If Only Flasks Could Talk...

I received my first flask as a college graduation gift from two of my roommates.  A stainless steel boot flask with a check pattern.  Your twenties are an age when it seems that booze is appropriate during almost any activity, thus making a flask an ideal tool to have on hand.

During the Middle Ages people would use gutted fruit to conceal liquor.  By the 1700's metal flasks were used by the upper crust of society, while the lower classes would fashion them out of pigs bladders.  Women in Britian would sneak gin aboard ships for sailors with a bladder flask tucked discreetly under their petticoats.   

The flask has been used throughout the history of liquor on battlefields across the world.  It is tool of courage for fallen soldiers when faced with surgery without anesthesia, and a means of steadying the nerves in the terrible throws of war.

It has been a while since I have used my flask.   I may technically still be in my 20's, but it is not exactly something a mother with two little babies wants to be caught with...if you know what I mean.  In fact, I hadn't much thought about it until I began seeking a new home for my wooden boat.  Flasks and boats seem to go hand in hand.

I had a fella help me trailer the boat, and it just so happened that this charter fisherman, owner of The Angler's Mark, was also a leather artist.  It came up in conversation that he specializes in leather flask covers.  Here is some of his work, as well as the flask above.

There is something wonderful about a leather flask.  Leather shows the wear of use with a warmth that a metal flask lacks.  A worn leather flask carries a certain sense of history...history with an undoubtedly interesting story.  

If only flasks could talk...