've never been much for screening. We'll choose our veggies and seeds and move straight to planting, probably over the next week or two.
Yesterday's post got me thinking about the dozens of metal cups that have accompanied me over the years. On a whim, I went rummaging through my gear and found four more that are still with me.
Along with my newly acquired GI canteen cup there's an original-style Sierra, a GSI with folding wire handles, a Coleman Peak1 with a rigid wire handle and a battered aluminum cup that first saw trailside duty when I wore the rank of Tenderfoot Scout. Together they span more than four decades of picnic lunches, day hikes, backpacking trips and motorcycle tours.
In the field, especially when packing light, a good cup is more than just a receptacle for beverages and soup. It's a dinner plate and a cook pot, a wash basin and even a trowel.
Each design has advantages, of course, as well as disadvantages. I've probably used various Sierra cups more than any other type, even though their relatively small capacity almost always disappoints.
Lately, with an eye on condensing my kit as much as is practical, I'm leaning more toward a "nesting" setup -- thus the GI canteen cup and also the stainless-steel GSI, which mates with a common Nalgene bottle in similar fashion. A cup's volume has become more important to me, too, primarily for water-purification purposes, so it's no accident that the GI and GSI are the largest of the bunch.
An intimate relationship can develop between cup and camper, for reasons that I hope need no explanation. That's why my well-worn Boy Scout dipper remains a sentimental favorite.
We cemented our bond in 1972, I think, at Philmont Scout Ranch. Over 75 miles of dusty trail it hung from a pack strap or my belt, clink-clanking at the end of a rawhide thong. It served me hot cocoa and tepid bug juice, beef stew and mac'n'cheese. A half-dozen years later, it drew icy water from Kintla Creek.
Other cups may be bigger or more versatile, but that one's a keeper.
On Saturday, Mrs. KintlaLake and I postponed our springtime yard work a week, choosing instead to head into Columbus and stroll the sidewalks south of the OSU campus. Our first stop was a military-surplus store, a door that I hadn't darkened since my college days.
The place is as wonderfully dim and musty today as it was 35 years ago. I was pleased to find a decent selection of used and true surplus goods, and little of the cheap faux mil that dominates similar shops.
It felt great to be back in those dingy confines. I lingered a good long while, finally marking my return with a five-dollar purchase.
Nothing fancy, mind you -- I bought a used USGI canteen cup.
I can't say just how old it is. The vessel is aluminum and the handle, stamped with US and INGERSOLL PRODUCTS, is steel. Its strap-type handle, which preceded the wire "butterfly" style, might date it to the 1960s or as early as WWII, or maybe sometime in between.
In any case, dents and rust testify to hard use by someone at some point -- but the rivets are tight, the latch is straight and the vessel is intact. So, like a certain old carpenter's hatchet, this cup's service life is far from over.
I took some time to clean it up a bit, of course, attacking the rusty handle with a wire brush and giving it a thorough scrubbing. Now paired with my 1980s-vintage GI canteen, it's one solid piece of kit.
It feels like a good time to re-visit some topics covered on KintlaLake Blog in recent weeks and months. In no particular order, then...
Scouting arms
I posted a pointed commentary last month about the disappearance of marksmanship from the list of essential Scouting skills. And while it may be endangered Scoutcraft, it's not yet gone.
Two long-gun merit badges remain -- Rifle Shooting and Shotgun Shooting. Earning each requires a Scout to demonstrate knowledge and proper mindset as well as skill with firearms.
Rifle Shooting gives a candidate the option of firing a .22 rifle, an air rifle or a muzzle-loader. The marksmanship standards might sound simple -- putting five three-shot groups inside an inch at 50 feet, for example -- but I'll wager that many of us gray-haired shooters can't do that reliably with open sights. Shotgun Shooting is similarly challenging.
It's also worth noting that Shooting Sports is an elective Ranger Award in the Venturing program, which succeeded Exploring in the 1990s.
There's no telling how long it'll be before runaway political correctness relegates those awards to Scouting's trash heap, but I wanted to temper my previous pessimism with some (encouraging) facts.
Urban Resources: Ranger Bands Seldom does the sun set without another use for "Ranger Bands" popping into my head. It's a curse.
One sub-zero February evening I pulled a Mini Maglite from my TrailBlazer's console, and after just a few minutes the ice-cold aluminum had my hands aching. The next morning I cut a length of road-bike tube and slipped it over the housing -- problem solved.
I also found a neat idea (above) in a 1919 issue of Popular Science. Soon I believe I'll cannibalize a motorcycle tube and use that "cobbled" sheath on my Vaughan Sub-Zero Axe. Pictures (mine) to follow.
Sharps: Pocket sheaths Looking at my "pocket sheath for the woods" the other day, it occurred to me to dose the hide with Montana Pitch-Blend Leather Dressing -- beeswax would help repel water, protecting the knife and (especially) the tinder in the fire kit.
The sweet-smelling paste darkened the leather slightly and gave it a nice sheen. Tested afterward, the surface beaded and shed moisture well. I treated my smaller pocket sheath, too, but with the Leather Oil -- less water-repellent than Leather Dressing (owing to the lack of beeswax), but just fine for the application.
Waste management
I hate to see food go to waste -- any food, for any reason. It's safe to say that it's one of my pet peeves. And although composting is a perfectly responsible way for us to turn truly disposable matter into fertilizer, I've been thinking about better ways to save fresh fruits and vegetables that risk spoiling before we're able to eat them.
At a local odd-lots store the other night I spied a brand-new five-tray food dehydrator. It was a convection-only model (no fan), so it wasn't ideal -- but it was "marked down" from $40 to $25. Besides, it came with a jerky kit.
So we brought it home. We'll do some drying, some vacuum-sealing and some canning and see how it goes over the next year or so. As for making jerky, I'll use the nifty convection oven that was in the kitchen when we moved into our house.
Winchester Model 67
I uncovered a relatively recent article about my old single-shot .22 -- "Winchester Model 67: A Product of Another Era," written by Gil Sengel and published in the January-February 2009 issue of Rifle Magazine. It covers the M67's history, development and variants, and I found it a fascinating read.
I'm unable to offer a hot-link to the piece, however -- it's vanished from Google Books. Go figure.
Scout at 16 weeks The last time I wrote about our new puppy, she could sleep in a teacup with room to spare. Now she's four months old (give or take) and weighs about 25 pounds. She looks more Lab-ish every day -- otter's tail and all.
I agree with our vet that she'll top-out between 50 and 60 pounds before she's done growing. I hope she doesn't grow out of her disposition, though -- she has the most amazing personality.
Smart? You betcha. She was obeying "sit" and "stay" a long time ago. And she doesn't just "shake hands" -- last week she mastered "gimme five," "high five" and "all ten, up high."
She's definitely Daddy's Girl -- and Daddy is incurably smitten.
I'm absolutely thrilled with the way they turned out. The three-step restoration process -- a thorough scrubbing with a horse-hair brush and Montana Pitch-Blend Leather Oil Soap, followed by two applications of Leather Oil & Conditioner and finally a light coat of Leather Dressing -- brought back the uppers' original olive-brown hue and gave the hide a supple, like-new feel.
Still on my to-do list: adding a pair of simple foam insoles and (maybe) replacing the laces. Other than that, they're ready for the woods -- or the yard, or whatever else I might ask of them.
I don't know who manufactured these boots for Sears four decades ago, but the all-leather construction -- upper, tongue, ankle collar and full lining -- is impressive. Most seams are double-stitched; a few actually are triple-stitched. That this pair is intact after years of hard use (and disuse) testifies to high-quality materials and workmanship.
Two things I do know for sure: The good stuff lasts, and it's always worth keeping. (Sears lace-up boots, manufactured ca. 1971, before & after)
I was on something of a mission when my wife and I stopped at our rented storage unit yesterday. See, for the last several weeks I've had a taste for Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, and I seemed to recall that we'd put some hard liquor into storage during our 2009 move.
I was right. When I rolled up the locker door I went straight to the correct box and extracted a bottle of Knob Creek and another of Maker's Mark. I also grabbed a fifth of Jack Daniel's and a bottle of Gosling's Black Seal Rum. All wereunopened.
The way I drink, four bottles should last me the rest of my life.
On the floor next to the booze box was a large plastic tote. Curious, I set the bottles down and popped off the lid.
Inside, packed away for decades, was a good chunk of my Scouting stuff. There was every handbook, from Wolf to Eagle, and every single wallet card, including all of my rank and merit-badge records. (I even found my Totin' Chip.) Neckerchiefs and slides, patches and hats...I don't remember the last time I'd laid eyes on my short-billed Cub Scout beanie.
Nestled in a box at the bottom of the tote was a pair of Sears lace-up boots, what we used to call "clod-hoppers." My parents bought them for me in early 1972 so that I'd have proper footwear for a trip to Philmont Scout Ranch that summer.
Those boots, now sporting what must be their fourth or fifth pair of soles, served me well beyond Boy Scouts. I wore them throughout my college years. They carried me to Europe and back, and they were the only boots I had with me 33 summers ago in Montana.
They've seen miles upon miles of trails, countless campfires and untold hours of yard work. They were my first motorcycle boots.
Running short on time yesterday, I re-packed the tote and tossed it into the truck. I knew what I'd be doing as soon as we got home.
The old boots still fit. The leather is soft, the stitching is intact and the Vibram soles are nearly new.
I wore them around the house for a few hours before taking them off and setting them on my work table in the basement. Soon, I think, their well-loved hide will get the full Montana Pitch-Blend treatment.
I returned to Google Books again this morning, focusing on a particular topic and how Boys' Life treated it when I was a Scout.
I'd graduated from Webelos to Tenderfoot less than a year before this installment of "Scoutcraft" (right) appeared in the April 1969 issue. At camp a few months later, I'd fire a gun for the first time -- a .22 Winchester Model 52 with peep sights.
I was 12 years old.
Before we had political correctness, universal psychotherapy and other forms of wussification, a rifle was a tool and marksmanship was as much "Scoutcraft" as knot-tying, whittling and firebuilding. For any self-respecting American boy, hell, handling a rifle was an essential part of growing up in the Heartland.
My dad took me shooting shortly after I returned from Camp Buckeye that year. We drove out to the farmstead where he was born and raised, parked the car and trudged through tangle to the edge of a sandstone quarry.
It was the very spot where his father once taught him to shoot.
To my adolescent delight, we spent the morning bagging tin cans, one shot at a time. We took turns plinking with a well-loved Winchester Model 67 -- fittingly, the first gun that my dad ever fired.
I remember noticing how much my father enjoyed himself that day. It wasn't until many years later, when I had boys in my own life, that I understood why -- it was a rite of passage.
That Model 67 is mine now. I think I'll take my 15-year-old spawn to the range soon and give him a turn with the old single-shot .22.
Checking the calendar, though, I see that it's not 1969 anymore. Our culture has changed -- for the worse, in my opinion -- along with what boyhood means. There's no rewinding that.
Move these items out of the "expected" category and file them under "endangered": inspirational ads for Winchester, Remington or even Daisy in the pages of a magazine for boys; encouragement to become a Junior Member of the NRA; tutorials on how to be a crack shot.
A boy who wants to learn to shoot raises more eyebrows now than he does smiles. In some places, a dad who hands his boy a gun -- even an air rifle -- risks having his name inscribed on some nanny's list.
Writing a couple of years ago about vanishing traditions, I concluded,
"We've lost so much more than we've gained."
That commentary on our society, sadly correct though it may be, shouldn't prevent independent Americans from raising our children the way they ought to be raised. (This classic Winchester ad appeared in the August 1967 issue of Boys' Life.)
Ten days ago I devoted a post to three tools that once belonged to my mother's father. Now I'll pay respect to a utilitarian gem from the other side of the family.
This "monkey wrench" bears no maker's marks, so I can shed no light on its provenance except that it was my paternal grandfather's. It measures just 3.875 inches long closed; it opens to one inch. The frame and jaw appear to be cast steel and the adjuster is brass.
As for how the tool was used, I can't say. I do know that my dad's dad, born in 1900, raised Guernsey cattle during the Great Depression. Too poor to afford a tractor, he farmed the land with teams of Belgian draft horses -- "Tom" and "Jerry," to name two. Perhaps he carried this small wrench in an overalls pocket for tending to implements, harnesses and such.
He was killed by one of his Guernsey bulls two years before I was born, but my father often spoke of his dad's frugality, the product of desperate necessity. I'm willing to bet that the man didn't own dozens of wrenches -- he probably had two or three at most, and he damned sure made them last.
That tells me more about this tool than any maker's mark ever could.
We're still unpacking here, eight months after our last (and I do mean last) household move. Other than seasonal storage -- winter coats, holiday decorations and the like -- at this stage it's mostly discovering stuff I'd forgotten about.
I pulled a plastic toolbox down from a basement shelf yesterday afternoon, recalling that we'd used it last spring to shuttle everyday wrenches and pliers and such. Buried in the bottom of the box I found three tools that once belonged to my maternal grandfather -- a claw hammer, tin snips and pruning shears.
I don't remember the last time I actually used any of those tools. We probably tossed them into the box as an afterthought, part of the process of making small items disappear into containers headed for our new place. Turning them over in my hands now, however, I was drawn to investigate the stories they might have to tell.
Carved into one side of the hammer's oak handle are my grandfather's initials. The other side bears his surname. His last initial is scratched into the butt.
Apparently he prized this simple tool and, typical of Depression-era Heartlanders, he didn't want it wandering off. I can't say that I blame him.
The head carries the marks of the maker: HELLER and MADE IN U.S.A., flanking the image of a horse.
Heller & Bros. made hammers and files, specializing in farriers' tools (thus the horse). Founded in Newark, New Jersey in 1866, Heller bought the fire-ravaged Rex File & Saw Co. in Newcomerstown, Ohio in 1917 and by the early 1950s had shifted virtually all of its production there.
It's not clear when or where this hammer was made; for what it's worth, my grandfather lived his entire life 15 miles south of the Newcomerstown plant. Heller was sold to Simonds in 1955, and while the brand survives today, production has moved to South America.
The small pair of tin snips offers no obvious clues to its origins. The pruning shears, on the other hand, are quite intriguing.
Behind the pivot, one blade is stamped with T. HESSENBRUCH & CO. arched over PHILA. On the other is a standing bear grasping a cane.
Hessenbruch, which sold its marked tools from Philadelphia between 1873 and 1926, usually is associated with fine German straight razors and, to a lesser degree, gentleman's pocketknives. The initial "T" reportedly stands for "Thomas" and helps date this tool to before 1890, when son Hermann assumed the business. (At that time the mark was changed to "H. HESSENBRUCH.")
On Hessenbruch's razors and knives, from what I gather, the bear icon often was accompanied by the words "WILD INSPECTION" (whatever that means) or "PERFECTION WARRANTED" (which at least makes sense). There's no such text on these pruning shears.
I'm not likely to press my grandfather's tools into regular service again anytime soon, despite the fact that they're still solid and capable. I'll keep them close at hand anyway, if only to be reminded of the history behind them.
I've loved woodcraft for as long as I can remember, but I didn't discover the landmark works of Sears, Kephart, Beardet al until later in life. My spark came from a much more ordinary book.
It was my favorite bedtime reading well before I was a Cub Scout, certainly before I became a Boy Scout. If I added up the hours I spent poring over Gordon Lynn's words and, most especially, Ernest Kurt Barth's illustrations, I probably invested a year of my boyhood in this simple book. I was, in a word, hooked.
It had me imagining and planning, studying and dreaming -- and for the first seven years of my life that's all I could do. When it came to family vacations, my parents were all Holiday Inn, no KOA.
Scouting changed that. Suddenly I was taking real hikes, sleeping in real tents and cooking over real campfires. Scouting also gave me an official handbook, though I found myself still measuring my experiences against the wellspring of my imaginings -- the scenes in a dog-eared Golden Book.
I'm sure that I still have my original 1959 edition packed away somewhere. I haven't seen it in years, but I was pleased today to stumble across a blog post paying tribute to The Golden Book of Camping and Camp Crafts.
I can't begin to describe what it was like seeing those pages again. In an instant I was a kid pulling the covers over my head and clicking on my flashlight, imagining that it was me in colorful pictures I'd seen a hundred times before and to which I'd return for inspiration a thousand times more.
It was a little over a year ago that I had a chance to chat with Jeff Randall, co-head honcho of Randall's Adventure & Training and ESEE Knives (formerly known as RAT Cutlery).
When we finally got around to talking knives, Jeff said a couple of things that still stick in my mind. First, this sound advice:
"The biggest fallacy is that gear is necessary to survive. You can't get by on gear -- you need skills. You need to prepare in every aspect of life. And if you don't have the proper mindset, you're going to die."
"I never carry a RAT into the jungle -- I always carry someone else's knife. Really, just give me a three-blade Old Timer and a ten-dollar machete."
I wouldn't presume to stack my skills against a guy who's spent years training military types, cops and civvies in the art of jungle survival. With respect, however, I present two of my favorite tools.
That grimy, taped-up handle belongs to a 22" Collins machete bought new in 1983 to clear two acres of brush around the first house I owned. It was up to that task and hundreds of others since. Now endearingly scarred from hard use, the "Legitimus" mark barely visible, it continues to serve me well.
My own "three-blade Old Timer," a made-in-USA #34OT, is 25 years old. My dad often carried a Middleman just like this one, which remains in my regular EDC rotation.
Our local American Legion post has had the honor of hosting The Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall during the week of Veterans Day 2010. Over the last several days it's been touching to see the throngs lining up to pay respects to the 58,195 Americans who lost their lives in that awful war.
The younger spawn and I drove over to see the 3/5-scale memorial yesterday afternoon. Just as I do when visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., on this Veterans Day I sought out one name in particular.
Wilma and my mother grew up across the street from one another in southeastern Ohio. They stayed in touch through the years and our families often visited each other during my own childhood. Wilma's elder son, Tom, turned out to be the kid that every mother dreams of -- a good student, an Eagle Scout, the straightest of straight arrows.
The much-older Tom became something of an uncle to me. I was especially fascinated with his love of (and excellence in) Scouting, joining Cub Scouts about the time that he enlisted in the U.S. Army.
Late in the summer of 1966, Tom began a tour in Southeast Asia. While operating near Phouc Vinh on 6 November, the platoon he led was pinned down by enemy fire. Seeing that his machine gunner was wounded, Tom advanced to tend to the soldier. He then reloaded the machine gun, picked it up and charged toward the enemy, laying down suppressing fire that allowed his platoon to withdraw and redeploy.
Tom fell mortally wounded just short of the enemy position. For his gallantry, 1st Lt. Thomas Ralph Murphy posthumously was awarded the Silver Star.
He was 24 years old and I, at the age of 9, suddenly had much more to look up to.
A couple of years after Tom's death, Wilma summoned me to her home. Reminders of her son, from sports trophies to the flag that draped his coffin, surrounded us in the sitting room. She gestured to several shoe boxes on the floor at her feet.
"I want you to have these," she said, her voice choked with emotion. "Tom would want you to have these."
Holding my breath, I lifted the lid from the box closest to me. Inside that and the other packages were hundreds of mementos of Tom's years in Scouting -- neckerchiefs and slides, hats and patches and pins and more. I was as stunned as I was honored.
From that moment and until my Scouting days were done, when donning my olive-green Boy Scout uniform I made a practice of wearing at least one item that had been Tom's -- as long as I'd earned it myself, of course. It was my tribute to his memory, his example.
I surely felt his presence, perhaps even his approval, the day that my Scoutmaster pinned an Eagle Scout medal to my chest.
As I stood before panel 12E yesterday afternoon, tears welled in my aging eyes. I reached out with my right hand, touched the name at the end of line 34 and whispered my thanks.
My left hand was in my pocket, clutching Tom's Boy Scout knife.
I can remember a time when a thing wasn't real until I had a certifying wallet card with my name on it. That was especially true when I was a Scout -- the Boy Scouts of America had a practice of handing out wallet cards for accomplishments of one sort or another, and yesterday I was reminded of two in particular.
In Cub Scouts, a Whittlin' Chip card conferred the privilege of carrying my very first pocketknife -- a Camillus official model, circa 1964.
Three years later a Totin' Chip card signified that I'd shown sufficient knowledge of (and responsibility with) knife and axe, granting me "totin' rights" for my BSA-edition Ulster.
It's hard to convey how important those rites of passage were to me at the time. I'm sure I still have my "chips" tucked away somewhere, probably in a hand-laced leather wallet I made as a Cub Scout.
The knives themselves are close at hand.
You're looking at the first two pocketknives I ever owned. That's my Camillus in the foreground, the Ulster behind, resting on page 67 of my original BSA Fieldbook, 1967 edition.
Yeah, I tend to keep the good stuff.
That old Ulster, though I seldom carry it these days, came up in conversation with one of my high-school classmates last month. His late father was our Scoutmaster, a good and patient man who imparted enthusiasm as well as wisdom. This master woodsman and gifted woodcarver had a great influence on me.
Now, 40 years on, I have the knowledge he shared and the simple edged tool I used to practice what he taught. At the same time, I acknowledge that Scouts in the UK are explicitly prohibited from carrying knives, and on our own shores knife laws are getting more restrictive every day.
We must do whatever we can to hold on to our independent heritage and the legacy of personal responsibility we seek to pass on to the next generation. For my part, I'll also be holding on to those two old pocketknives -- both for what they are and for the boyhood milestones they represent.
While I was on the phone this morning, expressing my habit of doodling in three dimensions I picked up that old Estwing hatchet and began turning it over in my hands. I mentioned in yesterday's post that I'd found three letters scribed into the tool's carbon-steel shank, but until today I hadn't spotted a second set of scratchings on the opposite side.
Some hours later I squinted through a magnifying glass at the faint letters -- first name and surname, postal route, town and state. A quick bit of research, colored by a splash of speculation, gives me a story to tell.
The place-name leads to a farming community north of Chillicothe, Ohio. As for the hatchet's owner, two candidates emerge -- father and son, Sr. and Jr.
The father was of my grandparents' era, born in Ross County in October of 1901; his death was recorded in the same locale in January of 1981. His namesake, who in his eighties reportedly goes by "Sonny," apparently still lives there. A satellite image shows the address to be a collection of buildings, surrounded by cultivated fields, at the end of a long lane.
With only sketchy information it's impossible to say for sure, of course, but it's my guess that the hatchet was employed on the family farm and may have been sold as part of the father's estate.
By today's standards, this scarred-up tool should've been retired long ago. It's not new, hardly state-of-the-art, neither pretty nor perfect.
Human hands in Rockford, Illinois forged this hatchet to last and, by god, it survived under the unsentimental lash of Depression-hardened Heartlanders. It saw a lifetime of use before finding its way to me -- what to do with it now?
I think I know what the tool's original owner might've said:
Use it up, wear it out;
Make it do or do without.
That's certainly what my father and his father would've said. There is indeed a story in this humble hatchet, and the telling of that tale isn't finished quite yet.
