JOY ALONG THE WAY: OLD KNIVES SEEM TO JUST MOSEY AWAY

Where do paring knives go after they vacate the kitchen? At my house they disappear in their youth, middle age or even old age, just when I'm beginning to wield them efficiently.

Do they go to some Happy Paring Knife Commune and spend their remaining years regaling their metallic brothers and sisters with tales of how they bloodily rebelled when their slave masters tried to use their pointed ends as screwdrivers, ice picks, paint can openers?

Perhaps if I had a fancy wooden knife-holder with those little slits as apartments for butcher, bread, carving, frozen food, etc. knives, my paring knives wouldn't run away from home.

These little narrow wood-paneled apartments are the epitome of housewifery neatness. Because Mama, Grandma, and maybe Great-grandmother just opened a cabinet drawer and pitched their paring knives into it to co-mingle with kitchen knives, forks, spoons, corkscrew, can opener, nut pick, pastry brush, blender and wheel, pancake turner, corn cob holders, etc. is why I followed this practice. This was before any social studies were made on "The Downside of Amalgamation and Miscegenation" or any "Definitive Analysis of the Dulling Effect of Metals Clashing Against Metals" was published.

When someone, looking into my cutlery drawer says, "How to you ever find anything in here?" I reply, "It is easy. My eyes, from years of practice, and maybe from inherited genes on the double helix, have been honed to sharpness. Like heat seeking missiles, they can immediately find their target, be they the squiggly conformation of a corkscrew, the stunted growth of the corncob holder, round, crimped edges of the pastry wheel, whiskers of a brush, the long sleekness of a kitchen knife and the pleasant concave nature of a spoon."

But when the paring knife is not there, how can I sight it?

At one time in the annals of my kitchen drawer equipment, there nestled, evidently comfortably, at least six paring knives resulting in my eyesight getting a little lazy. Some organization to enhance their treasuries, sold real dandy paring knives, apparently made in an all-in-one mold, handle and blade together. I bought three. A cousin once gave me a set of knives and not knowing they had to be sharpened, I pronounced the paring knife, the only one I needed, to be no good and it died of neglect, I suppose. Anyway, after a few years it disappeared. The fourth and fifth paring knives came into my possession by a mix-up of knives at picnics and probably disappeared in the same manner and possibly became CEOs at the Paring Knife Commune.

The sixth one wasn't exactly a paring knife but a serrated steak knife. Today it is the only one left. It is not real good for peeling potatoes, slicing tomatoes, paring pineapples, prying off paint can lids, slicing ham, dicing celery, picking out hickory nut kernels.

Yesterday I read, in a little country magazine, a headline that said, "Searching for something? We can help." I didn't read further to see if the searching people confined their searches to only certain things, I have a mind to just skip the "meat" of their advertisement and answer their question. "Yes, please, I've lost a little bone-handled paring knife, a wooden-handled knife, two metal-handled paring knives and a fancy, ceramic-looking-handled-paring knife, somewhere in the vicinity of the confines of Cape Girardeau, possibly Farmington or Sikeston. You might try sifting through landfills or dump piles, around local picnic tables, along a creek bank. Reward offered."

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.