Wise definitely. You learn a few things driving a tank across France , and old well my uncle is just a young middle aged man but he's one of the smartest people in the family for sure.
I certainly understand this.
From my teens up until a few years ago I always thought of little two handed knives as something you carry as a " backup " to a larger one handed knife.
Never been one to think of anything as for old guys ( besides prunes ) but I never took the little ones seriously.
I really don't know where the tactical type mindset came from, but I followed it pretty strictly I know that much.
Come to think of it you're actt responsible for correcting that idiotic notion I had, I won a " Jackknife starter kit GAW " and the little peanut class imperial I received really turned me onto the little ones.
You're love of the peanut got me interested in the hype so I entered and did my best to give that knife a fair shake which it passed with flying colors.
I can tell you exactly where the tactical mindset came from. The great migration from rural to urban lifestyle in the post WW2 era. All those returning GI's had a look at the big world, and many didn't want to go back to the family farm and plow. They went to the cities for better jobs, more money, and a better lifestyle. By the 1960's, their kids were growing up in the new landscape of the day called 'suburbia'. The office cubicle was a new work environment, and there was little need for a knife operating a copy machine or doing the TPS reports for the boss.
By the 1970's the American knife companies were in financial trouble and by the 80's some were going belly-up. They had to dream up some way to stimulate sales. They were going out of business trying to peddle the same pocket knives to a now different culture. A young guy by the name of Lynn Thomson and a company called Cold Steel paved the way. Another young guy named Sal Glesser had a new idea also for selling a knife that was a solution to a problem that hadn't existed before when our grandfathers really needed a pocket knife daily in their rural life. The new guys on the cutlery block created a new market to sell knives that hadn't been sold before, in spite of the designs not being needed by a generation or two before that lived through a Great Depression and a vicious world war. The age of the office cubicle commando had been born.
The knives being marketed today are more about selling a fantasy than about a real world cutting tool for normal day to day life. I had a very interesting talk with my Uncle Charlie once. He was a GI who landed on a beach in Normandy, and walked most the way to Berlin. He carried a Camillus TL-29 jackknife that had about a 2 1/2 inch blade and a screw driver blade. It served his purpose from the landing, the hedge row breakout, the Battle of the Bulge, and fighting their way across the Rhine. Another Uncle, my Uncle Mike, served in PT boats out of Falmouth, England. He carried a Camillus stockman in his pocket and when he got a PT boat blown out from under him in the English Chanel one night, it served him by cutting the canvas straps that held the life raft on the foredeck.
When push comes to shove, all that matters is, that few inches of steel is sharp.
