My Fascination With Flashlights

I’ve always been fascinated with flashlights. I guess it began around the time I was in first or second grade. My father worked on the C&O railroad, and one evening he came home with a six-volt lantern battery and a six-volt light bulb. With just a piece of wire wrapped around negative post of the battery and the other end around the base of the bulb, you could touch the bottom of the bulb to the positive terminal and there was light! I don’t know why this fascinated me so much. But I just thought this was the coolest thing in my little world at the time.

I began to experiment with lights and batteries at a very early age. We lived along what was once one of the busiest rail yards in the world, and there were numerous switchman in front of our house throughout the day and night. When their lantern battery would be depleted, they’d just pull it out of the lantern and toss it on the ground. But what was dead to them was still quite usable to me. So I’d collect them, test them with a bulb, and keep the ones that still had some life left in them. Before long, I had wired up my whole bedroom with six-volt bulbs! Tolerant of my vivid imagination and experimental nature, mom just put up with the mess.

Dad had also taken notice of my new hobby. One night after work, he surprised me a brand new railroad lantern. This was a big, clunky contraption that was built like a tank. It had two bulbs—one for flood and one for spot. I treasured it for years, and would pay a small fortune to have it again!

So since childhood, I’ve loved flashlights. I’m reluctant to call my lights a “collection,” because that implies that I put them in a display case and only take them out to dust them or show them off. Instead, all of my lights are working lights. I have several of the Surefire lights, which I believe to be the finest mass produced lights I’ve found. I also have a variety of other lights, such as a Q-Beam, several Maglites, and a host of other specialized lighting devices.

As time permits, I’ll be posting several entries in this blog about various lights that I’ve owned or read about. I’m keeping this at a fairly high level, so that it’s both easy to write and read. Hopefully, it’ll provide a person who wants to know more about a specific light a place to go for a quick and objective (but not overly-technical) reference.

As always, I welcome your feedback. All spam will be immediately deleted from the entries.