Knife-throwing in the graveyard

My dad's pocket knife was a simple gadget, just one blade, no scissors or corkscrew or flathead screwdriver. In the 1970s, Swiss Army hadn't convinced Americans to carry a utility knife complete with tweezers and a toothpick everywhere they went, dangling from keychains. Instead, men slipped small knives with faux wood handles into their pockets, and women didn’t have any use for the things. But I was a girl then, a tomboy really, and found my dad’s pocket knife to be highly entertaining. 

Dad and I spent a couple of days a week together, leaving my mom behind at the apartment where she and I lived following their divorce. After relaxing with a bucket of rainbow sherbet on his black and white hounds tooth couch, we’d take off on his safety vest orange Schwinn ten-speed and ride to nearby Pioneer Park. I didn’t yet have my own bike, so I sat on the rack where saddlebags would normally hang. Dad padded the metal bars with an old hand towel and I’d hold onto his hips while letting my feet swing back forth, as if the motion would help him pedal. 

Pioneer Park was once a graveyard, one of the oldest in San Diego. Headstones of the most prominent citizens lined the back corner of the neighborhood park, saved as historical landmarks when the city approved turning the site into a recreational space. The transformation had only occurred in 1970, but somehow, even to a grade-schooler, it felt as if the park had always been there, welcoming the neighborhood to gather and find a home outside the confines of our houses and yards. A row of evenly spaced eucalyptus trees split the grassy space not exactly in half, but more like into one-quarter and three-quarters. It was under one of those trees where Dad taught me the Hot and Cold game. 

With his long legs stretched toward the sidewalk, lounging and resting on his left elbow, Dad asked me to close my eyes. His knife was open and in his throwing hand, and when he said, “Ready,” I immediately noticed the missing knife. I was to search for the little thing, stuck in the surrounding grass, leaves, and twigs, while he gave me clues of either “hot,” meaning I was getting close, or “cold,” meaning I ought to consider changing direction. The part metal, part wood handle of the knife helped it blend remarkably well with the fallen, sword-shaped, pale green leaves of the eucalyptus. 

I have no sense of how long we’d play Hot and Cold, I just know it became part of our routine, part of the life Dad and I were building together. I was five and six years old in the days he lived near Pioneer Park, and we had many other endeavors. Dad played on a baseball team for his company and I wanted my own mitt. I was ready to learn to throw, catch, and hit. His best friend’s son handed down a skateboard and I used up hours riding in circles as Dad watched. Back home, we’d listen to Disney books on tape together, and as I learned to decipher words on my own in the accompanying hardback, I’d curl up against him and read the books out loud instead of popping the tape into the cassette player.

He carried that knife for years. And Pioneer Park wasn’t the only place we’d play the search game, but it is the most vivid in my memory, perhaps because Pioneer Park eventually became the center of my childhood. When I started third grade, Dad moved to another city for work, and my mom and I moved into the house he vacated. My elementary school shared the eastern border of the park. My friends and I gathered after school and on weekends for all sorts of games and bike riding in the open space. And always, I felt my dad near. 

With that simple knife throwing game he made me love just being in the park, made it feel like a place to relax, to laugh, to play. To be together.