A Father's Day Memento

I had a nice dinner with my sister Sunday night. She'd actually been trying to ply me with food since my birthday, but this was the first chance we'd gotten to get together. She'd come across an old box of my Mom's stuff, that we'd cleaned out of her house many years before. As she was going through it, she found a number of things...an old ring that my Mom had promised to a cousin of mine, and this...my Dad's old straight razor.



You can just barely make out the price on the box $3.50



It's the "Antelope" model, made by Clauss, I'm guessing around the 1930's. The handle is Bakelite and there's plastic bonded to the tang. My Dad probably started shaving sometime in the 1920's, and while I don't think this was his first razor, I think it was probably his last straight razor, before he started using those new fangled disposable blade razors.

I don't think I ever saw him shave with it, but I was acquainted on a couple of occasions with the leather razor strop he used to keep it sharp. It was applied to my seat of education once or twice, to sharpen me into the individual I am today.

I feel as if I got a little part of my father back on Father's day. A connection. A tangible bit of something to stretch across the years from his world to mine.

I'm a Norelco man, myself. Got my first one when I was about eighteen. Made it a point to get one for each of my sons on their eighteenth birthday. After I'm gone, I don't expect any of my boys to want to keep any old electric shaver of mine. They're disposable. But one of them will probably find his grandfather's razor still holding an edge. Still almost new in the box, as when it cost three dollars and four bits.