Re: Golden Age of Knives....
Thanks for sharing the photo and the history.
I have made fun of Stallone a time or two, especially after seeing him in an airport and noticing that he is ony 19 inches tall.
I had read First Blood in HS and the movie came out my first or 2nd year in the Corps. The book ended a bit differently
See Link. Fascinating realism in that movie despite the reality that Rambo nor Sheriff Teasle ever experienced RVN. (
See Dennehy link). The truth is that I could watch the woodsman scenes again and again. Realer than real, it makes me think of Travels in Hyperreality, by Umberto Eco.
The IMDB website shows that the movie's popularity has went up <span style="font-weight: bold">90%</span> in the last week. As more and more people fill up an extra bookbag with an Altoids can of fishhooks, pork and beans, firestarters and special silent dog whistles in order to combat the wave of zombies or in Rambo's case, National Guardsmen and law Enforcement, I expect the movie will grow even larger.
As a teenager, seeing the self-sufficiency involved with only a canvas tarp and one good knife that had a wound stitching kit, a compass, etc., in it, captured the ingenuity and cowboy spirit of Americans as much as anything. The original should be in the Smithsonian for all to see.
Again, thanks for posting. Every Marine I served with then knew the name Jimmy Lile, but I don't think I had ever seen him before.
It has motivated me to start my own novel which will depict a Rogue Male scenario based in West Virginia. In my story though, the protagonist will be a High School senior, a wrestler, expelled from school for having a .22 shell in his pocket and chased by an elected sheriff, who is hot for the lad's mom now that dad is deployed to Afghanistan for a year with the U.S. Army. In an early scene, the boy is smacked around a bit by the sheriff and then taken home. The sheriff tries to flirt with the mom at the house and this enrages the boy. Soon afterward, the boy photoshops the sheriffs head onto bodies of men wearing corsetts and such, and sends it to every business in town using a fake name. Now angry, the sheriff follows the lad and meets up with him as he is loading his dogs back into the truck after an evening of coon hunting. Trying to confiscate the boy's hunting rifle, one of the Blueticks mangles the sheriff's hand and the game is on.