Rural Heritage December 2025/January 2026

paint can or it might not come back at all. It’s a small object and easily lost or forgotten. Use your knife with pleasure and satisfaction — And carefully! P.S. The livestock person may have behind himself or herself generations of lore in the use of knives and their care. The machine operator, with a different background, might employ the knife in any number of uses appalling to the stock person, like using it to cut light sheet metal or using it as a screwdriver or to scrape grease from an axle housing. When I was sent out with the road crew on my new job up in a Nebraska county, one of my new fellow-workers asked if I had a knife. I took a quick look at what he was working at and replied, “Not for that job I don’t.” Sensing that my reply had been tactless and would cause resentment by the friends I was just acquiring, I purchased that evening an inexpensive knife of medium quality, and the next morning I happily appeared at work with

my fine old Case knife in my left pocket and a new Western Auto “loaner” in the right. Dick Courteau lives in the Arkansas Ozarks near Elkins and is the author of Get Your Ass to Work and Profoundly Country, both available on the Rural Heritage website: www.ruralheritage.com..

December 2025/January 2026

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