Strike Gold Shave 9/11 25th Anniversary Soap: A Tribute I Had to Cover
Howdy. Welcome back to A Texan Shaves.
Is it weird, me saying that again? I think some of you got the wrong idea from my goodbye video, so let me clear it up. I’m not gone. A Texan Shaves might be gone, but I’m not. I’ll pop up now and then, and this is one of those times. Frank asked me to review the 9/11 25th Anniversary soap, and Frank’s a friend, so even though I’d already told him I was done with reviews, I said yes for him. I’m not burned out. I’m not tired of this hobby. If anything I’m deeper in the rabbit hole than I’ve ever been. Doubling and tripling down is what’s happening over here. Enough said on that.
But I’m not going to shave with it on this video. It’s an amazing fragrance, and it’s a Strike Gold Shave, so you already know what that means. Frank does amazing homages. He runs a premium artisan base. Excellent shave. You don’t need me to tell you that, and I’m not going to. You already know it. If you don’t, pick up a Strike Gold Shave, pick up the 25th Anniversary, and find out for yourself.
A Memory Passed Down
When I was a kid, back in the 70s, I’d hear my great grandparents, my grandparents, my uncles, my parents, all of them, talk about where they were when Kennedy was shot. I didn’t get it. I was too young to understand why that memory stuck so hard on them. There were news segments built entirely around it, people recounting the smallest details decades later like it happened that morning.
Now I’m the generation with that same kind of memory. Mine is 9/11.
Where I Was
I’d just started a new job two days earlier, managing a big box retail store. No cell phone yet, that’s how long ago this was. My wife at the time called the store and told me a plane had hit the towers. I figured it was some kind of accident, maybe a Cessna. I went to the back, we had a TV, turned it on, and the whole crew gathered around. That’s when the second plane hit, live, while we were watching.
After that it was chaos. Nobody knew what was happening, everybody guessing. We dragged the TV up front so we could keep an eye on it and tuned the other sets in the store to the news. No customers came in, obviously, so we closed for the day and went home. The whole country stayed glued to the TV and the radio for weeks.
One thing I remember clearly: for months after, you couldn’t walk past a house or an apartment without seeing an American flag out front. Confusion, disbelief, and then this wave of wanting to help however you could. Patriotism. It’s a shame it took something that horrible to bring it out of people, but it did, and that’s how we came together.
I couldn’t volunteer the way I wanted to, but my brother could. He’s a firefighter, and he went. A lot of firefighters and first responders did. Some got hurt. Some didn’t come home, trying to dig their fellow man out from under that pile.
Tunnel to Towers
That’s where Tunnel to Towers comes in. I wrote their mission statement down so I wouldn’t butcher it:
Tunnel to Towers Foundation’s mission is to do good by providing mortgage-free homes to Gold Star and fallen first responder families with young children, and by building specially adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders. Children of the foundation’s home recipients are offered full scholarships for undergraduate degrees and accredited trade school programs. Tunnel to Towers is also committed to eradicating veteran homelessness and helping America never forget September 11th.
Never forget. My generation made that promise, and the generations around mine made it too. I’ve kept it. I remember almost every minute of that day in detail, the same way my grandparents remembered exactly where they were when Kennedy was shot. Those moments stick because they’re supposed to.
I can’t think of a better foundation to put your money behind if you want to honor that promise.
The Soap
100 percent of the proceeds from this soap go to Tunnel to Towers. Not a cut off the top for overhead, not a percentage held back, all of it. Frank and Jerry put this together, along with Monica, who I believe is over at Van Yulay, and every cent you spend goes straight to the foundation. If you’d rather just donate without buying anything, there’s a QR code on the label you can scan straight from your phone. Give a dollar if that’s what you’ve got. It all counts.
I’m not trying to guilt anybody into this. I believe in the foundation, I believe in what Frank and Jerry built here, and I believe in remembering the people who lost their lives that day just going to work, from the executives at the top of those towers down to maintenance and the janitorial staff, and the ones who ran into that building and never made it back out. I won’t know every name. I’ll remember what they gave anyway.
If you want the soap, it’s a great fragrance and a great shave. It’s Frank’s homage to Tom Ford’s Beau de Jour, and it holds up. I shaved with it, head and face. I’d been growing a beard, about eight days in, finally getting around to shaping up the lines, and I messed it up, so off it came. Guess I’m starting over.
Find your peace in what and where you can. Never forget.