Pipe Smoking Inspiration

I always loved the smell of burning pipe tobacco. When setting fire to tobacco warehouses became a little too dangerous, I decided to smoke a pipe instead.

Because I dared to! Smoking a pipe when barely into my twenties (early 1970s) helped me stand out in a crowd!

Huck Finn. Started when I was 10.

Memories of my dad and my most influential mentor. Dad smoked till I was about 8 years old. I think he quit because the church and my mom said it was wrong (my guess is that he continued as a closet smoker but am not certain). As a young adult, my mentor was a pipe smoker.

Jesse I am reading a book about Michel Rockfeller son of Nelson Rockfeller who dissapeared in New Guinea , in it a missionary who was being persued by Headhunters and was looking to make him a meal, for them not him , had tobacco in his boat, natives loved it, slowed them down by casting it on the waters, they stopped to pick up the tobbaco and he got away.Good Book Named Savage Harvest.

My grandfather smoked a pipe and I wanted to break away from cigs, day 9 now without a smoke after a pack a day for 40 years.

Congrats salmonfisher.
I have always been intrigued with pipes, the art, styling and functionality of them. I wanted to give it a try since I was a kid, but never did. About 2 years ago, I was finally reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes, and all the constant pipe smoking pushed me over the edge. I went out and bought a cheap briar and fell in love.

fading... solved any big crimes I can write about yet? Gladly be your Dr. Watson. (Sherlock got the pipe, sure -- but Watson got the gun!)

12Pups, I haven't yet, but here is one we can start working on.
http://pipesmagazine.com/forums/topic/big-price-hike-for-cheap-pipes

After 22 years, last year I quit smoking cigarettes; however I still enjoy cigars on the golf course, in the duck blind, fishing trips and summer BBQ's. I love flavourful Cuban cigars and pipe tobacco is equally enjoyable. What really prompted me into this new hobby was seeing a collection of estate pipes at an auction. The pipe stand, the pipes, the humidor, all really appealed to me on a personal level and I had to buy them. I could not point a finger at any one individual who influenced me...perhaps a personal love of traditional things and activities, and an appriciation for quality tobacco over poisonous cigarettes.

For me I always remembered the smell of pipe tobacco and how much I loved it as a kid whenever I was around a tobacco shop at the mall or a chance passerby who smoked a pipe. Still didn't think of ever doing it once I reached manhood. Had been ingrained since youth of the dangerousness of smoking to one's health. Then, one day a year ago at my son-in-law's parents' house, sitting outside around a fire pit, he and some of his buddies pulled out their pipes and started lighting up. I was intrigued. He offered me an extra pipe but I declined. Later however, I couldn't put it out of my mind, and shortly after that purchased my first pipe, a Dr. Grabow Grand Duke, and now I'm hooked. Wish I had started this 30 years ago, but better late than never. :puffpipe:

Guess my inspiration was curiosity at first, then after my first bowl of tobacco, I was hooked! I started to read more about the pleasures of pipe smoking and tobaccos and just dove right in and haven't looked back!

The first time I smoked a pipe I was 9 years old. I actually made it from a corncob leftover from dinner, bored a little hole with the awl of my pocket knife and stuck a bamboo stem in there which I took from my mom's garden. I don't think I even let the cob dry out. I picked up cigarette butt's and smoked the tobacco in this pipe, though I also used to smoke leaves and bark in it. I don't remember what gave me the idea, but I was a big fan of popeye as a kid. I smoked a pipe a few times as I got older, but mostly smoked cigarettes for almost twenty years. Then about 6 years ago, I was in a shop buying smokes, and thought, "what the hell," and bought a shit plastic pipe and some captain black. It tasted okay, but I was sure it could be better. About a week later, I went to a local tobacconist and he sold me a nice briar and some PS English luxury. That's all I smoked for about 5 years and never went back to cigarettes. There was a cigar lounge and we'd play poker and smoke. Everyone smoked cigars but I always had my pipe. Occasionally someone else would also smoke a pipe with me. My dad, grandfather's, Uncles all smoke pipes. But they are all one pipe, one blend types. I was also that way, but now I bounce between two pipes and many blends, though I smoke one of 3 blends every day and smoke something special only at night when I can enjoy it more.

Sweet nostalgia!
rsuninv beat me to it.
My grandfather is the man I most idolize. I spent every summer of my childhood with him up at the lake. And although pipe smoking apparently contributed to his demise, I knew that when I got older I would be a pipe smoker just like him. Fortunately that day has arrived! I feel his presence as I puff on a Billiard or a Canadian as he did when were out fishing or just staring into the campfire so many years ago.
Dot

My childhood friends's father is a man I have always had immense respect for, and he is a pipe and cigar smoker still going strong at over 80-years old. He always has a pipe or cigar going.
And of course after reading The Lord of the Rings a dozen times since the 8th grade, one cannot help but want to smoke some leaf from the Southfarthing!

Two of my biggest influences were Sherlock Holmes and The Lord of the Rings. I decided if I wanted to be like Sherlock Holmes it would be safest to just smoke a pipe and leave out the heroin habit!!! My other major influence was music. Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra. They all smoked pipes and inspired both my pipe smoking and my music.

+1 12pups, Huck Finn was a huge influence on me as a youth. I even built a raft and drifted to the Tennessee River as a kid, and cobs full of rabbit tobacco and corn silk were some of my first plays with pipes. But, there were lots of pipe smokers in my family, and you couldn't walk into a convenience store or grocer without passing men on rockers smoking their pipes. There is still a strong pipe culture here in Alabama, so it's not unusual to see guys walking their dogs or fishing with pipes clenched. None of that mamby-pamby holding a pipe with pinky out "sipping," ha ha. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you just don't see it. ::
edit: you had to clench, because you needed your hands free to work on whittling your next pipe, or a whistle, or a carving of your favorite mule :wink:

I picked up the pipe on a whim when I was twenty. I had always been fascinated by it, but I hate cigarettes and was always told of the evils of tobacco and all that nonsense. I never smoked it prior to that because I thought tobacco was all the same. After I found out a professor that I really like smokes a pipe I got to thinking about it a lot. I always felt that at certain times there was something missing and that a pipe might be it. I did my research and realized that pipe smoking was more or less safe and that over half of the chemicals and foods I come into contact with everyday pose a much greater threat to my health. I figured car exhaust, fast food, processed food and cell phone radiation were gonna do me in a lot sooner. So on a whim I bought an MM cob and some cheap aromatics. I loved it. It was exactly what I was always looking for. It provided that missing something when I was on the lake fishing at sunset or when I was trying to think or things like that. I reckon it kinda became a part of me. I don't really think I chose the pipe so much as the pipe chose me. Growing up, I only ever saw a few pipe smokers. A few older men and whatnot, but nobody I looked up to anybody in my immediate family. I found out after I had started that my grandfather smoked a pipe years ago, but he quit long before I was ever born. Everyone else in my family that used tobacco either smoked cigarettes or dipped.