I can actually remember when, where, and how I got my first folding pocket knife, and also how and where I lost it, I was on vacation at Sebago Lake in Maine, my folks rented the boat house on little Sebago lake just a short walk from Whites Bridge one week a year for quite a few years, there was a set of steps leading from the cabin down to the water and ended at a small pier that jutted out into the water.
At five years old it was where I spent much of my idle time drowning worms and watching Arthur Godfrey (he owned a Cabin in the cove at the end of little Sebago) taxi his small plane past our boathouse, pass under Whites bridge and into Big Sebago where he would take off from and land.
Well it was while I was sitting on the pier one morning just after breakfast and had just thrown out my first cast of the day really hoping not to get a birds nest, anyone my age and who fished will remember what those were, back then we didn't have the benefit of todays marvels of advanced reel technology, we had the old fashioned bait casting reels, some were really expensive, others were about as cheap as one could get, but they basically all functioned the same way, they had a button to lock the spool, an adjustable drag, a free spinning spool, all housed in a simple round metal body.
The most important part of the whole setup was your skill in manipulating your thumb on the spinning spool as the line was playing out, if you were aiming for precision bait casting you had to let the line go as far as possible before the bait got to where you wanted it, if you stopped the spool too soon you wouldn't reach your target, but if your bait hit the water before you thumbed the spool to stop it the bait stopped and the reel kept spinning off line, and the result would look like a birds nest with your reel at the center, which usually took an experienced angler 15 minutes to an hour to get untangled, if you were a five year old you probably brought it to your dad to untangle, and that usually meant listening to a bunch of words you wouldn't want to use in front of your mom.
Any way, it was on that morning when my dad walked on to the pier and handed me a brandy new Imperial Camp King scout type pocket knife and said it's about time I get my own pocket knife, was I ever surprised and all of a sudden I felt allot more grown up.
I spent a couple of days just sitting on that pier whittling away what ever sticks that presented themselves, we kids (especially back then) all had cap pistols (yup, it was moral, ethical, and non fattening to let your kid have a toy gun) they used small rolls of caps that had some sort of exploding powder in them that made a pretty loud bang when they were fired in a cap gun, hit with a hammer, or scraped with a knife blade.
Well, a few days after my dad presented me with my first pocket knife he caught me sitting on my pier scraping caps with my new knife, he didn't think it was a great idea so he warned me to quit doing it or he'd take my knife away from me, later that after noon I was at my station hold my knife in one hand and a fresh roll of caps in the other when I spotted my dad coming down the steps leading to the pier, Being afraid that I'd get caught I quickly decided to toss the caps in the water and pocket my knife, but in my excitement and guilt I got the process mixed and pocketed the caps while I tossed my new knife in the lake, never to be seen again.
Ok, my opinion on custom pocket knives as users for myself, they are nice to look at and fondle, and then there's the pride of ownership, all of which I'm really not into enough to drop big bucks into, however, I am into knives, I am very traditional in my likes, modern tactical, assisted opening, or knives with blades that resemble alligator heads with a hole for an eye, or that are serrated or wear black rubber scales do not do anything for me, give me a good quality slip joint pocket worn folder and I'm happy.
Non custom in my book doesn't have to mean lessor quality, their are quite few makers of production pocket knives that run in the $200.00 and under range that make great quality beautiful looking, durable pocket knives that are well suited for taking on most reasonable cutting tasks while looking good doing it.
But hey, that's just me.
