Keeping Zippo's flame eternal

USA TODAY ^ | 6/23/2003 | Thomas A. Fogarty

[Willie Green]

BRADFORD, Pa.

[Willie Green]

Related threads:

Zippo Closing Canadian Operations
Zippo Sues Disney on Cartoon
The Glitzy Return of the Zippo Lighter

[Moose4]

Looks like some very shrewd businessmen there, using diversification to prepare themselves for a decline in the sales of their most noteworthy product.

}:-)4

[chance33_98]

Gotta have a zippo pic!

[discostu]

I've always felt Zippo should push marketing towards the camping set. A Zippo and all the extras that implies (fluid, extra flint, possibly extra wick) are the best source of fire for people roughing it. Reliable, portable, fairly safe from weather, and the fluid works just like charcoal lighter fluid. Even though I quit smoking I kept my Zippos and alway bring a complete set even on hiking trips.

[Chuckster]

I still have a Zippo with the unit crest of the 92nd Field Artillery and inscribed with my name and rank and date, 1968. I don't use it to light my stogies anymore because it ruins the taste and the fuel is a hassle. It sits on my desk and reminds me of my sordid past.

[TroutStalker]

Zippo is a great company. I've owned Zippos ever since I was a teenager. I'll have to find my collection (what's left after long ago divorce) that's buried around here somewhere.

BTW, when I was business manager for a State College computer company, Zippo was one of our Autocad clients.

[Helms]

Willie- My father played golf with the Big Guy,George Blaisdell. I lived next door to George and his brother Pete, on I believe it was either Brown or Thomas Ave., in Bradford. He and his brother, Pete, I believe, and Jimmy Rhone, were playmates of mine. I lived there for 8 years (my first) and we moved to Buffalo, NY. This is a sentimentally strange post to see. Lots of oil money in Bradford, and especially the Dorns who had their own estate. Since that time business and industry have fallen and I believe that Texas is where the heirs to this fortune now call home.

Anyway, back to my life alot less secure than theirs.

[Ditter]

I understand their problem. My husbands family used to be buggy & harness makers.

[Zeppo]

Whew! For a moment I thought that this was a thread about Zeppo...

[norraad]

About 150 years ago Bradford was an oil boom town.

I've seen historic photos of the surrounding hills barren of trees & filled with oil derricks. It had all the look of environmental distruction.

Now it's green & lush, proof how little mother nature cares what we do.

[Drew68]

Lifetime free repair burnishes the image of quality.

They're not kidding. I have a copper-finished Zippo that I accidentally dropped from an eleventh story balcony on to concrete. (I did this on the day that I purchased it!)

I took the elevator down to retrieve it and it was fine except for a small dent on the lid.

After a few months, the hinge wore out (due to the fall, I am certain) and I shipped it back to Zippo for repairs.

A couple of weeks later, they sent it back to me with a new hinge, and a brand new interior assembly. On top of that, they fixed the dent on the lid.

I have several Zippos and have owned and lost several more (primarily to sticky-fingered acquaintances).

I use two regularly --my copper one and a silver one with my name engraved in it. I always keep an extra flint or two in the bottom of each lighter.

[Freedom4US]

Zippo is one of the few companies that stands behind their product 100%, and a reputation for quality service that is awfully rare anymore. They send out pre-paid mailers on request, repair the lighter, and send it back with extra flints and a tag with a penny on a chain - stating "the CENT never spent to repair a ZIPPO product." They have a website of course, http://www.zippo.com

[Focault's Pendulum]

Zippo means life...everyone should be issued one at birth.

[Bubba_Leroy]

I'm surprised they have avoided getting sued because of their connection to the evil tobacco industry, not to mention all of the people and property injured by fires every year.

[dighton]

........

[Helms]

[Helms]

When I was a little tike in Bradford, a neighbor child's father worked for Halliburton, which now seems to be synonymous with evil.

A brief history of oil (also nicknamed "erl"):

In August if 1859, the region - and the world - was changed forever by Colonel Edwin Drake's drilling of the first commercially successful oil well in Titusville. Wells sprang up throughout the region, spawning "boom towns". The oil boom brought great wealth to the area, and one can still see remnants of past magnificence in the region's Victorian architecture.

Bradford was named in 1850 by Daniel Kingsbury, who bought 50,000 acres of a region then known as Littleton. Kingsbury's family originally came from Bradford, England. "

Bradford used to be called Littleton. According to Mike O'Hara's Name Origins of Northeast PA Towns, Daniel Kingsbury bought 50,000 acres of the region in 1850. He then renamed the area after Bradford, England, from where his family came.

Bradford was home for a while to Kendall Oil which for some time was the finest oil and so was PA crude.

[skeeter]

Then, many Americans thought cigarette smoking actually aided breathing.

BS. They were calling 'em 'coffin nails' in the thirties.

[norraad]

It's first use was as medicine & still

Pa Crude will make your hair grow