31 Things Every Man Should Own
per Esquire
1. Cast-Iron Skillet
It's not a specialty kitchen item, which means you can cook almost anything in it. Because you never use soap on it, it'll enrich your eggs and burgers and grilled cheese and fish fillets and rib eyes with the earned flavors of a well-used grill. It's impossible to break and can go in the oven. And it will last longer than you.
2. Valid Passport
You can't even go to Canada anymore without one. Not having a passport is like not having money.
3. Multipurpose Tool
It's not that it's better than any of the seventeen individual implements it contains. It's that its seventeen implements are good enough that you don't have to carry any of them individually.
4. Waiter's Corkscrew/Bottle Opener/Knife
Corkscrews should not be expensive. Or require instruction manuals.
5. Ax
Because you need something to make firewood out of the tree that fell across your driveway.
6. WD-40
If only for the door hinges. A man's house should involve no squeaking.
7. Cordless Drill
Electric hand tools should be cordless. Eighteen volts — contractor grade — is all the power you'll ever need.
8. Weekend Shoulder Bag
Which should fit the following: a cotton blazer, jeans, khaki shorts, swim trunks, two T-shirts, a button-down, flip-flops, white sneakers, a leather belt, two pairs underwear, two pairs socks, one Dopp kit (as dictated by Esquire's Big Black Book Spring 2009).
9. Giant Wool Blanket Never Removed from the Trunk of the Car
Because you could freeze to death without one. Also, it's good for a picnic.
10. Chain Saw
Because you need something to prepare the tree for the ax.
11. Work Gloves
Without a good pair of work gloves, you blister in five minutes of picking up an ax or a chain saw. You need two pairs: rubber-coated for winter, leather for summer.
12. Carpenter's Level
Because with a small one, you can level a picture. With this one, you can level a deck.
13. Boots for the Shop
Sneakers are not for the garage.
14. Boots for Everywhere Else
These are custom-fitted to your feet, so you won't go through two weeks of blistering and one week of healing before they're comfortable. And they're guaranteed for life, so you'll never buy another pair again.
15. Jack
Cars come with inferior jacks. You need a better one.
16.Claw Hammer
Because gravity. A good heavy hammer changes everything.
17. Coleman Lantern
An electric lantern makes your campsite look cold. This one makes it look warm.
18. Chef's Knife
With a good kitchen knife, you're holding something heavy and well-balanced. The food yields to it. Cooking becomes a craft, not a chore.
19. Flying Disc
This isn't the flimsy, feathery Frisbee you played with as a kid. It's the flying disc sanctioned by the Ultimate Players Association for its championship series.
20. U.S. Road Atlas
The man who only uses a GPS is half a man.
21. Air Pump
No electric model has improved on the ease or reliability of a well-built, hand-powered floor pump. And you can't take an electric one tubing on the river.
22. Jumper Cables
Not so much for you but for the stranger stuck in the parking lot.
23. Charcoal Grill
Gas grills are nice. We like the gas grill. But the metal kettle is crucial. Not because charcoal makes food taste better than a gas grill (it probably does, a little) but because with a charcoal grill you can smoke things. And smoking things can kill two, three, four hours. Hours of drinking and basting and Cigar smoking. Beautiful.
24. Card Holder
To be placed in the breast pocket of your jacket.
25. Pocket Knife
One with a two-and-a-half-inch blade: big enough for most jobs, small enough not to weigh you down.
26. Grease
None of that silicone-based, high-tech synthetic goop. Something made of dinosaurs. Something that smells like God's garage.
27. Lucky Charm
Because it gives the comfort of faith to the faithless — like when you really need the chain saw to start.
28. $1,000 Hidden in Your House
Because $500 is too little and $2,000 is too much.
29. LED Flashlight
LED flashlights are blindingly bright, shockproof, and, maybe best of all, run for a hundred hours on four AA batteries, which is at least seventy more hours than an incandescent bulb.
30. Money Clip
To be placed in the front pocket of your pants.
31. Joy of Cooking
It's the Old Testament of cookbooks. Low on bombast. Heavy on information. Lots of lists. It begat all others. And if you want to cook it, it's in there, including possum.
Looks like I need to go shopping.
:-)
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