Bear Grease - Ep. 235: This Country Life - For the Love of a Knife

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Brent's taking us on a trip to the Case Knife factory in Bradford, Pennsylvania. He's also teaching us a game he used to play with his friends in elementary school that got his personal knife collection started. Leave it to Brent to have toothbrushes and pocket knives playing pivotal roles in one activity. All that and a homecoming story you don't want to miss on MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast. Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life Merch Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.com.

Welcome to this country life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This country life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eat Eater's Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts the Airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share for the love of a knife.

If you're a new listener or a highly decorated veteran of this struggle each week, you've no doubt surmised by now that I have an affinity for case pocket knives. I'm going to tell you a little how that relationship started over a year ago, where we are now, and how to play a game that can fill your pockets with knives or your mouth with dirt. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. It was a case medium stockman pocket knife and it cost $14. in 1979. It was brand new.

The sides were made of yellow delrin, and it ran a close second to the mini-trapper that we, the Reuse family, considered a gift from heaven. I remember standing at the display case, listening to Mr. Leland Bryant, tell stories about him and my dad while I smudged up the glass with my hands

and painstakingly scoured over each knife, the colors, and the blade configurations. $14 was a lot of money to a thousand, 13-year-old in April of 1979, especially when the money came from what was left from selling further previous winter and maybe a little of my birthday money from March. But I was determined to give my dad a case pocket knife for his birthday. The case display at Hurley's hardware was the flame, and I was the moth. I couldn't walk by that store on the sidewalk without going in to look at them.

I didn't have a lot of opportunities to go in there living so far out of town. and so when I had the chance, I took full advantage of it. Whenever I was in town and turned loose, my friends and I would go inside, taking a break from the heat to soak up some air conditioning, fingerprint the glass, and stink up to a place like only young boys can. Mr. Leland and all the other folks in there would ask each of us

how our parents were doing by name, mostly out of curiosity and care, but maybe a little just to remind each of us that if we broke anything, they knew who to call to seek reimbursement and retribution from. It didn't matter when or who I was with. If I had the chance to go in and look at that knife display, I did it. And I've said this before. You can bait a trap with a case pocket knife and catch me every time.

This should explain to what degree my weakness for these things is, but on this particular day, I was shopping for one for my dad. and I wasn't just ogling all of them and dreaming about holding them each in my hands, I was fixing to walk out of there with a brand new one, and then give it away to him on his birthday. It would be the first case knife I would ever purchase. I had one in my pocket that day, one that my dad had given me. And I owned more than one of them at that time,

but they'd all been given to me as gifts, or I'd want them playing mumbly pig on the playground at school. What's a mumbly peg? Well, I'm so glad you asked. It's a game dating back to the 1800s where folks would flip pocket knives into the ground and competition. Some did it for money and some did it for fun. But here's how we played it at Westside Elementary in Warren, Arkansas. The same school me and another fellow sophisticated skipped by hopping a train and hoboing all over town.

And I suppose this is where I should put the disclaimer, don't try this at home. That's for all the nerd lawyers that are listening and looking for an opportunity to get Brentley in some litigations since we are dealing with a sharpened instrument. At least it should be sharpened. But if flipping a knife off your fingers

into the ground sounds dangerous, you probably ain't toting one. And if you are toting one, and it still sounds dangerous, odds are your knife's about as sharp as you are. Nonetheless, consider yourself. warned. Before school and at the big recess, we'd gather up, hopefully out of the constant eye of the duty teacher, standing out there surveying the playground with their X-ray vision and hound dog smelling

abilities, searching out anything that was fun so they could immediately put a stop to it. Mumly Peg was at the top of their list, not because it involved a pocket knife. We could tote pocket knife to school then. That wasn't a big deal or the problem. No, it was because with a gambling. And it wasn't really gambling, not really. It was more of a game of skill, but when a young one would lose his knife or get a mouth full of dirt trying to keep it, some of them would go squalling to the teacher. That's the kind of folks that need warning labels on paper coffee cups. Contents may be hot. Really? Did you not just order hot coffee? Or how about the road signs that say, bridge may ice in cold weather, was the

cold weather part really necessary. For that matter, was the bridge may ice necessary? If it's raining, sleeting, or snowing, and the temperatures are dipping around the freezing mark, shouldn't you already know that? Don't get me started. Here's how you wind up losing your pocket knife at school or go home with your teeth looking like you had a mouth full of burnt matches

from chewing the dirt up trying to keep your knife. Check it out. Bumbley peg requires you to stick your knife in the ground by flipping it from lying flat on your closed fist, both hands, then by throwing it by gripping the blade, both hands. Then, with the point of the blade resting on each finger and thumb, both hands again, your arms crossed across your chest, both hands, from the top of your head and backwards over each shoulder,

with the finale being when you would slap that knife as it stood in the ground from your last over-the-shoulder throw, having to successfully stick your knife in the ground again. Now, that last one was called plowing the ground, and it was not easy. You each took turns, and when someone missed, the other person started. Whenever he missed, if he did, the previous contestant would pick back up from where he stopped until one person made it all the way through. Now, depending on how many steps the loser had left, determined how many times the winner,

got to hammer a finger-long limb whittled down to somewhere between a pencil and a toothpick into the dirt. Now, we played an abbreviated version of Mumbly Peg because we didn't have time for a real game due to our primary reason for being at school was to get an education and not hone our skills as a future circus performers. So if the loser was four steps away from finishing when he got beat, the winner got four licks on that peg that was just in the ground. enough to hold it upright. The hard ground wasn't an issue.

If you broke the peg when hammering it in the ground, the game was a tie. This discouraged folks from trying to pound a peg to China out of meanness. But if the ground was soft, you'd be gnawed at the dirt trying to get that peg like a beaver on a pin-up. Or you had the option of giving up your pocket knife to the winter if the peg was so deep, you didn't want to be digging for it with your choppers. If you got that peg out of the ground successfully, you got to keep your knife and your reputation as a sportsman. Our playground version took out the over-the-shoulder throws

and the plow in the ground throw. Those were tough, and we wanted to get to the peg rooting as fast as possible, and for as many folks we could get before the bell rang. If we could just have one young and eating dirt, it was a victory for us all. More than once, I watched boys hauling butt to the bathroom to wash the dirt off their faces and out of their mouths to get to their seats before the tardy bell rang. I was in that number occasionally myself, but I never lost a knife, not one. That's Mumly Pig, or at least our version of them.

We played another game called Chicken. That one? I ain't talking about. Not today anyway. Back to Hurley's hardware and the case display. Mr. Leland opened up the display cabinet and pulled out a brand new, still in the box, medium yellow model 3318 CV case stockman pocket knife. I handed him $15 and had a $20 bill left in the bill of my overalls.

I asked him to go ahead and hand me that brown bone mini trapper for myself. Now I left there with $3 and change and two new knives, one for my dad and one for me. I wrapped his present the best I could, and when his birthday came a few days later, I gave it to him. I remember his big smile when he opened it up and how proud he was to have his new knife. We both said it was a match to his yellow trapper that he already had. I showed him the one I bought that day. He gave me a quarter in return. That keeps you from having bad luck.

Hey, I don't make the rules. I just follow them. Anyway, my dad would carry that knife on and off for a while, just like I know. others I know do, swapping them out for new ones that had been added to the rotation and eventually putting them back in the box they came in and placed them in a drawer. That's where I found it, 13 years ago after he passed away. We were getting his affairs in order and doing all the things you have to do when taking care of someone's estate, and I found it, and I recognized it immediately.

The birthday gift I had given him on April the 16th, 1979. which birthday because if you know case knives you know that they have a stamped dating system on the blade tanks that change every year he was 42 years old when I gave it to him that knife is now 45 years old three years older than he was when when he got it there's no surprise ending to this story and really no unique revelation just just a footnote in the legacy of an inanimate object that I shared with my dad, and for the last 13 years, he's been sharing it back with me.

I'll share it with one of my children one day and a host of others. And that's just how that happened, but is at the end? We'll see. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen.

But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecauls.com. I think you'll be glad you did.

And you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. For the love of a knife. I guess y'all heard the new opening for the show. If you skip through, I'll save you the trouble of going back. This country life is now presented by. case knives. If you're new to this country life, go back and start it to begin. And of all the shows, if you really want to get an idea about my family's history with this brand, none of it has

been planned or orchestrated in any way and was actually started by someone who contacted the good folks in Bradford, Pennsylvania and said to the effect of, hey, there's some dude that works for me, Dieter, that has a podcast, and y'all ought to hear it. Now, fast forward a year and a later, and those folks are inviting me and my family to come to the Made in Bradford event celebrating 135 years of case knife production. 135 years ago, that was 1889. The Eiffel Tower was finished. North and South Dakota, Montana, and Washington were admitted as states.

Brook Trout were introduced into the Fire Hole River in Yellowstone National Park, and the New York Giants won their second consecutive. executive world series by defeating the Brooklyn bridegrooms three to two. And up in New York, not far from Bradford, Pennsylvania, the Case Brothers, whooped up a case pocket knife. Man, was that a good year or what? Anyway, as things have a tendency to do, they worked out in the last week, my wife, Alexis, and my youngest daughter Bailey and I found ourselves in the company of a bunch of like-minded folks whose only difference in us is that they use just about all the letters of the words they're

speaking. They call it a family reunion every year and spending a little time with them. I can see why. There were folks from all over the country there, knife collectors and traders from every direction and points of the compass sitting down under one big tent showing off their collections and vistas and reminiscing about old times and talking about the new ones to come. There were some really amazing knives, both new and old there, and I gave a couple of them a ride home to Arkansas. They like it here. But the best part of the trip, we were treated to a tour of the factory where all the knives are made, all of them, every one of them, right here.

Five minutes into the tour, I asked Tony DeFonzo, who was overplanted production above the den of the fans and the operating machines if I could take a video, and he said, yeah. But make sure you get that big American flag hanging on the back wall. We're proud of that flag and these knives that we're making here in America. Over 6,000 knives are being turned out in that plant every day. The majority of it is by hand. The only automated production was a robotic welder that was added to weld bolsters onto spacers. Now, we're going to talk about exactly what each of those are.

in a minute and I promise you're going to want to hang around for it. It's going to be the best part of this whole episode. I met Miss Linda, who's been working there for 33 years. She was one of the many long-tinted employees that worked there. Some of them generational employees, along with parents, children, and spouses, siblings and cousins, all making the living, producing a product that goes through 160 steps from the time it gets there as raw materials until the leaves wrapped tighter than bark on a beech tree with wax paper and secured in a box.

I talked with Tammy at the wrapping table and I ask her for a lesson in wrapping and she gave me one. I challenged her to a race on the next one. She finished so far ahead of me that she could have took a nap before I was done. I saw trays and tables full of every model of pocket knife in production. The work spaces were all orderly and clean, unlike what I would assume, the knife factory would be. It was obvious that the folks working there take a lot of pride in their work,

and they should. The city of Bradford has a population of less than 8,000 people. It lies three miles south of New York State in the Allegheny Mountains and is a paradise all its own. Remember when I said I was going to talk about welding bolsters and spacers

and it was going to be the best part? Well, we're at that part now, and if you happen to have a case pocket knife close, who can do so safely, whoop that rascal out and follow along. I've got my dad's stockman in front of me, so I'm going to use that one to tell you the rest of this story. Each end of the knife has a shiny silver part on both sides.

Those are called bolsters. If you turn the knife over and look at the back, you'll see the brass are gold-colored thin line. That's the spacer. That allows the blade to move in and out of the knife without touching the other blades or rubbing against. the inside. Not very exciting stuff I know, but very important to where I'm going with this. For the last two years, Case added a machine that helps the folks weld the bolsters onto the

spacers because of the demand for more knives. This is in addition to the folks that were already welding them by hand and an activity that is taking place right now, regardless of the time you're listening to this podcast. There's folks working. That machine didn't replace anyone. This corner of the factory was actually the first place we visited on the tour, but it made the biggest impact on me not only for the tour, but for the whole trip. Tony introduced me to a man I'd been watching concentrate on his work. Mr. Dave was in what seemed like perpetual motion moving around this station welding bolsters onto spacers, steadily placing the finished parts into a tray. He was obviously well-versed in his duties, and I shook me.

Mr. Dave's hand, and I was surprised to learn that Mr. Dave had been working for case for nearly 51 years. For the last 51 years, Mr. Dave had his mitts on just about every case pocket knife that was made there. Now, here's where it gets good. Before I left home, I thought about what two knives I'd take with me. Y'all, y'all know where most of you do anyway that I tote two pocket knives. One used to be an off-brand loner. Well, I retired that practice. and I now carry two-case knives and I don't loan either one of them. But I wanted to bring two knives with me on that tour that meant something. One of them I brought was a 2023 Model 6207 mini trapper than John Pantuso gave me last year.

John works on the marketing team and he sent it to me after he heard the podcast. That was my introduction to the company and the rest of the folks that worked there. and that knife means a lot to me. It was the first token of appreciation from a company that not only me, but my entire family has been promoting for the last six generations. I accepted it on behalf of them, and it was for all of them that I carried it with me back to Bradford. The other knife, the second knife I carried,

was the Kay Stockman that I gave my dad for his birthday in 1979. I planned to get a picture of both of them in that factory. I thought that'd be pretty cool. The first case knife that had been given to me by case and the first case that I'd bought that had also been my dad's, the guy that started me on this whole trip to Pennsylvania when he gave me my first one when I was just a little boy. While I stood there listening to Mr. Dave,

tell me what he did, and for how long you've been doing it, started doing some math in my head. I said, Mr. Dave, you were working here in 1979, right? He smiled and nodded, yes. I pulled that knife out and handed it to him, and I said, would you have worked on this knife? He opened up the blade and checked the tang stamp markings, indicating what decade in year it was produced and handed it back to him.

He smiling. Yeah, I would have worked on that knife, he said. I couldn't tell him the story of that knife fast enough. As a matter of fact, I couldn't tell him but about half. of it before I got so emotional I couldn't say anything. Alexis had to finish the story for me. Mr. Dave understood, and he smiled. He allowed me my moment.

Then when he found out I was from Arkansas, he wanted to know how good the deer hunting was. I regained my composure, and I told him how proud I was to meet him, and I thanked him for his work he was doing there and that he had been doing throughout his career. I told everyone I met in there that could hear. me how much I appreciated the effort that they put into turning metal and bone into utilitarian pieces of handmade art. It's not just knives that they're making, and they know it. The next day at the Case Museum, Miss Heather and Jeremy were set up outside during the event sharpening and polishing knives for anyone that wanted it done. Now, I'd met them the day before

on our tour, and I'd watched them masterfully doing the same job. But now I had the operatively. opportunity to really watch them and for them to tell me about each step and how they did it and how long they've been doing it. I let them polish and resharpen the knife that John had given me and how I came about receiving it, each commenting and laughing that they probably handled that knife before I did. Then before I handed them my dad's knife, I told them that story. I know they've heard no telling how many tales, just like mine, and it fits like that one, But they each listened intently, and they thanked me for telling them about each knife and for letting them become part of the history of this one.

I probably could have sum that last 25 minutes up with one sentence. I bought a knife for my dad when I was young, and after he died, I got it back. That's a fair assessment of the tale. But the knife isn't the story. The story is all the people. From my friends on the playground and the teachers at school to Mr. Leland and Hurley's Hardware, Mr. Dave, all the other wonderful people that I met along the way and my wife and daughter that went with me on this journey to a little valley in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. It started generations ago when my great-grandfather bought a pocket knife.

How thankful I am for that seemingly inconsequential act. that was the first ripple in the pond that is still making waves today. I thank you so much for listening and being a part of this country life of mine. It truly is something special and I'm forever grateful for all of your support for me and O'Claibo here on the Bear Grease Channel. Speaking of that, Rascal, me and him will be down in Venice, Louisiana at the Cypress Cove Mid-Eater fishing experience on October the 10th through the 16th. and there's still some slots available for that if you're interested.

You can find that on the meat eater website. I'll be in the great state of Kansas with the Latvian Eagle himself, Mr. Yannis Patelis on December the 30th through January the 2nd. Come ring in the new year with me and Janus and help us put some ducks, toes up in the decoys. There's a couple spots left that are going to go quick. I keep telling them that we should be blowing up beaver dams and running trot lines in the Saline River bottom.

maybe we could do something like that one day. Who knows? But that's it for me. Until next week, this is Brent Reeves. Signing off. Y'all be careful. First Lights Fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends.

Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the way. work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldware gear at firstlight.