Little Bobby and The Pocketknife

The Pocketknife

It was a hot sunny August in the late 1930's. The Great Depression was ending. World War II was looming over the horizon. School had been out for over a month and summer had settled into the routine of hot humid days and warm muggy nights typical of mid-western United States.

Three small children were playing a make-up game called {i)Mumbly Peg. The game consisted of throwing a pocketknife end over end into the grid of a playing field drawn in the dirt at their feet.

The rules were vague. The players would take turns throwing a knife into the playing field. When the knife stuck into the ground an imaginary line was drawn extending along the sharpened blade, in both directions, to the edges of the playing grid and the field size was reduced to the larger of the two areas formed by this dissecting line.

Everyone knew that the thrower had the right-of-way over the game area. When disagreements occurred, and they often did, they were settled by shoving and pushing until one or the other combatants conceded or quit the game in a fit of hurt feelings and bruised ego.

On our hot August day tempers were flaring. Each contestant accused the other of cheating. During one of the more heated disagreements Bobby's older brother, Johnny, tried to erase the last line drawn by Bobby. As Johnny's foot moved back and forth across the playing grid removing all traces of the line, Bobby took careful aim at the grid and let his knife fly. Johnny's foot was making a slow pass across the grid just as the knife left Bobby's hand.

Straight as an arrow the blade flew. It entered Johnny's shoe in the area of the big toe, passed through the shoe, missing the big toe, sliced a chunk of flesh off the next toe, passed through the sole of the shoe and into the ground. Johnny let out a shout.

Bobby knew he was in trouble. Johnny grabbed the knife, pulled it from his shoe and quickly headed home without saying a word.

The incident was never mentioned. Johnny hid the knife. Bobby knew if he wanted to make trouble, Johnny could tell the story to their parents and Bobby would loose his knife forever. In the days that followed Bobby searched everywhere for the knife. Eventually it was found among the treasurers, hidden by Johnny, in that special hiding place that little boys keep for their treasures.

By then Johnny had forgotten the incident and Bobby moved the knife to his own special hiding place where it remained until the day it was collected with his other prize possessions and placed securely in a pocket when Bobby attempted his run away from home trick.

But that’s another story for another time.