“How much for the whetstone and the old pocket knife?”
I was indulging in my Saturday morning yard-sale therapy. I was only interested in the worn gray sharpening stone but I could see that the blades of the cheap jackknife had been carefully whetted until they would shave hair from your forearm. “They were my granddad’s. How does 2 dollars for the stone and a dollar for the pocket knife sound?” My 12-step program for junk acquisition went right out the window. I dropped the knife in my pocket and headed out to the Flagstaff Friends of Traditional Music campout.
I joined the circle of musicians seated on folding chairs and logs under the stately pines and mint-green oaks and added my voice and that of my battered Martin guitar to the chorus. I watched a half-dozen children race back and forth between the tents swinging sticks. I remembered my recently acquired pocket knife and pssst-ed over a likely boy. Handing him the knife I said “Ask your dad if you can have this.” This kid who had known me all his life looked at me like I was flashing a dirty syringe, backed up, and went straight to his father who graciously declined.
I suppose I enjoyed a childhood relatively unencumbered by adult oversight. From the age of 6 I wandered our acres alone with a penknife and kitchen matches in my pocket. My mother sewed me a “hunting bag” of striped mattress ticking with a shoulder strap and wonderful little compartments for my expeditions. I would rise early before the family and stock my bag with cold biscuits, fried potatoes and a pint fruit jar of water and go exploring the unknown. Deer and cattle trails were my routes and water holes, dirt tanks; spring seeps and windmills the beads on my rosary. In my mind I mapped the certain hollow trees, favored high-point lookouts and the dens of fox and armadillo.
I learned to smell every flower for the infinitely subtle and varied fragrances they hid. I learned that when you find the delicate bits of egg shell—blue as the summer sky on the outside and white as milk froth on the inside—on the forest floor, sometimes you can find the source nest in the tree directly above. I discovered all animals come to water and leave evidence of their passing. I could identify the tracks of skunks, possums, deer and roadrunners and follow them through the scrub ’til I lost the trail in the rocks and grass, trying to interpret their actions from the clues left in the dirt.
At an early age my father gave me full access to his workshop. He showed me the proper way to use bench grinders, electric drills and the wood-turning lathe. He instructed me in the use of the Lincoln arc welder and left me to it. I learned to identify metals by the color and shape of their spark on the grinding wheel and their response to a magnet.
I learned how to take things apart and reduce them to their elemental parts with screwdrivers, hammers, rocks and fire. I learned to fasten things together with nails and bolts, homemade flour paste, folds, spit and molten metal. I found out what happens when you mix pickle juice and baking soda or soak the funny papers in soapy water. I whittled bows and arrows and doctored my own cuts and insect bites.
I executed my own repairs on old electrical appliances that came my way from previous dynasties—faulty lamps and fans a specialty. I tinkered unsuccessfully with broken radios and TVs. I was shocked regularly.
Before I attended first grade I was entrusted with Daddy’s single shot .22 rifle. I would sit in the autumn shade of the giant pecan trees along the creek bank and wait for the squirrels to come out and gambol along the spreading branches. I discovered that when I jumped the little brown cottontails, they would explode in a heart bursting flurry of legs and dust but only run a few yards before stopping and trying to blend into the ragweed.
I drew myself back from those misty memories. I offered the pocket knife to a 10-year-old girl and told her to check with her grandma who was coaxing a tune from a concertina. Grandma abashedly explained that last year the girl had cut her hand with a pocket knife. So much for equipping America’s youth for exploration.
Was my childhood charmed or just unobserved?
