1940's The W.A.S.K. Lighter

W.A. King still holds the world class record as Brownsville's all-time greatest B's'r. One of his money making schemes was a lighter that was wind-proof and made in Mexico.  Nobody tells it better than William Abraham King, Jr., author of 

Rattling Yours ... Snake King:  The true-life adventure of a pint-sized New Yorker, via California, became a Tall Texan, and rode a rattlesnake to world-wide fame and fortune ...

Snake King Builds a Lighter

Shortly after the outbreak of war, a few big-time cigarette lighter manufacturers in the naton turned over their complete facilities over to the war effort.  By the second year of the war, cigarette lighters joined a long critical list of shortages.

It goes without saying that Dad knew next to nothing about manufacturing or merchandising lighters.  This was an altogether alien operation to him.  The necessary raw materials and labor were unavailable in war-time U.S.A.  Such drawback would have been enough to discourage the average man.  With characteristic bluntness he ran roughshod over such "minor" drawbacks.  It didn't take him long to figure out that Mexico was just the place to set up a factory.  Raw materials and labor there were plentiful and the country, as a whole, hardly knew there was a war going on.  They couldn't care less; this just wasn't their fight.

Dad spent thousands of dollars in producing the master dies required in manufacturing lighters.  The innocent-looking flint wheel turned out to be the most troublesome part to make.  He designed, and had made, special machines, set up production lines and started training personnel.  After surmounting the innumerable problems that confront a new industry in a foreign country, he finally came up with an acceptable product.  I was real proud of Dad when I saw my first WASK lighter.  Leave it to Dad to come up with a real corker when it came to naming his brain-child.  The brand had a double-barreled significance:  it proclaimed the lighter to be a Wind And Storm King while at the same time it stood for W.A. Snake King.  You could hardly call this a coincidence, could you?

The next step was to submit lighter samples to U.S. Customs so that import duties could be established.  Ordinarily this could be time-consuming; in war-time, it could be hopelessly exasperating.  But Dad was a real expert at cutting corners and red tape; this was something he'd had to do all his life.  Before long, he was bring in lighters by the "jillion," his designation for large quantities of anything.

William Abraham King Jr and Manuel King 2010 (?)