Thank you all for the support on Collection One. We sold out in less than 24 hours. Incredible!
I made my dad - and a few friend’s dads - some Custom Father’s Day lighters. They became a much bigger hit than I’d expected so I decided to make a limited HAPPY FATHER’S DAY collection.
There are 7 available. Shop opens when this email is sent.
They’re $55. $65 if you want your dad’s initials on the back.
You can purchase one of the seven here. They’ll all be shipped tomorrow 06/13.
My dad drove a train. Real blue collar. Wide shouldered hero. Over the years I’ve watched my admiration for him grow.
Losing his dad at a young age. Growing up an only child. A nasty divorce. Raising two kids alone. Too many wives. More divorces. Days long trips. Multiple state coal hauls. Tier 3 city hotels and taxis and not enough home cooked food. That time something was on the train tracks and didn’t get off in time.
It wasn’t until I was around 17 years old and was watching my dad with a buddy of his that he Became Human to me. It all fell in on itself. Before that he was really just an enigma. A stern and confident enigma. A good natured hustler character. Like a movie. Like an assignment. The way my 3rd grade math teacher was assigned to teach me. I was just born under this man. I was just sat in the back right seat of his burgundy 1992 jeep grand Cherokee. I just materialized there. Or was strapped in and buckled by a stork.
I’d call it fate. Or be real Calvinistic about it. But human elements happened. My dad was the age I am now when he was at an after shift bar with his friend. (Casual. 90’s style. Not full of Teenage Scholars.) and my mom was doing the same with her friend. He bought her a drink from down the bar. Went to talk to her. Now I’m writing to you.
It all crashed that my dad had a life. Failures, sadness, triumphs, anxieties, special places and people, hatred and love, doubt. He felt everything. Must have. But I’d never heard much of a whisper of any of it. Just slight aggravated facial expressions. Or smiles at certain things. Only slivers of light through the closed door.
That’s Manhood.
As we’re told it to be.
I’m the oldest. The only son. “My entire life changed the night your were born”
I’ve heard him say this but I can’t know what it means until I’m holding my newborn. Yesterday my little sister gave birth. Yesterday I became an uncle. I looked at her husband and felt something like impatient jealously. Like he’d now been thrust behind the curtain that my dad had also been shoved through in the late 90’s.
Some time ago I read the suicide rates of adult men. How it happened at such an intense rate. I’d never been introduced to that sort of reality. A real world where instead of Holding Up Straight, the expected Back Bones break. Snap in half under the pressures.
Then I got older and realized the true reality of a Man.
If done correctly - as boys are told as a child when wondering How To Be A Man - it is private. All held in and compartmentalized. Life is done in the style of the Old Grandpas, it’s very much kept in. Handled. A volcano with few exhaust vents.
There are heavier responsibilities these days. Heavier consequences. Maybe, just maybe… things to live for.
My 2023 New Years Resolution: Tell people you’re proud of them more often.
Since following this goal, and honoring it. I’ve realized it’s a lot easier to make someone feel seen. It just take a few words, a small token. Really anything /extracurricular/ the shows ‘I appreciate everything you do.’ Even if it’s just those 5 words over a phone call. Dads hear this the least.
This year I had some success selling my custom zippos. So I wanted to make my dad one. Then my friends wanted one for their dads. And before I knew it I spent all last weekend carving Zippos for - I like to imagine - a son and his father to smoke a Marlboro red together next week.
I have 7 available if you’d like to order one for Fathers Day. I can customize it for you too.
God bless,
Winston
The Prodigal Son
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