I Had My Pre-war Letter Opener Confiscated by TSA and I Need a Place to Complain About It

Oscar.Kravets | March 25, 2023, 1:58 p.m.

I don’t typically enjoy spreading hate or even things I have antipathy towards into the collective consciousness of our universe, but with that being said, there are times when the injustices conducted by the people around me become so overbearing that I must unleash my distaste for others in a figuratively public forum in order to satisfy my gripes.

Let’s back up a few days to Tuesday evening, I was at the airport getting ready to go on a two and a half hour flight to Austin Texas to see my daughter and three grandchildren. She's a beautiful person and has really grown into being a kind and loving woman even despite the fact that she married a conservative executive at Exxonmobil and agreed to raise two of her children in the Protestant religion.

It was a colder day than usual, especially considering it being late to mid march. For that reason, I had indulged myself into wearing one of the comforts of my lounge ware that I’m usually only known for sporting around my own quarters. It was my wool sport coat with a flannel lining that I had gotten from the original Brooks Brothers brick and mortar on the Northeast corner of Catherine and Cherry Street in New York City in the year 1958. Oh the stories that coat could tell, even still, despite its journeys, it’s still in the same shape as it was the day I bought it, if not better.

Anyway, as I navigated my way through security at the airport, I was bemused by the expression I came upon on the face of the TSA agent on the other side of the Backscatter passenger scanner. She was a 45 year old Armenian woman with yellow teeth and more than likely an Adderall addiction. Using the gloves on her hands she had frugally removed from the pocket of my sport coat a 7 and a half inch engraved pewter letter opener with a hand carved wooden grip.

Now to take a step back further, this letter opener was no ordinary letter opener. This letter opener was pre-war and had been handed down in my family for a generation, originally given to me by my mother, a Guatemalan immigrant of Ukrainian descent that independently raised 4 children each of different fathers and ethnicities. More importantly though, the letter opener was a gift she had received from J. Edgar Hoover in 1925 while waiting tables at Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington DC. My mother was unsure of why she was given the opener but regardless of the reason she was more than grateful for it. My mother never had much use for the letter opener with her being a woman and not being able to receive mail but she still admired its beauty and craftsmanship including the engraving of “1901” on its flat indicating that it was indeed Pre-war.

Returning back to the setting of the airport, the TSA agent that was clearly addicted to uppers notified me that I could not continue through security with what she referred to as a “blade”. Despite correcting her statement informing her that it was indeed a Pre-war letter opener, she exclaimed that passengers are prohibited from traveling with knives.

The man behind me in line, a 32 year old white man with a poorly groomed beard, a wrinkled button down shirt, used shoes, and most likely a gambling addiction, exclaimed to me that it was not a big deal and that I should just concede to them confiscating the blade and move on. “Not a big deal?” I uttered, “This is Pre-war” an important fact that none of these incompetent sociopaths could seem to comprehend.

So here I was, in quite the predicament, do I stand tall, refuse that my letter opener be confiscated, loudly exit the airport, and head home? Or do I swallow my pride and avoid missing my flight and ultimately the bar mitzvah of my only Jewish grandson? A decision within my 85 years of living on this earth I truly thought I’d never have to make.

To skip ahead a bit. I ended up at one of the airport bars sipping on a whiskey ginger really reflecting on my entire existence as a human on this planet. Easy enough for you to figure out, I did end up going through security after surrendering my Pre-war blade to the Transport Security Administration. Despite being extremely upset, I was able to find some solace in the wise words of the bartender, a 29 year old man who had graduated Columbia Business School at the age of 20 and dropped out of University of Chicago Law School at the age of 24 due to an inconvenient pill addiction. Although I can’t quote him word for word (as I was a couple whiskeys in at that point) I remember the gist of it being that although the past sometimes brings us closer to the ones we loved, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee bringing us closer to the ones we love in the present. Sure, it would’ve been nice to maybe hand that letter opener down to my daughter and her recently sterile husband, but it wouldn’t have been the same as when J. Edgar Hoover handed to my mother after not finishing his plate of steak and eggs and when my mother handed it to me when my second youngest brother’s father was aggressively banging on our apartment door at 3 am on Christmas morning.

It’s hard to say what the point of any of this is. I guess just sometimes you wish things were like the good ole days when you needed a knife to open your mail and everybody just had a drinking problem instead of being highly dependent on medically prescribed uppers. Needless to say, always travel light.