Switchblades, Playboys, and a Two-Dollar Treasure

When you're a kid, there aren't many places cooler than an old military surplus store. Especially when your dad is the one taking you there.

I don't remember exactly how old my brother and I were, but we were young enough that just about anything military fascinated us. And our dad, John Davis, was a veteran of the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles. So walking into a place full of old military equipment with him was like walking into a museum with your own personal tour guide.

Except this museum had price tags, smelled like old leather and canvas, and occasionally had a stack of Playboy magazines lying around.

Those were definitely worth investigating.

The place was packed with stuff. Old Army helmets, canteens, ammunition boxes, gas masks, combat boots, and military jackets that looked like they'd survived three wars and a divorce.

There were probably things in that store that hadn't seen daylight since World War II.

My brother and I would pick things up, turn them over, and ask Dad what they were.

And he usually knew.

He'd explain what a piece of equipment was used for, how soldiers carried it, or why something was designed a certain way. Sometimes he'd tell us about the Army and the things he'd experienced.

The interesting thing about our dad was that he didn't really talk to us like we were little kids.

He talked to us like we were young men.

If we asked him a question, he gave us an answer. He didn't dumb everything down or act like we were too young to understand. He treated us like we were capable of learning something.

And we loved that.

Of course, we were still kids.

So while Dad was explaining military history, my brother and I were probably wondering whether we could buy a grenade.

Then there were the Playboy magazines.

Now, you put two young boys in a store full of military equipment and old Playboys, and eventually their curiosity is going to drift away from the helmets.

I can just imagine one of us picking one up.

"Hey, Dad, what's this?"

He didn't need to give us a military briefing on that one.

"No. You can't have those."

Well, that settled that.

Apparently, we were old enough to learn about war, weapons, and military survival, but not quite old enough to appreciate the finer points of Playboy photography.

Fair enough.

But the greatest discovery of that entire visit wasn't a helmet, a knife, or anything left over from Vietnam.

It was a comb.

Not just any comb.

A switchblade comb.

If you grew up in the late 1970s or early 1980s, you probably remember these things. They looked like switchblade knives, except instead of a blade, a plastic comb shot out when you pushed the button.

Spring-loaded.

Click!

Out came the comb.

To a kid, that was about the coolest invention mankind had ever produced.

Forget the space shuttle. Forget computers. Somebody had figured out how to put a comb inside a switchblade handle.

And back then, we combed our hair constantly.

I mean constantly.

You'd be sitting in class, walking down the hallway, standing outside, or talking to your friends, and somebody would pull out a comb and run it through his hair.

It was practically a requirement of being a boy in those days.

And now I had a comb that deployed like a weapon.

I couldn't wait to take that thing to school.

I can still imagine the satisfaction of reaching into my pocket, pulling out what looked like a switchblade, pressing the button, and watching that comb snap open.

Click!

Then casually running it through my hair like I was the coolest kid in the building.

There was absolutely no practical reason for a comb to operate that way.

That's what made it so wonderful.

And Dad bought them for us.

I don't remember what they cost. Probably a couple of dollars at most. They were cheap little novelty items sitting among piles of military leftovers.

But to my brother and me, they might as well have been gold.

And that's something I've thought about quite a bit over the years.

Our mother was the one who raised us. She bought our clothes, made sure we had what we needed, and somehow managed to give us Christmas presents year after year.

She did the everyday work of being a parent.

The expensive work.

The exhausting work.

The work that doesn't always get appreciated by children because, to a kid, clean clothes and Christmas presents are just things that somehow appear.

But our dad?

We didn't get to see him very often.

So he could take us into some dusty old military surplus store, spend a couple of bucks on a ridiculous spring-loaded comb, and suddenly we'd have something we treasured more than gifts that cost ten times as much.

I know that probably aggravated our mother.

And looking back, I can understand why.

She could spend months making sure we had everything we needed, and Dad could show up with some cheap little trinket that we'd carry around like a family heirloom.

But kids don't understand those things.

They don't calculate how much money somebody spent or how many hours somebody worked to pay for something.

They remember how something made them feel.

And those combs came from Dad.

That was what made them special.

Another thing I remember about him was that, for all his problems, he generally didn't treat us badly. He wasn't constantly cussing at us or talking down to us.

There was one incident involving my brother getting smacked by our father, but that's another story I'll tell later.

Most of my memories of spending time with Dad were of him treating us like little men instead of little boys.

He'd talk to us, explain things, and let us experience a world that seemed a whole lot bigger than the one we knew.

And sometimes that world was nothing more than a dusty military surplus store filled with old helmets, Army boots, questionable magazines, and two spring-loaded plastic combs.

I have no idea whatever happened to those combs.

They probably broke, got lost, or ended up in the garbage like most childhood toys eventually do.

But more than forty years later, I still remember that little button.

Click!

And for a few seconds, I was the coolest kid in school.

All because Dad bought me a cheap comb.