Rescuing City's Aging Blades, a Member of a Dying Trade By Emiland Guillerme Alessandro Penso for The International Herald Tribune Dull Knives? Dwindling Service in Rome: Rome's knife sharpeners are becoming a dying breed as restaurants cast aside dull cutlery instead of repairing it, or rent knives instead of owning them. ROME - Carmine Mainella's calling card is his call. "Arrotino, arrotino," he shouted on a warm September morning, strolling with an easy gait on a sidewalk in central Rome, announcing his trade: a sharpener of knives, scissors, meat-slicing blades and sundry metal items that have lost their edge. He need not even yell. Mr. Mainella, who turns 75 on Oct. 20, has been making pretty much the same rounds for decades. "People expect me," he said. As long as I'm still circulating, they know where and when to find me. He works with a motorized stone wheel that emits a deep growl under the canopy of a mini-truck he customized decades ago to accommodate his loss of a hand to a firecracker when he was 14. One client whispered that he had cut off his own hand because of an unrequited love, a theory that made Mr. Mainella laugh. "All of Rome knows him, after all these years," said Franca De Zuliani, the owner of the Ristorante Papa Rex, a restaurant not far from the Vatican and one of Mr. Mainella's bimonthly stops. He gets all over the place. Mr. Mainella is one of the last of a dying profession. Much of his old client base - corner butcher shops, delicatessens, mom-and-pop groceries - has been swallowed up by supermarket chains. Other clients in downtown neighborhoods here have capitulated to souvenir shops, victims of high rents and modern shopping habits. "They've all gone," Mr. Mainella said. Now I serve 5 shops, where before I served 10. Before the latest economic crisis sharply curtailed household spending, he was able to live on fewer commissions. When money went further, "you could survive sharpening 50 knives," he added. Now, because you can't increase the price, you have to sharpen 500. There is no fixed price for his labor. He takes what he gets - a euro here, a euro fifty there. "Still I get by," he said. "He's the last sharpener in Rome; there's no use for them anymore," said a 93-year-old man who said he first hired Mr. Mainella in 1962, to sharpen knives and cleavers at a Rome hospital. "I haven't left him since," said the man, who declined to give his name. Just say I am a satisfied customer. "Today's society is wasteful," the man added. You use something and throw it away. People think, "What do I care?" " Fortunately, the man said, some people reject the disposable mentality. Restaurants now tend to use knife rental services, which replace them every few weeks. But Bernardo Folino, the owner of Ristorante Arturo on Via Aurelia Antica, which remains a client, said: "Carmine offers a service that we maintain because of tradition and friendship. It's a more human rapport. In general, Mr. Folino said, the mentality has changed, and "nothing is forever anymore." Mr. Mainella has been plying his trade here in Rome since 1955, when he arrived from his native Molise region, following in the footsteps of countless thousands of rural Italians escaping postwar poverty and lured by the opportunities held out by the nation's capital. He was born in Frosolone, a town of about 3,300 historically known for its knife craftsmanship and its production of sharp tools. The town is proud of its history: a life-size statue of a knife maker greets visitors, there is a museum dedicated to knives and scissor-making, and an annual "forging festival" draws thousands. Until the 1950s there were more than 100 workshops in Frosolone's center, where the rhythmic beating of metal on anvils was a constant refrain from 4 a.m. to nightfall, said Maurizio Trillo, the council member responsible for tourism. "Difficult work" that produces much smoke, Mr. Trillo said. "In dialect," he added, "knife makers are known as "facciatinti," black face, because of the smoke." Frosolone still has a strong blade-making economy, but competition from China has mostly relegated local makers to a niche market for handmade products. Mr. Mainella, who is proud of his birthplace, was born into a modest farming family, he said, but his dream as a child was to make knives. He trained as an arrotino, and then came to Rome working for a master. After a few years, he set out on his own.