The Care & Feeding of the Pipeman - by G. L. Pease
Indulge me. Take a moment to close your eyes and reflect on your earliest experience as a budding pipe smoker. It could have been months ago, years, or even decades. Imagine that first bowl in as much vivid detail as you can conjure. How does the memory compare to your current experience?

Most of us, without much effort, can recall our first pipe, our first tobacco, our first smoke. For some, it was the opening of a sensory door that would lead to a wonderful new world of taste and aroma; for others, it was like entering a chamber of horrors, a dread-filled experience that, if lucidly recalled, makes us wonder why the hell we ever again chose to wander those darkly haunted halls.

G. L. Pease
I’ve been smoking a pipe for about 30 years, now, and I’m starting to get the idea that I just don’t know how to do it. Seriously. It’s not that I can’t stuff tobacco into a bowl, get it smouldering, and even keep it going more or less until I get to the bottom, but I know there’s more to it than that, despite the choir’s sustained insistence that “it’s easy,” or that I’m “over-thinking it.” Let me ’splain.