My Zippo Trio

A few years ago I was at a club in Philly called Tiki Bobs. A very good friend of mine used to like hanging out there so I made a point to check it out with him and his brother one night. After a few high priced beers I got to moving around to check out the people and what was going on. Not being much of a club person I was trying to keep myself from getting bored. On my way back to the bar I was approached by this guy with a sort of electronic clipboard.

Right away he went into telling me about this survey they were doing for a free Zippo lighter or passes to some sort of Marlboro sponsored event. I took a quick survey and collected my free Zippo. A couple yards away I saw another person with a fancy clipboard walking around. I thought it would be fun to hit up all the survey people and see how many lighters I could leave the club with at the end of the night.

By the end of the night I was mildly amused and carting around four Zippo lighters in my pockets. They were nothing fancy but I looked at it as a way to recoup my money from the high priced beers. Over time I gave away most of the those lighters but kept one. It was a polished brass case with no frills.

Some years later, my wife being the observer that she is, noticed that I had this lighter tossed in a drawer and asked me how I came about it. After telling her the story she must have mentioned it to her parents, which happened to be going on a motorcycle trip in the area of the Zippo factory here in PA.

For Christmas I got a nice wolf Zippo from my in-laws. They explained that my wife had mentioned I could use a nice Zippo to light my cigars with. Both lighters are not considered ideal to light cigars due to the type of fuel they use, so a Blazer butane torch insert is in order for them.

A few days ago I received a package from Don Ramos Cigars with samples to review for Stogie Review. Among the samples was a Zippo Blu torch lighter. I remember when these were announced and how cool it would be to get a new style Zippo.

While this story has no real point, its just my way of explaining how the Zippo Trio came to be