For Uncle, My Mother's Knife

We're farmfolk and this is the only knife my mother used for as long as I knew her, fifty-four years or so, from cutting the head off a rooster, skinning a rabbit, turning a pig into ham, bacon and sausage, peeling potatoes, dicing onions, slicing bread .... My father kept it sharp with a file.

It's an Okapi, German-made, of plain carbon steel, and likely a lot older than I am.