My youth

Wenesday 8-12-09

Today I'll tell a little about my youth, grade and middle school ages.

When I was young we boys all had pocket knives, plain, and Boy Scout, which had various blades, can opener, hole boring blade, large and small cutting blades, corkscrew etc.

A lot of summer time was spent playing mumbley peg, a game played on hands and knees and throwing a knife into the lawn by the proscribed motions. The first routine was with the knife laying on the backs of the fingernails with the 4 fingers closed into a fist and the thumb extended. You held your hand palm up with the knife blade pointed toward the thumb, and with a circular moition threw the knife at the ground, the object being to stik the knife blade in the ground.

This first action was the easiest. The next was to do the same with the left hand, There was a series of motions which followed, including putting the knife point on your knee, with your forefinger on the other end of the knife and flipping the knife to stick it in the ground.

The game followed a reutine in which the knife had to be stuck in the ground from various positions on the body, and when you missed, the knife did not stick, it was the next boy's turn. I can not remember any of us being cut.

The other use of the knives was whittling, we cut up a lot of wood. One of the projects we all did was to carve a ball in a cage out of a piece of wood.

Thanks to my mother, she saved one. I knew nothing about this until we were going through her mementos that were at Jack's house after Jack passed away.

This is my first attempt at including a photo, so forgive me if it is not in the right place.