I was sifting through my gramps’s old box of crapola a long time ago — you’ve seen that kind of thing before. A rusty pocketknife, a pair of faded Navy pins, some strange foreign coins that smelled like the ’40s. Then I spotted this little metal tube, which looked like a Dryco flint holder, in the corner. Thought it was a blown fuse, or the sort of stuff you throw into the junk drawer and don’t see again for 40 years.
But nope. I unscrewed the top — and boom — flints.
It was clearly a small flint holder from Dryco. I didn’t know even one, honestly, but the second I realized what we were going there to see, I experienced this weird little wave of respect. As in … this little thing had likely seen more than I have.
If you’ve ever used a Zippo, you also know that these things are tanks. They’ll light in the wind, rain, maybe even underwater if you first say something nice. But no flint? No fire. It is basically a cool-looking chunk of metal that clicks.