The Zippo 

It began its life in a factory far from the sea, a block of stainless steel pressed, shaped, polished, and fitted with a hinge that snapped like a salute. It didn’t know where it was going, or who would carry it. It only knew it bore a ship’s crest on its side, etched deep enough to outlast storms.

It was purchased from the Ships Store by a young Sailor who smelled of salt, oil, and determination. The first time he held it, the lighter felt the sure grip of someone who already knew how to handle tools. He tapped it against his palm, flipped the lid open with a motion so smooth it might have been instinct, and sparked it to life. The flame stood steady, even in the wind.

From that moment on, the lighter was never just a lighter.

It rode in dungaree pockets, warm from body heat and fireroom temperatures. It walked the bulkhead in heavy weather, clacking softly against steel as the ship rolled. It learned the rhythm of watches, the long, quiet stretches where a man’s thoughts wandered but his attention could never drift.

It saw ports that smelled of diesel, spice, and heat. It heard laughter in bars where the jukebox was too loud and the night too short. It felt the tremor of a man’s hand after bad news from home, and the steadying breath after a long day in the plant.

It lit cigarettes for shipmates who came and went, some transferred, some lost, some remembered only in stories told years later. It lit the Sailor’s own smokes in one fluid motion, flip, spark, flame, a ritual as familiar as tying boots or checking gauges.

And it witnessed things no object should ever repeat. The kind of things every ship carries in its silence. If it could talk, the Sailor would tell it to shut up, some memories belong only to the men who lived them.

Years passed. The cigarettes ended. The drinking ended. The old life ended. But the lighter stayed.

Its edges grew smoother. Its hinge softened. The crest dulled but never disappeared. The Sailor’s reflexes slowed, and the one‑motion flip became a memory instead of a trick. But the Zippo didn’t mind. It had already done its duty.

Now it lights charcoal on quiet evenings. It sits on a shelf, not as a relic, but as a companion, a piece of steel that learned the shape of a man’s life and carried it for half a century.

It no longer needs to impress anyone.  
It no longer needs to perform.  
It only needs to exist, as proof that some things endure.

A Sailor may leave the sea, but the sea never leaves the Sailor.  
And sometimes, the sea lives on in a stainless Zippo with a ship’s crest, burnished by time, memory, and the hand that carried it through storms.

Epilog: The Last Cigarette

For all the places that Zippo traveled, for all the watches it stood, for all the storms it rode out in a dungaree pocket, there was one moment it remembers more sharply than any port call or liberty night.

It was the day everything changed.

The Sailor had received Christ, and every part of his life changed, shifted like a ship coming about in heavy seas. The drinking stopped. The old habits fell away. The anger, the drifting, the emptiness, gone. But the cigarettes remained. Three packs a day, the ritual woven into every waking moment. He felt the guilt of it like a weight on his chest. Two weeks of wrestling, praying, trying, failing, lighting another smoke and hating the taste of it.

Then came the day.

He climbed down into the Aft Fireroom, the Zippo warm in his pocket, a cigarette hanging from his lips out of sheer habit. A shipmate was working there, a man who knew him well, knew the old life, the old ways, the old excess.

The Sailor said, "Let me tell you what Christ has done for me."

The shipmate looked up, pointed at the cigarette still burning between his lips, and said, "You’re a hypocrite. I don’t need your God. You’re no different than me."

The words hit harder than any blow.

In that instant, without drama, without ceremony, without a final drag, the Sailor reached up, took the cigarette from his mouth, crushed it out, and quit. Not tomorrow. Not after this pack. Not after this watch.

Right then.

The Zippo felt the absence immediately. No flip. No spark. No flame. Just silence.

It never lit another cigarette again.

Years later, it would still light charcoal on quiet evenings, its hinge softer, its crest worn smooth. But it never returned to the old ritual. The Old Sailor didn’t either.

Some changes come slowly.  
Some come with struggle.  
And some come in a single moment of truth, in the heat of a fireroom, with a man realizing that the old life had no claim on him anymore.

The Zippo didn’t save him.  
The Zippo didn’t change him.  
But it was there, a silent witness to the moment the last chain broke.

And it has stayed with him ever since, not as a reminder of addiction, but as a reminder of the day he walked away from it forever.

And of course, that Sailor was me.

Yours in Him,

Tony