I know that. I have an old Case knive that has been used to cut wire, SHAME ON ME but have the notches out, pencil sharpener, castration, trimming caulk, tapping nails in the bottom of boots, leather punch, nut turner, screwdriver, fingernail cleaner, letter opener, pecan cracker, peeler, clean-out, and I can do the dangest, quickest, slip-slide cuts on an orange and have it peeled in just ........done. We had them 29 tools in a knive that only had two blade on it, a drop tang and a .... <....... , don't know what that one is called though.
Speaking of pencil sharpeners, as a youngster, I wrote real small and I can remember Dad taking a few pencils and sharpening them up and putting the finest point on them that few pencil sharpeners could do. Heck 0.5mm, not nothing to a . (dot) sized lead.
Orange peeling - Also as a youngster, we never got much fruit growing up until things got better, bout the time I turned 14 or so, but early on at Christmas the schools and the churches gave out fruit and candy socks and that way kids didn't have to buy any Christmas presents for anyone. But ORANGES again, I can remember taking an orange to Dad and asking if he would peel it for me, he'd come back with 'Lets just cut it in half and then you can squeeze the juice out in your mouth and then peel the peeling back and eat the meat of it?' all knowing good and well what he was going to do. He could take that orange and it was like magic, it would spin in his hand with the knife, never cutting into the meat or even past the white, would cut into the white but not ever, in my memory anyways, into the orange and then holding the knife he would twirl it some more and then there was the orange all peeled and knive slits where one could just push the seeds out of the oranges and never get them in our mouths.
The simple things that a mother or a father could do that would make the eyes sparkle like diamonds in a young child's face. Those things were worth more than any diamond, gold, frankencinse or myrhh.
crap, tearing up thinking of the good days of simple things..
