Knives

Bladework:

Speaking of arms in the sunlight, I've a story I've been meaning to tell for several days. It happened last Sunday, on the last day of the final gun show to be held in Bealton, VA. The show hall is being sold, and the organizers say they don't expect to do it anymore.

I hadn't known that there was a Bealton gun show, but my Canadian friend asked me if I were going when I saw him on Saturday. I probably wouldn't have gone, if it hadn't been the last of its kind, but I thought I might meet some dealers I wouldn't otherwise ever meet. So, on Sunday morning, I piled the wife and our two-year-old son into the car and -- on the way to a nearby park for an afternoon's pleasant hike -- we went by the show.

There was nothing there that interested me at all, except for one fellow named Paul Proctor. He wasn't actually in the show hall. He'd set up his tent out the back of his van, and was selling custom made hunting knives.

I have a lot of knives.

Still, these things were fine looking: hilts of antler or elk bone, and -- although they were made of stainless rather than carbon steel -- they were hand forged by a man who had been making them longer than I have been alive. Beautiful things. But, as I said, I already own a lot of knives.

I talked to Mr. Proctor for a few minutes, and then went into the show hall to look around. After determining that nothing there interested me, I bought a Venison sausage to take on the hike, and then went out to find my family and get on with the day.

When I found my wife and little boy, the wife said, "Hey, I have something to show you." She reached into her belt, pulled out one of these hunting knives -- a small skinner, which would have cost about a hundred dollars -- and handed it to me.

The man had given it to her, she said. As a gift. For our son.

"Have your husband hold it for him," he said, "until the boy is old enough. He looks like a fine boy, and he's going to need a good knife someday."

The world is full of kind and generous people. Maybe the world hasn't prepared you to look for them at gun shows. That's just where one of them found me, though.

I went back and bought a knife for myself, so that my son and I would each have one. You can see the pair of them here. Mr. Proctor turns out to be quite an adventurer. At seventy-four years old, he had a number of stories to tell -- stories I would have been glad to hear even without the gift thrown in.

A salute, then, to a fine man I am proud to barely know. To Mr. Paul Proctor, adventurer, smith, and a man kind to children.