Open carry?

A good discussion over at Caleb's place got me thinking about open carry.

Not counting hunting and backwoods hiking, I believe the last time I strapped visibly on was in the 80s during a long sojourn at Tortilla Flat in the Superstitions. Even there where open carry was common, it was mostly a matter of forgetting to take the damned thing off when I came in from a hike.

A gun on my belt just tends to make me feel a little on the foolish side. I say that meaning no disrespect to the good guys who feel differently, although I still question the political and public relations wisdom of making a big point of carrying at meetings, demonstrations, and the like.

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Boats have been a large feature of my life, and a man working around line is a man who better have a good knife very handy, and that means a fixed blade carried outside of everything else -- trousers, jacket, so'wester. And so I did, usually the beauty pictured.* But, again, it resonated with me as the toy of a little boy playing Mike Nelson. I usually stuck it in a drawer immediately on arriving back at the slip. I admit it may be flawed thinking.

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*It is the happy result of an embarrassing mistake. As a newly acquired pristine USN deck knife (Mark I, the RH Pal 35) it went camping with us near a fur trade rendezvous. Some of mountain men were contesting their knife-throwing skills. I couldn't resist and joined the game. What you see is what fell to the dirt immediately after the first hard hit on the log end. As far as I know the front inch and a half of the blade is still buried in the stump.

Judicious grinding left me with a sturdy and entirely satisfactory little hunter which holds an admirable edge. It's is the companion of decades, but I still feel half silly every time I slip the belt trough the sheath.