Gaslight Pipe-Smoking Contest 2009
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Kevin Godbee - Sep 22, 2009
- 2 min read
A 37-year-old Kentucky man smoked a pipe of 3.3 grams of tobacco for 71 minutes and 30 seconds to win the Gaslight Festival Pipe Smoking Contest.
Coy Howard, 37, of Springfield, KY., smoked the pipe with a single light longest to best five competitors Sunday at the annual contest in Jeffersontown, the Louisville, KY.
Gorden Vogel, 71, took second place by making his pipe last 70 minutes and 45 seconds on a single light.
The Gaslight pipe-smoking contest took place on Sunday, Sept. 20 in Jeffersontown, Kentucky with six contestants.
Four younger men joined two old-timers in puffing and eyeing each other’s pipes under the columned portico that shelters Jeffersontown City Hall, each nursing 3.3 grams of tobacco, trying for the longest time on just one light.
Under the watchful eyes of a judge holding a stopwatch, the winner, Coy Howard, 37, coaxed his bowl of burley and vanilla-flavored Virginia tobacco to burn 71 minutes, 30 seconds. He snuffed out Gorden Vogel, age 71, who lasted 70 minutes, 45 seconds.
“I pray for two things,” said Howard, a factory worker from Springfield, Ky. “That mine does not go out and others’ do.”
Souvenir pins from many past pipe smoking competitions studded the red tobacco pouch on the lap of Griffin, a competitive puffer since 1984.
His collection included pins from pipe-smoking marathons at the Ham Days celebration in Lebanon, Ky.; the Steamboat Days Festival in Jeffersonville, Ind.; and the Kentucky State Fair.
This year, the International Association of Pipe Smokers will hold its 61st world championships near its headquarters in Mount Pleasant, Mich.
The association’s Web site lists Internet links to seven pipe-smoking clubs nationwide, including the Kentuckiana Pipe Smokers Club based at Kremer’s Smoke Shoppe in downtown Louisville.
Before the contest began, the owner of Kremer’s shouted to be heard over the keyboard and drums of a six-man gospel combo playing for festival passers-by on Watterson Trail.
This was the second year Kempf, 27, who also works as a clerk at a liquor store on Bardstown Road, competed in the pipe-smoking contest with his friend Jordan Humbert, 26, a musician.
Nate Keller, 18, said he took up pipe smoking under a tree in his Jeffersontown backyard last year to ease nerves jangled by his job setting bowling pins at King Pin Lanes on Taylorsville Road.
“After you have had a harsh day, it puts you in a mellow mind,” Keller said.
Kremer’s Smoke Shoppe
Written by Kevin Godbee
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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. 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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 […]
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
