I really like reading about umbrella etiquette and how to go out dressed to the nines with bowler and gloves. When I was an English teacher, it would have been an acceptable affectation, too. I didn’t quite go that far back then, but it was attractive to me. And still is. But as a rural Iowan, from a long line of Midwestern farmers and blue collar trades, not so easy to wear.
Even what I do now. I showed up to interview for my current position, a coveted seat as senior writer of a communications firm specializing in the construction and mining industry, in a brand new three-piece suit. I hit it off really well with the firm’s owner, who looked up at me when I thanked him and shook his hand before leaving to say only, “You’ll never wear that suit again.”
So I have to work through a little bit of internal conflict.
I routinely interview millionaires, not solely of giant energy conglomerates but the brilliant men and women who made it happen, then turned it over to the corporations in handsome buyouts. I attend parties and stay in venues that were beyond conception to me as a teacher. And I marvel at my hosts and their clients, how they learned to live this life. Yet, I don't want to join it. Not really. It’s not a fit for me.
I don’t wear this leather cap for style. I have the leather cap to keep pipe smoke out of my thick hair, one of the fortunate traits of my bloodline. Other manly traits I didn’t carry off so well, but I am an heir to them anyway.
The men in my family, my role models, were self-effacing, simple, hard working men with calloused hands and weathered faces. They said little. They smiled a lot. They chuckled more than laughed but would occasionally laugh loud about themselves when ribbed. No one outside the family, I think, knew them this way.
They milked the cows which were on antibiotics separate from the dairy herd, by hand. They walked with slop buckets through the muck in rubber boots past their knees. And they sat around the table after supper, knowing better than to pass up what they knew could not be permanent. They didn’t miss any family time. The crowd of us there. Always. They lived as if they were dying and did not waste emotion on what the government demanded in taxes or the grocer needed for food. Enjoy each other now.
When I take the pipe I have selected as a gift for my Uncle Donny to him, I’ll be bonding further with him, reinforcing the connection we let go for so long. The false light and then the tamping and true light, will be welcome as yet another opportunity to be kin to each other.
I can see it as a vision. I am manipulating things to make it reality. I’ll keep it simple. I teach him to sip the cool smoke and savor it, to ease back then and become the world’s observer, silent as old men taking their break. Two gray-white men on seats on the back porch. Masculine, yet nurturing to sisters, children, cousins and aunts and friends. Rural yet refined. The smoking will subside to conversation. And when I’m not hanging on each word of his, the way he speaks them in his quiet voice, the sparkle in his eye and his inner calm, relishing what life we have together yet (having learned my lesson with Grampa and Gramma gone, Dad and Mom gone, so many family members deceiving me into believing they’d always be here)… when I’m not memorizing his words and manner…. I’ll contribute my own, now finally old enough to have something worth contributing a little.
I am aware of a class system among pipe smokers. It’s been bothering me. It’s why I’m writing now. The construction contractor at his truck puffing as he rereads specifications from his prints. The professor with pipe in hand, simmering, as he corrects papers. The finely dressed woman with pipe in mouth feeling eyes on her, tripping up preconceptions. The old lady in a wooden rocker on her weathered-wood porch in eastern Kentucky. The college student amusing himself with dense billowing clouds in front of friends. All of them, a different class of smoker without their own blogs and articles how to “be them.”
This anticipation I’m feeling for the moment I present this pipe to my uncle and that first smoke we’ll have together…
I finally feel it’s no less noble than any other class. No matter what we wear or how we speak, there is an elegance about the pipe that transcends class distinctions. (Even though we don’t see blogs or articles about each one.)
I’ve worked it through now. I’ve gotten what I set out to do. All things seem right to me now. I won’t have a silk smoking jacket in a den of an estate. I’ll probably never wear a three-piece suit again until they lay me to rest. I won’t wear gloves unless it's an OSHA requirement. I won't carry a crook-handled umbrella from my arm. Interested as I am in how to be a gentleman, I just don’t see that happening to a man like me. That part doesn’t fit me.
But I am a pipe smoker. And it is itself a mighty fine class to belong to.
Check the membership roster. Nod to the finely dressed man who is being who he is, and knuckle-bump the 20-something sucking cotton-candy from his pipe and blowing it from his lips like a child blowing bubbles.
It’s time. I’ll give my uncle his pipe, and he and I together will join you here, celebrating the art of being gentle men, and women.
Pups
Even what I do now. I showed up to interview for my current position, a coveted seat as senior writer of a communications firm specializing in the construction and mining industry, in a brand new three-piece suit. I hit it off really well with the firm’s owner, who looked up at me when I thanked him and shook his hand before leaving to say only, “You’ll never wear that suit again.”
So I have to work through a little bit of internal conflict.
I routinely interview millionaires, not solely of giant energy conglomerates but the brilliant men and women who made it happen, then turned it over to the corporations in handsome buyouts. I attend parties and stay in venues that were beyond conception to me as a teacher. And I marvel at my hosts and their clients, how they learned to live this life. Yet, I don't want to join it. Not really. It’s not a fit for me.
I don’t wear this leather cap for style. I have the leather cap to keep pipe smoke out of my thick hair, one of the fortunate traits of my bloodline. Other manly traits I didn’t carry off so well, but I am an heir to them anyway.
The men in my family, my role models, were self-effacing, simple, hard working men with calloused hands and weathered faces. They said little. They smiled a lot. They chuckled more than laughed but would occasionally laugh loud about themselves when ribbed. No one outside the family, I think, knew them this way.
They milked the cows which were on antibiotics separate from the dairy herd, by hand. They walked with slop buckets through the muck in rubber boots past their knees. And they sat around the table after supper, knowing better than to pass up what they knew could not be permanent. They didn’t miss any family time. The crowd of us there. Always. They lived as if they were dying and did not waste emotion on what the government demanded in taxes or the grocer needed for food. Enjoy each other now.
When I take the pipe I have selected as a gift for my Uncle Donny to him, I’ll be bonding further with him, reinforcing the connection we let go for so long. The false light and then the tamping and true light, will be welcome as yet another opportunity to be kin to each other.
I can see it as a vision. I am manipulating things to make it reality. I’ll keep it simple. I teach him to sip the cool smoke and savor it, to ease back then and become the world’s observer, silent as old men taking their break. Two gray-white men on seats on the back porch. Masculine, yet nurturing to sisters, children, cousins and aunts and friends. Rural yet refined. The smoking will subside to conversation. And when I’m not hanging on each word of his, the way he speaks them in his quiet voice, the sparkle in his eye and his inner calm, relishing what life we have together yet (having learned my lesson with Grampa and Gramma gone, Dad and Mom gone, so many family members deceiving me into believing they’d always be here)… when I’m not memorizing his words and manner…. I’ll contribute my own, now finally old enough to have something worth contributing a little.
I am aware of a class system among pipe smokers. It’s been bothering me. It’s why I’m writing now. The construction contractor at his truck puffing as he rereads specifications from his prints. The professor with pipe in hand, simmering, as he corrects papers. The finely dressed woman with pipe in mouth feeling eyes on her, tripping up preconceptions. The old lady in a wooden rocker on her weathered-wood porch in eastern Kentucky. The college student amusing himself with dense billowing clouds in front of friends. All of them, a different class of smoker without their own blogs and articles how to “be them.”
This anticipation I’m feeling for the moment I present this pipe to my uncle and that first smoke we’ll have together…
I finally feel it’s no less noble than any other class. No matter what we wear or how we speak, there is an elegance about the pipe that transcends class distinctions. (Even though we don’t see blogs or articles about each one.)
I’ve worked it through now. I’ve gotten what I set out to do. All things seem right to me now. I won’t have a silk smoking jacket in a den of an estate. I’ll probably never wear a three-piece suit again until they lay me to rest. I won’t wear gloves unless it's an OSHA requirement. I won't carry a crook-handled umbrella from my arm. Interested as I am in how to be a gentleman, I just don’t see that happening to a man like me. That part doesn’t fit me.
But I am a pipe smoker. And it is itself a mighty fine class to belong to.
Check the membership roster. Nod to the finely dressed man who is being who he is, and knuckle-bump the 20-something sucking cotton-candy from his pipe and blowing it from his lips like a child blowing bubbles.
It’s time. I’ll give my uncle his pipe, and he and I together will join you here, celebrating the art of being gentle men, and women.
Pups