This Knife Might Not Work Once

This Northwest Trail knife is built wrong. Clipped into your pocket, when you take it out, you have to flip it around before you can open it. You get what you pay for.

My neighborhood Walmart is my pharmacy and I enjoy walking the store while waiting for my presscription. The abundance of stuff speaks to our deep, broad, and wide prosperty, a direct consequence of the market economy. Free markets = free minds. Usually, as much as I like looking, I seldom buy. However, over the years, working in physical security and serving in the Texas Military Department, I have bought extra gear. I learned that lesson from a classmate in criminology. She looked into the trunk of my car and said, "You only have stuff for yourself. I always carry extra." 

And you can always use an extra knife. I never leave home without at least one knife and at least one way to make a fire. That was a lesson from a team-building exercise when I worked for Coin World. We had a series of monthly Monday morning meetings to get to know each other in order to improve our quality of worklife. There were about 40 of us from Coin World, Linn's, Scott's, the press operators, and pre-press at about six or eight tables. The last exercise was a survival scenario.

You are coming home from a vacation in South America with the team mates at your table. Your plane hits a storm and you go down. You crash land. The pilot is killed. The plane is unflyable. The radio does not work. You are all mostly all right. You have to come out together. This is an inventory of what you all packed on your vacation. Golf clubs... a bottle of rum... a .38-cal handgun with six bullets... a Christmas candle... and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember. Not everyone got out. One team gave up right away and decided to settle in place for the rest of their lives. The one press operator on our team said that she was going out on her own. I said that in real life I would join her and leave them behind, but we all have to come out togther, that's the rules. I told my team mates to leave the gun and the rum or not everyone is going to make it. They ignored that. One guy said to bring the gun so that we could fire it into the air to attract natives who would help us. I thought that was a bad idea on several levels. He asked why I wanted the Christmas candle. I replied, "To help make a fire." He said that we are in a jungle and can build a fire anytime. He said to bring the golf clubs. "Whatever for?" I asked. "To make a stretcher and carry someone who is wounded or to kill small game." The others saw the wisdom in both of those plans. You see, this guy was obviously the de facto leader, well known and well liked. It went on for about 45 minutes. Then they gave us the answer from the back of the book.

According to the Army Rangers, you stay with the plane for 72 hours. Someone knows you are missing. They will come looking for you. The plane is unflyable. If you hear help coming you can set it on fire as a signal. In any case, after 72 hours, set it on fire anyway and head out. Find a stream and follow it downhill. Somewhere near the water's edge, probably at the mouth of the river, you will find a village. Whatever you took, you always need a knife and a way to make fire.

Since that day in AD 2000, I never leave home without at least one knife and at least one way to make a fire. 

How many knives do you need? How many can you carry? As the public affairs officer for the Maritime Regiment of the Texas State Guard, I went out with our dive team several times. One time on shore, one of the divers was fussing with some line and needed to cut his knife free. He reached around left and right and went for the leg he was sitting on and then tried to lean over his tanks to grab his pack. I handed him one of mine. His unit leader saw that. "Don't you always have three knives?" he barked. "Well, yeah, but this one is tied up and ... " His leader shook his head and walked away. 

I do not know what I will do with the Northwest Trails knife. I won't toss it out, but I cannot have it for an everyday carry. My Victorinox is my EDC. When I retired from the TXSG, I stopped carrying the Benchmade that I always clipped to the right pocket of my ACUs. The Benchmade works the way a knife is supposed to. I still need a replacement for civilian life. (See, also Gibbs's Rule #9 from NCIS.) You can always use an extra knife; and in the worst case, it only has to work once.

When I was learning to fly, I was coming in a bit low, and the instructor pushed the yoke forward for a little more airspeed and lift. When we were done, he asked, "What you have done if you had come down in the bean field at the end of the runway?" I replied, "Stay with the plane 72 hours, then set it on fire and walk in to the terminal." 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Genius of Design

Objectified

Documentation is Specification

Leadership

Dagny Two Point Oh

Coletta Anne Cannon and I met in Lakewood Park on Labor Day, 1969. A decade ago, when she turned 50, I sent her a card and we talked on the phone.  “Considering how close we are in age,” I said, “it is hard to understand what your parents were so mad about.”  She replied, “The fact that when I was 16, you were 20.”  We dated for two more years, mostly under the radar. When she turned 18, she moved in. A couple of weeks later, we flew to Chicago, and got married, and returned to work the next morning.  On May 15, 1972, we moved to Lansing to be with Linda and Morris Tannehill, authors of The Market for Liberty.

Magnificat High School Prom 1971

Coletta read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and other Rand works before we married. When we met, revolution was in the air.  The old road was rapidly fading.  Atlas Shrugged was already non-fiction in the 70s.  From the Nixon Wage and Price Freeze, to the loss in Vietnam, and the resignation of Nixon, followed by economic stagnation coupled with inflation (“stagflation”) that sent precious metals prices soaring, we expected the end of civilization as we knew it.  The Iranian Hostage Crises capped the decade.  And, then came Reagan.  It was not perfect, but it made a difference.  In the mean time, Coletta and I followed separate paths. 

I never loved her more than the moment when I watched an 18-year old girl close a business deal with a man twice her age.  She set up his publishing business. 

 

My present wife and I threw a party for ourselves
when we completed our bachelor degrees in 2008.
We invited all of our friends. 

She had started after high school printing on a tabletop Multilith for an insurance company.  After we moved to Lansing she worked in quick print shops before going into business for herself.  That was when we separated and divorced.  I wanted to move out west and picked Las Cruces, New Mexico.  She stayed in Lansing.  We both remarried.  But we remained friends over the years.  And she called on me to do computer projects for her. 

She had moved to Pittsburgh when I returned the favor by recommending her to crack a tough nut for a Coin World newspaper when we were changing the database formats for Trends pricing.  As a leader in the Quark Xpress national user group, she knew about the Ferengi before I did.  Here in Austin last year, when our local Filemaker club brought in a guest speaker, I dropped Coletta’s name and got a nod.

 

With a regulation
Taggart Transcontinental shirt
from an admirer on her 60th birthday.

Most people cannot imagine what kind of relationship Dagny, Francisco, Hank, and John could have had after the end of the book.  We can.  It is easy when people are rational and realistic, and adhere to values that enhance their lives. 

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACT

Start the Presses

Objectified

The Genius of Design

City Air Makes You Free

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World