Passing the Match
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Kevin Godbee - Apr 22, 2013
- 10 min read
E. Roberts
"Could you pass me a match, too, Dave?"
The thermometer reads seventy degrees in January down here in Florida, and I’m quickly running out of my own matches in the breeze of an afternoon on my uncle’s patio. We’re enjoying some of his tobacco from the never-ending tub of Half & Half, which I’m finding quite agreeable for the weather. I offer him some of the Peterson Nutty Cut that I’ve brought down with me for the trip, but he passes on it with a wave, saying, "Not just now; that stuff smells too good. I’ll try some after dinner." And he’s right: the burley and bright Virginia blend we’re smoking is the perfect tobacco for the season, and it amuses me to realize how much of a tobacco snob I’ve become. The light and effortless drugstore blend proves to be an ideal companion to our afternoon chat, allowing for several refills without overdoing it on the nicotine, and burning easily in the mild atmosphere. This trip is a thankful reprieve from the grind of a long Manhattan winter for me; more than that, though, it’s a chance to reconnect with the family history, to listen to our stories, and to find something of my identity and legacy within that.
My Uncle Dave is one of the main inspirations that led me to join the fellowship of the briar. He’s been a pipe smoker since the beginning of time, at least in my accounting of it, and he stands as the archetype of such in my mental images. He is a burley man, and a burly man—not much over five-foot seven, but built like a sturdy wall, with a barrel chest and tattoos of clipper ships and hula girls—a man’s man, by all accounts. Humble, and preferring to smile and not take things too seriously, for he discovered long ago that this is what attracts a good woman, which he found and held onto in my mother’s sister, Katie. He smokes Half & Half mostly, but makes an occasional foray into Carter Hall, Prince Albert, even the odd pouch of Captain Black. He laughs when I ask him which cherry blend he prefers, since it’s indelibly imprinted in my mind as a hallmark of the winter holiday season and the visits to his house. The answer is Middleton’s, and he still keeps some in the cabinet. My aunt calls us in to dinner, though, and my thoughts turn to memories of food.
Winter holiday trips to my uncle’s were something to look forward to: a break from the boredom of home and school, and a chance to gorge myself on the best food of the year for days on end. I’d spend afternoons in front of the TV playing Atari with my cousins, the strong smells of tobacco mingling with the delicious kitchen aromas—particularly the pies, cookies and other sweet, bready baked goods that were a specialty of our clan. Being offered a wooden spoon covered in the batter that would become a cake or pastry filling was a special treat, and was often a reward for good behavior—or at least not actively engaging in any bad behavior for several minutes before the goodies were mixed. I’m sure I had an angel looking over my shoulder, considering the absurd number of raw eggs and dairy products I consumed, but what a blissful experience: to know the texture and taste of each of the flavors from the recipe in their pure form, and then to witness the transformation when they were combined and baked, was a revelation. Likewise with canned goods, of which there were many—we’re of Welsh ancestry, after all, and anything that could be made to fit in a jar often was. The chemistry of binder and protein, sugar and time, when balanced precisely by the experienced hands of my mother, aunt, and grandmother, was nothing short of wizardry to me. Many years later I would remember those holiday baking sessions while taking cooking classes, and was humbled that my precise measurements of ingredients could not equal their casual perfection in the kitchen. I eventually managed at least a small degree of acumen with a stove, and now make it a point to do some sort of cooking or baking at every family get-together.
Through these early experiences, the notion of taste as the refuge of the senses was imprinted deeply on my psyche. It was a delicious chemistry set, in a way, to my analytical young mind. This practical education in the changes effected through bacterial action, fermentation, and transformation by heat and age, has now found its expression in me through my own enjoyment of fine tobaccos—cellaring, tasting, blending, and even writing about them.
After dinner we return to the patio for some more conversation and tobacco, this time of the "good stuff". Dave is delighted to learn I’ve taken up the pipe, and pleased as punch to relate his own history with our noble hobby. Even approaching seventy, he can recall that his first pipe, at age sixteen, was a Missouri Meerschaum corncob, and that he paid a hefty thirty-nine cents for it in 1960—probably a day’s wage for him then. He’d graduated from chewing tobacco to the pipe for the flavor and sophistication of it, and realized that the ladies thought it handsome and refined, which we both agree still holds true. A year later and he was in the Navy, growing his collection with meerschaums from Turkey and wood from ports of call in the Mediterranean. He learned first-hand the differences in briar from Greece or Spain or France or Morocco, and he favored the Italians, a preference I’ve arrived at in my own collecting, coincidentally. I ask him what his favorite pipe was, and he immediately recalls the Kaywoodie that he inherited from his grandfather—a pipe that would have been comparable or even superior to a Dunhill from that era.
"I’ll always remember, it was the day that Kennedy was shot. I was up on the weather deck, smoking that pipe, when we got the call to go to general quarters. Everyone was scared—here we were in the middle of the Mediterranean, a long way from home, and we didn’t know if this was going to turn into a nuclear war or what. So everybody’s running to their battle stations, and I was going below decks through a hatch that was a little tight for me. Well, my pipe was in my shirt pocket, and I got caught on the lip of the hatch—it ripped my pocket open, and I watched the pipe fall down below and break into pieces. I couldn’t even stop to pick it up, though, as I had to haul ass to my station. And then the news went around the ship that the President was killed, and we were even more nervous then—suddenly there was no Commander in Chief; we all liked him, he was a Navy man. But I sure wish I still had that pipe."
The service was a job and a travel ticket for a small-town guy, and he took advantage of it with gusto; it was a life that suited his adventurous spirit. It didn’t suit his first wife quite as well, however, with him being away months at a time, and his marriage didn’t last as long as his stint in the Navy. Back home, he worked for a while in the Lackawanna steel mill, during which time he met and married my aunt. He soon needed a bigger paycheck to support his growing family, though. The 1970s marked the decline of American industry, and the mill was systematically dismantled by its parent company, Bethlehem Steel. The service offered a steady income, and Vietnam was underway, so Dave signed up with the Army Reserve as a combat medic. I can recall from my youth some stories he told, usually when the adults had gotten a bit drunk at holiday festivities. One in particular sticks in my mind, of him seeing a soldier sucked into a helicopter’s rotors… and there not being enough of him left to save. We don’t talk about this now, though, as I can still hear in his voice the scars that are left from that time.
It wasn’t until my twenty-first birthday that I discovered the pleasures of pipe smoking. My girlfriend often commented that she thought of me as being older than my skin, of being from a different time. I’d picked up the cigarette habit in my teens, and was a confirmed smoker, but she was sure I’d look better smoking a pipe—and so gifted me my first and most treasured briar, a Sasieni Ruff Root. She really couldn’t have chosen a better pipe, its baby-blue satin bag revealing what, to me, was (and still is) the epitome of the billiard shape. It fit me perfectly, and felt natural and befitting for a young writer, which was my ambition back then. We went that afternoon to the tobacconist to find something to fill the pipe with, spending a lot of time with a patient old man who seemed amused to help us in our selection. Lifting glass jar after glass jar, reveling in the exotic spices they contained, we finally settled on a sweet aromatic and a lighter, non-aromatic—in retrospect, it was likely a burley blend, for I recall it immediately triggered the scent-memory of baked goods and my uncle’s living room rocker, a chair in which I’d fallen asleep many nights while the adults played cards and drank.
Back then I was out on my own, far away from home and family. I’d tried college for a few years, until I realized that the halls of academia weren’t the ideal place for me to learn. I was possessed of the familial wanderlust, the need to see things, to live everywhere and do everything. The pipe stayed with me after the girlfriend was long gone, and I smoked the hell out of it. I smoked until my tongue was raw leather, convinced that I wasn’t doing it right until I’d extracted a sufficient volume of smoke on each puff to fill an entire room. I enjoyed the flavor and the ritual of the experience, but was always nagged by the thought that if that’s what a real man had to go through to enjoy a pipe, then I was half the man my uncle was. I stuck with it, though, until I learned to slow down and savor my time; the pipe, in turn, has repaid me with innumerable hours of clarity and contemplation. As in Dave’s youth, my peregrinations took me all over the country and halfway around the globe; unlike my uncle, though, my war was not external. I lived in a far different world than he did. A child of détente, I knew no great strife and had the luxury of long years of introspection without responsibility. Thankfully, the closest I ever came to combat was the evening news.
As the twilight draws darker around us and my visit comes to an end, I throw my uncle a curveball, something I imagine young guys have been entreating of their elders since there were fires to gather around: I ask him what he thinks the meaning of life is. He deliberates for a moment and laughs. "If you’re gonna live in this world, try to live the best you can; be good to your friends and neighbors. Nine times out of ten they won’t stab you in the back." It is comforting to look back on one’s journey, and while mine certainly hasn’t been a straight line, I can better see the contour of the course my own path has taken. Perhaps it is the gift and province of pipe smokers to focus our effort of thought on the understanding of time. These trinkets we fill with incense are imbued with our musings, and become talismans of our memories, treasured relics to be preserved as a part of our person. For my part, I know that I’ll always have a tub of Half & Half on hand now, to remember the match that has been passed to me.
Listen to the interview with E. "Bill" Roberts on The Pipes Magazine Radio Show
Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Great article Bill, I love the call from the past as well and that has led me to my own pipe smoking journey. I will be meeting my Grandfather this coming weekend and smoking my first pipe with him, he is the main reason I started the pipe hobby. I look forward to that meeting just a little bit more after reading this article.
You’re a talented storyteller — I especially enjoyed how you wrote the closing on this article. Thanks for sharing those memories, Bill.
What a great article. Really enjoyed that one. I read somewhere of a navy pipeman who was a gunner. He was saying how he’d spend countless hours keeping his gun clean, and how this translated to his pipe hygiene as well. A clean gun/pipe is a happy gun/pipe he wrote.
wonderful read. Wish it was 1000 pages of this to go thorough.
Bill
Not only are you a fine writer, you are also a very thoughtful and perceptive man.
Thanks for the essay
Allan
Thanks for a great article. It reminded me of the times when I was a child visiting with my grandfather in Florida and being mesmerized by his pipe and the smells associated with it.
Great read, makes me glad I picked up the tradition from my uncle too. It’s funny how this gets passed down through the generations.
Fantastic article Bill.
Rom – another beautiful read! Never knew my grandparents, but they didn’t puff neither. But my wife’s uncle did. How is it we remember the pipesmokers from our youth but not so much the cigarette smokers?
hp
les
Bravo
What a fine essay, thanks!
A really beautiful peace, my favorite of your work so far; a window to your soul 🙂
I’m glad that this struck a chord with so many people…it’s this ability of pipe smoking to be handed down as a legacy, within our family or friends, that is really one of its more remarkable aspects, to me. I hope that some will be inspired to pass the match themselves.