Just What Is It About World That’s So Cutting-Edge?

Americans seem content to live a dull life.

Now that the Contract with America has been fulfilled, we need to fix our attention on the dullness than runs rampant through our homes in everything from scissors to lawn-mower blades.

Dullness is depressing our Gross National Product. We’re sawing and whacking when we should be slicing.

Worst of all, were losing fish. Drag the point of a fishing hook across your thumbnail. If it sticks, it’s sharp. If it slides, it’s too dull to reliably penetrate a walleye’s mouth.

Too many people let it slide.

I’m a little on edge about this subject after yet another frustrating encounter with THE KNIFE in our newspaper lunch room.

THE KNIFE is a lethal instrument with a point followed by 8 frightening inches of steel. Yet when matched against a bagel, the blade all but wilts.

It’s laser-honed edge is a disgrace in a country that’s supposed to be on the cutting edge of technology. The ruler my 9-year-old uses at school has a keener edge.

This despicable instrument ruins my morning before I even get to my voice mail.

I learned the advantage of a sharp knife as a teenager after shooting my first elk deep in a canyon several miles from our camp.

Unfortunately, I had dulled my hunting knife the previous night while slicing stew vegetables on the boiler plate of the wood stove.

What should have been a quick job dragged on into the night. I punctured and perforated my hands and fingers several times while using brute strength where finesse should have sufficed.

I’m reminded of this each time I see my wife choose a flimsy grapefruit sectioning knife for doing the larger job of slicing potatoes.

Knives are just another essential of the past with which we’ve lost touch. Kids can’t even carry pocket knives anymore. They’d be expelled from school.

To hell with society. I’m teaching my daughters to whittle. I don’t care if they never gut an elk or fillet a salmon. At least they won’t grow up to be intimidated by a tomato.

Trappers used to wear out their knives from sharpening. Savvy woodsmen simply didn’t work with a dull blade. They’d carry a knife on one side of their belt and a sharpening steel on the other. They went hand in hand.

Trappers are dying out, and so is the appreciation for a keen edge. But there’s at least one other person in the newspaper office who appreciates a sharp blade.

After hacking and mashing my morning bagel recently with THE KNIFE, I vented my rage on Judy, the lunchroom attendant.

“The first knife we put out on the counter was sharp,” she said. “But it disappeared.”

Christmas milestone: 1994 was a milestone for my good friend, Darrell Tonn of Moscow.

As usual, Tonn’s 1994 Christmas card featured his Gordon setters. This year, however, marked the first time the renegade canines weren’t pictured wearing elephant-grade, high-voltage shock collars.

Tonn has driven several pro trainers to drink trying to get his dogs to whoa. Just before Christmas, I’m told, he was making rounds to area taxidermists.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t need the shock collars for the photo.

Supreme thinking: In what could be a landmark case involving the Endangered Species Act, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued this week that the act’s restrictions on taking endangered animals applies to hunting, not to destroying habitat.

The idea that liquidating old-growth forests “is taking an animal seems to me just weird,” he said.

I think I get the drift, judge. When guns are outlawed, there will be no endangered species.

xxxx

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review