The Tomboy in me learned to play Mumbley Peg before I learned how to play Jacks. A skill I pull out every so often because I like to throw knives at my friend’s feet. Oh Boy!
The way we played it was we stood face to face and one at a time we threw a pocketknife at the other player’s foot. Getting it as close as you could.
Then that person would have to put their foot over the spot where the knife landed. You then picked up the knife and threw it at your opponent’s foot.
Then they had to move their foot out to where the knife landed and so it went. Pretty soon you were doing this throwing a knife, sharp as a tin can lid, at a foot while you tried to balance yourself with legs further and further apart. It was a blast.
Oh, and to add to the thrill there were maybe 25 different ways to throw the knife.
Hey, this was no sissy girl game. No sir. In really intense games you had to throw how the other guy threw their knife.
The way you got ahead was if the knife didn’t stick in the ground. It had to stick and stand too. There was no sticking it and it falling over, even part way.
When you threw, you threw hard. Of course, we always played on the lawn. Where it had been watered recently and was soft and kind of squishy. Yes, that was the Mumbley Peg game of the era.
I read recently where Mumbley Peg was a game played in the 1800’s. Man they were tough kids. There was not a lot of soft ground then. Especially out west. The ground was prairie, or just plain hard scrabbled ground. Playing Mumbley Peg on that type of ground would really test the skills you would have to sharpen your knife. And that’s where I am going today. Knife sharpening.
The art if sharpening a knife is not something to shake a stick at. Either you have the ability or you don’t. You can learn it sure.
But. Yes, a knife edged “but.” It takes plenty of years and lots of knives to get that edge so sharp that you could split hairs.
Every week my other half would take great pride in sharpening my kitchen knives. I never had to worry about pushing down too hard on a tomato because the knife wouldn’t cut it.
Or that I would cut myself with a dull knife. I learned a long time ago that a cook will cut themselves so easy with a dull knife. I have always had good quality knives in my kitchen.
So, this past week when I pulled out four big ole butcher, vegetable and boning knives to get one sharp enough to cut up a chicken, finding that I would have been better off just gnawing on the dead slippery chicken, I knew it was time to do the deed.
I have sharpened knives before. Several times. But to just take time and do a whole pile? Not on my bucket list.
I usually just pull one out and run it over the diamond steel I have, just enough to get the cucumber peeled and sliced. This was different. Every knife I ran my finger over the edge of was dull as reading Shakespeare. Now that’s dull.
There are many ways and stages of knife sharpening. His was several different gritted sharpening stones, the ever important 3-in-One oil, a few different lengths of sharpening steels, some pieces of paper to test the blade.
At the very, very end of the process? He would lick his forearm and shave the hair off to prove the sharpness of the blades. I know. I know. Yuck. But I did wash every knife vigorously when he was done.
Laid out before me on a towel were five various knives, sharpening steel and the piece of paper. I do not do the shaving part. That just made me squirm every time just watching it. I was not going to partake in that ritual.
I picked up the first one. The one I go after first every time I need a knife. Not a butcher, not a big veggie knife or a little paring knife. Just a medium size one that holds an edge longer than Meat Loaf held that note in his song “Bat Out of Hell.”
Yes, that long. The sharpening all went pretty quickly and I might add, professionally. I never did cut the paper. For some reason that knife through paper sound just set my teeth on edge too.
I just flicked at the edge until I could see I was dangerously close to losing a finger and figured that was good-n-sharp enough.
Trina lives in Diamond Valley, north of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers. Email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com
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