Halloween 2022 Recap

Did I "over knife" on the year's scariest night?

Halloween in recent years has been marked by neighborhoods full of dark houses and trick-or-treaters so few and far between as to make you suspicious. Years of creeping public paranoia, culminating with the pandemic, led to the near cancellation of common sense in general and the concept of fun in particular.

This year was different, thankfully, people seem to be getting back to normal. We went to our friends’ new house in a community with lots of homes and kids for Halloween, the street teemed with costumed kids and hovering parents. The whole thing had a Spielberg vibe.

I, not knowing any of this beforehand, showed up well decked out in all manner of defensive blade.

My thinking was, “This is Halloween, the best excuse for nut-jobs to get out there and do their terrorizing… and also, what if werewolves are real?”

In the front right pocket, my EDC was the substantial Spyderco Yojumbo, I also had the Kershaw Launch 9 rattling around in my pocket for Laffy Taffy and other tenacious candy wrappers.

But as I set out with the girls (who later ditched my old butt), I had on my person to defend our lives, nay, our very souls from whatever lurked in the darkness, the TOPS Szabo Express Double Edge Fighter, (my favorite dog walking knife) … in CM carry. Check out my close up video here.

If you don’t remember CMFTW/Matt Freeman (R.I.P.) from YouTube, look him up. He was a character and a knife maker who carried a 7” fixed blade on him at all times, in what he called “CM Carry”, a legal if not intimidating way to carry a fixed blade knife in his native California.

This carry requires a kydex sheath and a clip that can orient the sheath upside down on the belt. This way you can draw the knife down and out from a natural arm-hanging position, instead of reaching a handle above the belt and having to draw up even further to unsheathe the blade.

It's a slick maneuver that could easily bring those 6 inches of double-edged steel into play quickly and to deadly effect in reverse or standard grip. But as I walked among all these little sugar-raging trick-or-treating munchkins, it occurred to me that a distracted child, absent-mindedly reaching for a parent's hand, could instead grab the Express handled and tug those 6 inches of double-edged steel from the sheath and really ruin the evening through no fault of their own.

I played all of the sad and gruesome scenarios in my head, as one does once one becomes a parent, and after only a few seconds of extrapolation, I ran back to the car, unbelted the TOPS Szabo Express and stashed the sleek, black fighter under my car seat, where it would remain until we got home and I walked the dog.

I caught back up to the girls and their friends confident that the Yojumbo in pocket was enough, because these kids are cute and just looking to have a good time, and also, probably werewolves aren’t real. 

Hope your Halloween was fun-filled and not too spooky. Here’s to a good rest of the week.

Bob

P.S. Don’t forget this weekend’s “Knives Live 2022”, a 24-hour multichannel knife variety show to benefit Knife Rights, that will be streaming live this weekend Friday, Nov. 4 at 6 p.m. to Saturday, Nov. 5 at 6 p.m. (CST). I’ll be on at 3 p.m. by the way. For the complete lineup, check out Shayne Gables Instagram.