An Old Pocketknife
A longtime client and friend died last year. He and I only saw each other once a year when he made his annual trip to Arab to file his taxes. But we always spent extra time together talking about old pocketknives, a common interest we shared.
This week my friend’s daughter was in to meet with me and file her father’s estate tax return. I was surprised and humbled when she presented her dad’s old pocketknife to me. It was a knife he carried and had sharpened. Oh, he had a lot of old pocketknives, just like I do, so I know the grandkids will be getting special ones as well (if they want them).
One of the Best Gifts Ever!
How can I say that an old, worn pocketknife is one of the best gifts ever? Sometimes it is not the monetary value of a gift that is important or special, but what the gift represents. My friend enjoyed fishing and I can imagine that he used this old knife to cut bait and fishing line.
My friend’s daughter is my age, so her father was from a different generation than ours. Men from his generation carried pocketknives because they were a tool that they used often. Old pocketknives have been used to fix appliances, repair automobiles, cut chewing gum out of a child’s hair and open Christmas presents. And my friend was just the kind of man that would have done all of those things and more with this old knife.
