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I recently signed up in order to expand my knowledge of pipe smoking. My first pipe was when I was a junior in high school, May 1964. The boarding high school allowed Seniors to smoke and in the May of the Junior year they allowed Juniors to smoke. Naturally nearly everyone ran down to the local drug store for smokes on May 1. A number of my friends had older brothers who matured to pipe smoking, so they thought they'd skip the cigarettes and go for the pipe. I connected early with Uhle's in Milwaukee and they were a guiding mentor for buying good tobacco and picking good pipes back then. I think that's where I was introduced to the lament of disappearing Algerian brier becoming the reason why new pipes were not as good as the old ones.
I enjoyed my pipes through my college years. Had a job with Marshall Field & Co in the art department. I assisted in window dressing. One day I found a number of pipes in the studio that were used in the windows and were a little faded by the sunlight. They weren't going to use them in that condition and I bought them as salvage for 5 cents each. One of them was a GBD Rockroot. About 1984 I walked into an antique store and spotted some pipes for sale. One immediately stood out from the rest. It was a Dunhill. My wife is much better at negotiating a price and got the dealer to go down from $5 to $3. A year or two after that I had a terrible cold and didn't smoke for a month. It was suggested to me that since I had not smoked for a month, I could "kick the habit" and stop smoking, which I did. I eventually packed up my pipes and later sold them off on Ebay. Fast forward twenty-five years or so. I decided to celebrate a birthday with a cigar. Sometime later I was visiting my son who pulled out my old GBD Rockroot I had given him and we had a cigar and a pipe together. A little later I was digging around in my office for something and ran across the Dunhill I purchased so many years ago. I enjoyed that pipe and continue to do so.
I enjoyed my pipes through my college years. Had a job with Marshall Field & Co in the art department. I assisted in window dressing. One day I found a number of pipes in the studio that were used in the windows and were a little faded by the sunlight. They weren't going to use them in that condition and I bought them as salvage for 5 cents each. One of them was a GBD Rockroot. About 1984 I walked into an antique store and spotted some pipes for sale. One immediately stood out from the rest. It was a Dunhill. My wife is much better at negotiating a price and got the dealer to go down from $5 to $3. A year or two after that I had a terrible cold and didn't smoke for a month. It was suggested to me that since I had not smoked for a month, I could "kick the habit" and stop smoking, which I did. I eventually packed up my pipes and later sold them off on Ebay. Fast forward twenty-five years or so. I decided to celebrate a birthday with a cigar. Sometime later I was visiting my son who pulled out my old GBD Rockroot I had given him and we had a cigar and a pipe together. A little later I was digging around in my office for something and ran across the Dunhill I purchased so many years ago. I enjoyed that pipe and continue to do so.
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