Life’s Meaning Through Our Pipes
-
Fred Brown - May 7, 2019
- 5 min read
Fred Brown
There are times, it seems to me when old lessons are the very best teachers. Like hard knocks. They just keep on tapping.
For example, listen to a few hoary catchphrases I created, found, or edited just a bit:
“If a thing can whip you, it will;
“Start out like you can old hold out. . . to the end;
“If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it well enough (with apologies to Mr. Einstein);
“Politicians are like the weather: you can complain about it or change channels;
“Never tell a man you don’t like his dog. He might bite you;
“There are three things in life that are worth every penny: a loving wife, a good pipe and a dog;”
It has been my experience that you can trust a man or woman who smokes a pipe. Who else has that kind of patience, but a trustworthy person?
“Tobacco these days seems to have collected a lot of enemies. My theory is to just wait it out and pack a bowl instead of your bags;
“It pays to know yourself before speaking out;
“Flying high is fun until the wind stops;
“Details are in the fine print, but the message is often writ large;
And finally:
“Often a curve will straighten your course.”
I have run through many phases in my years of smoking a pipe.
There was a time when I smoked nothing but aromatic tobacco. Loved it and couldn’t get enough. Like a kid in an ice cream parlor wanting a lick of every flavor.
Then came the English blend discovery. It was like crossing the London Bridge and seeing Big Ben.
I smoked English blends until my tongue was part Latakia and Turkish leaf and I was spouting Shakespearean quotes.
Next came straight Virginia. My life changed after trying Samuel Gawith’s 1792 Flake. I thought I had swallowed a frog.
Mind you, I have eaten and still love fried frog legs (it’s a Southern thing), but this was far, far different.
My here-to-fore stainless steel stomach rejected my entire morning and noon meals.
You get the drift.
It was a good while before I tried Virginias again. But, being dedicated and stubborn, back to the Virginias I turned, this time to Astley’s sublime No. 44 Dark Virginia Flake.
And then, I fell in love with McClelland’s Virginia tobacco, ketchup fumes and all. Oh, lordy, was that great Virginia tobacco!
Then I arrived at the Virginia and Perique phase, followed by Burley and Perique chapter.
For a while there, I didn’t know whether I was a Va/Per or a Bur/Per.
Yes, the pun is very much intended.
Mind you, all this tobacco experimentation took more than four decades.
I never kept a tobacco tasting notebook but should have. I recommend that to young pipe smokers, because not only do your tastes change but so does your attitude toward certain blends and brands.
As you can see, my tastes have been all over the tobacco map.
But I have found certain manufacturers and blenders I know I can depend upon to “get it right.”
Mythical blender G.L. Pease quickly comes to mind. The legendary Russ Ouellette is a master. Expert blender Joe Lankford of Seattle Pipe Club fame is another artist of tobacco chemistry.
You must add Jeremy Reeves, head blender at Cornell & Diehl, part of the Laudisi-SmokingPipes.com talented pipes and tobaccosmiths.
As for manufacturers, I still believe we are in the heyday of singular producers of the leaf.
You must go no farther than the tobacco discussion on the Pipesmagazine.com forum to find the best in the business.
Start with Cornell & Diehl, Lane, Gawith and Hogarth, Samuel Gawith, Pipes and Cigars, Esoterica, Kohlhase & Kopp, Iwan Reis, Rattray’s, Fribourg & Treyer, Mac Baren, Peter Stokkebye, Sutliff, Wilke Pipe Tobacco, and on and on as far as the eye can see.
Thankfully, for as long as it lasts, I believe we are in a tobacco blending and manufacturing renaissance, an age of tobacco enlightenment if you will.
Returning to aromatic tobacco, I have begun to revisit my beginnings in pipe smoking.
This does not mean I have forsaken Virginias, English blends, Virginia and perique or Burley and perique.
I mix and match a great deal now. Or I simply strike out on an English kick, a pleasurable Virginia, or straight Burley run.
And in changing blends as much as I do in a pipe-smoking day, I have also learned to monitor my puffing pace.
Slowing down has given me the holy grail of tobacco tastes. I pull my lips back from the stem and sip the smoke.
Try that one day. You will be surprised, I think, as I. You will taste the blender’s secrets in that intermingling of rich leaf variety.
My attitude has changed as I try to understand my smoking self.
I no longer smoke as if this could be my last. I savor the flavors of the blends.
And like most of you, I have come to value my pipes in a way that a man loves his dog.
My pipe is a faithful companion. I am always gratified when I strike a match to a bowl and sift through the various smells and tastes.
And my pipes act as a brake on the stresses of my day.
I slow down and breathe, letting creamy smoke cover me in blessed silence.
Certain of my pipes are irreplaceable in terms of what they mean to me, what they do for me, how they comfort me.
These are not just chunks of wood pulled from the earth and fashioned into bowls.
No. My pipes are precious pieces of art, that fill my life with joy and a sense of accomplishment.
I feel as if I have climbed the mountain and have seen the break of dawn, the early light creeping over the rim of ancient lands.
Pipe smoking has given me a perspective on life that I would not have had otherwise.
We are who we are. I think; therefore, I am a pipe smoker, with apologies to Rene Descartes.
One of my favorite quotes is from the French existentialist, John-Paul Sartre:
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give life meaning.”
We are pipe smokers. Therefore, we give ourselves meaning through our pipes.
A pipe is not just a pipe. It is life itself.
 Fred Brown is a journalist who lives in Knoxville, TN. He will write this column for PipesMagazine.com monthly. He can be contacted at tennwriter@bellsouth.net. |
Written by Fred Brown
2 Responses
Recent Posts
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 637. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Nate King. Most people know of Nate as an excellent pipe artisan. He also has an honorary Master of Pipes degree from the Chicagoland Pipe Collectors Club, and is a member of the prestigious Confrérie des Maitres Pipiers de Saint-Claude. To be inducted into the Confrérie, this past May Nate travelled to Saint-Claude, France with master tobacco blender G.L. Pease, who was also inducted. It was quite a time in France, and at the ceremony. We’ll hear all about those adventures on the show. At the top of the show we’ll continue the virtual tour of Brian’s pipe collection with six of his Satou Dublin-shape pipes.
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.
Amen Fred. Well said
Excellent read! I love your way with words.