Zippo

My dad was a pipe smoker. Do not know if people smoke pipes anymore. Googled it and there seem many options. I must not travel in the right circles if I even have a circle. Not a very healthy habit and dad would invariably fall asleep, pipe lit, and a smoldering bit of tobacco would fall on his shirt, much to my mother’s chagrin. Many shirts found their way to the rag pile as a result. My dad used Zippo lighters to keep his pipe lit. Most of my father’s life was spent in Rochester, NY on what I fondly refer to as the wrong side of Lake Ontario. This is a view shared by many of my fellow Upstate brethren living in Watertown, or Syracuse. In the winter, and most of the rest of the time, the wind howls from the northwest, from Canada, across the lake, bringing the most unpleasant and uncertain weather. One element is certain. It is always windy. Specific to the Zippo, its claim to fame is its windscreen that helps it stay lit. The Zippo is an engineering marvel, American ingenuity at its best. My dad had at least four that I can remember.

What I recall as a youngster is that Dad would let the lighter fluid run low and I could put my thumb on the wheel and give it a half spin. Sparks would fly from the flint, but no fuel, so no flame. I would delight at the sparks, a miniature show of what I experienced on the fourth of July with the only legal home-celebration available in New York, sparklers. My parents were not much for the fourth of July celebrations, both globalists and socialists, and my Canadian mother not too much interested in the fuss. Nevertheless, they would let us have sparklers and my older sisters and I would be allowed to go out after 9 PM and light them up with close parental supervision. We could swish them through the air and my sisters would even twirl theirs. The defunct Zippo could not put on that kind of spectacle, but it compensated by being available year-round and not subject to watchful parental eyes. It was lots of spark, but no flame.

What I know now that I did not know then is that if your Zippo needed repair, you packed it up and sent it to Bradford, Pennsylvania, and it would be fixed, free of charge. Cannot say I know much about the details of packing and shipping, but I cannot envision later generations trying that with their Bic. Therefore, it would seem to me that all any person would need is two Zippos, one utilized and the other a backup, when and if one had to go to the shop. We were working class, so I do not know why my Dad had four of them, but perhaps, he just kept one around for my amusement; plenty of spark, but no flame.

She wrote to me of spark or the lack thereof. She wrote how he provided her no spark and given the course of our own non-romance romance; it is fair to assume I fared much less well. At least he had something with this amazing woman. I, on the other hand, received an immediate, unambiguous rebuff. Unlike Dad’s Zippo, she did not even spin the wheel. Perhaps, she could see the futility of wasting time on a worn out lighter. In mathematics and economics, we write of what is necessary and what is sufficient, two conditions juxtaposed. If the objective is to keep an eternal flame burning, spark and an interminable supply of fuel are each necessary and brought together are sufficient. Consider for a moment that the spark is so essential yet so fleeting, there and gone (although repeated strokes of the wheel will offer its return). Also, sparks can be indiscriminate. In the carefully engineered confines of a Zippo, spark meets fuel via wick and voilà, fire. However, that same spark falling upon dry California brush will consume thousands of acres in deadly fashion. The problem to which she did not put her incredible analytical skills is that some of us are more spark and others more fuel. Certain people walk through life astonishingly effervescent, throwing off a fourth of July sparkler display wherever they go and for whomever they meet. And if they should pass by someone suffering a drought, a forest full of dry kindling, a bed of passion beneath old leaves of cynicism and betrayal, then they do not mean to set off a conflagration, but what other possible outcome? We would hope that fuel and spark remain socially distanced. Even worse might be too much of each in one place at one time captured in a single vessel – spontaneous combustion. One can covet more spark, but self-immolation on the pyre of passion’s love seems a fool’s errand. And I am no Buddhist monk.

They will write of us, if they write at all: No spark, no flame, nada, Zippo.