When I was ten or eleven, I played my first game of Mumbley-peg with my cousin Gene. Being four years my senior, and a pocketknife toting teen, he showed me the ropes on several of life’s major issues. Mumbley-peg was just one. He was the closest thing I had to a big brother.
We played the game standing face to face. Gene tossed the knife into the ground a couple inches from my foot. I had to step over to the knife, retrieve it, and toss it near his foot. He’d take his step, retrieve the knife and toss it again for me. Each toss had our legs stretching further and further apart. If you couldn’t make the stretch, or stick the knife in the ground, you lost the game. We played round after round, always with his knife. He won most games because he was able to stretch farther and stick the knife better.
There are several versions of the game. The common denominator is knife throwing. One version requires the loser to pull the knife out of the ground with his teeth. We never played that. Another version I read about involves two opponents who stand opposite from one another, feet shoulder-width apart. The first player takes his pocketknife and throws it at the ground, so that it sticks into the ground as close as possible to his own foot. The second player takes his knife and does the same. The player who sticks his knife closest to his own foot wins. A player could automatically win if he purposely stuck his knife into his own foot. We weren’t macho enough to stab ourselves. Thank heaven. If Gene would have done it, I probably would have tried.
I carried a pocketknife during camping trips with the boy scouts. Mine had the official boy scout logo. It was the real deal and a vital part of my gear. We had to cut ropes, sharpen sticks, and cut food several times during each trip. Being a city boy, this was foreign territory for me; but one I welcomed.
My dad was an infrequent pocketknife carrier, but both of my grandfathers were regulars. A couple of my uncles carried them as well. I remember more than one using such a knife to clean their fingernails and slice off bits of apple. Talk about macho. I viewed this as the pinnacle.
When my Grandpa Tebo passed, my dad got two of his knives. One was long and slender with a three- or four-inch blade. It somehow got lost over time. Perhaps one of my sisters has it. In any case I have the knife pictured here. It was his second knife with a large, curved blade. It’s at least a hundred years old as I know Grandpa Tebo carried it much of his life. He was eighty years old when he died in 1955.
My dad spent the last nine months of his life in hospitals and nursing homes. His declining health was too much for my mom to handle. I drove to see him weekly and during our time together we swapped stories. One on one time helps with that.
As his health declined, he didn’t always think clearly. On one of my visits, as I was looking for a deck of playing cards in his dresser, I found this knife. I asked him why he had it and he replied, “It’s for protection. Just in case I need it.” I saw it has a potential disaster, so I offered to take it home for sharpening. I just never took it back.