I found this whetstone in a box of keepsakes when I cleaned out the attic of my parents home (many years ago). It belonged to my maternal grandmother, Inus Perry.

Neither my mom or dad carried a pocket knife or a pen knife (a British English term for a small folding knife) but I never saw my grandmother without one. And she kept it razor sharp with this stone, or one exactly like it (Eventually they became so thin they’d break).

I remember the blades on my grandmother’s knife (one long, one short, both sharp) showed similar wear from constant use and sharpening. Over time the edge would become thinner, concave.

I suspect pocket knives — of the sort I’m remembering — were a rural, small town thing. People needed and used knives on the farm and kept them when they moved to town. There were a couple of wooden benches just outside the county courthouse where old men passed the time. Known by one and all as “the spit and whittle club,” these guys endlessly swapped pocket knives, back and forth. Pausing from time to time to squirt a stream of tobacco juice into the dirt.

I still see men carrying knives but, as with all else, they’re more high tech these days and you are unlikely to see them lovingly dragging the blade back and forth on a whetstone. No emotional connection. Just a tool. If there is anything more zen than sharpening a knife on a whetstone, I can’t imagine what it might be.