Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

(l.) new 1L canteen, (r.) 25+-year-old 1L. Wish I’d held up as well.

There isn’t a lot of stuff I have left over from early days of being into preparedness but one of them is the 1-liter military canteens. I bought a few back before I moved to Montana 25 years ago and I still have one. It’s beat up and scuffed and I haven’t used it in years. In fact, it’s relegated to the tertiary level of water storage. A quality Nalgene bottle beats it in just about every regard. But…nostalgia got the better of me and when I saw some available at countycomm I couldn’t resist and ordered up a few. Normally, I try not to give in to sentimentality, especially when it is so obviously trumped by better and newer products, but I couldn’t help myself.

Like I said, these things get beat by a good Nalgene bottle in just about every regard except for the shape. The relatively flat and square shape of the 1L canteens make them easy to stack or tuck in a corner of a bag or vehicle. Interestingly my old ones didnt come with a keepr for the cap and neither do the new ones. Of course, since there are grooves on both parts for a keeper, a few minutes with some paracord will take care of that.

As I said, this was mostly about nostalgia…I got the original ones back when the Cold War was still going on, Reagan was president, and the pinnacle of tactical ubercoolness came from a Brigade Quartermaster catalog…no internet ordering! I was just a kid who liked cool military-type stuff and I remember me and my brother getting a few of these. He, apparently, still has his, too. There is very little stuff I have now, that I still use, from back then…a knife or two, my polypro neck gaiter from BQ, this 1L canteen, and maybe a few knickknacks that have travelled with me over the years.

Ah, those heady young days of the late ’80s when someone talked about the Evil Empire and they weren’t talking about us. Say what you will, I liked the ’80s.