Hoping St. Peter Has a Match
-
Kevin Godbee - Feb 6, 2015
- 5 min read
Fred Brown
When does a fad cease being a fad and become an exciting hobby? And following that line of thought, when does that compelling hobby cease to be a hobby and become an all-encompassing serious obsession?
Personally, I’m at the serious obsession stage right now today. My pipe smoking and collecting began shortly after college, in the 1960s when I came across the old Royal Cigar Store on Forsyth Street in Downtown Atlanta and actually thought I had found heaven.
The appeal of the smells, the tins, the pipes, the cigars, the men smoking both and everyone talking pipes and tobaccos hit me so hard, it was as if I had found the Court of Montezuma and someone handed me a pipe to join in the ceremony.
To make it short, the fellas in Royal Cigar in Downtown Atlanta had me at "hello." For the next several years, I stopped by Royal Cigar at every opportunity, spending money I’d earned working in grocery stores and from summer jobs with the State of Georgia survey crews.
Royal Cigar Company, Atlanta, GA (Late 60s early ’70s?)
It was as if I had found Never-Never Land. The tobacco tins were round and came with crinkly paper that reminded me of neck collars worn by medieval princes. I was, after all, a serious romantic as well, being an English Lit major.
The experienced pipe men at Royal Cigar took me through a veritable fairly land of pipes and tobaccos. They taught me how to load the pipe, light it, smoke it slowly, enjoy the pure tobacco, and most of all, how to relax and just be one with the whole process. Zen like, yes.
I also noticed that many of my college professors, especially history, philosophy and physics, all smoked pipes. And they mostly smoked Sir Walter Raleigh or Prince Albert.
But my physics professor, Dr. Neill Whitelaw, smoked mostly Revelation. That wasn’t his only tobacco. The tops of his lab shelves were lined with the old tubs: Briggs, PA, Half and Half, Barking Dog, Country Doctor, and of course, Revelation.
It was even more thrilling to learn that my physics professor was buddies with, ahem, Mr. Einstein. I often wondered what those two talked about. As for me, I could barely understand Dr. Whitelaw in plain English. That’s why after my first Whitelaw lab exam, he suggested I "drop the course immediately." I did and told him "Dr. Whitelaw, I’m headed to the English Department, where I understand what I read." Dr. Whitelaw did not suffer fools lightly.
At my graduation, however, he was one of the first to shake my hand in a congratulatory shake. "Frankly," Dr. Whitelaw said then, "I didn’t think you were going to make it." Uh, I didn’t either.
Later, in my junior year of college, I discovered Edward’s Pipe Shop of Atlanta. It was, again, love at first "hello." Over time, I purchased several of Edward’s pipes. I loved them all, especially a Canadian that I called "My Edwardian" if you get the drift of that. Edwards bulk tobaccos taught me about burleys, aromatics, Virginias.
By now, I had several pipes in my collection, and I was on what Edwards called a "steady order" list. I received a pound of tobacco monthly, which meant I could mix and match. My pipe collection had ceased to be a fad. It had become a solemn hobby. Each time I received an Edwards Catalog, I ordered another pipe.
By the time I was the editor of a small daily newspaper, my pipe smoking had reached another level. Instead of a pound a month, I was smoking close to a pound a week!
Those were the days when you could smoke anywhere you pleased. There were few anti-smoking zealots at the time.
So, I had a pipe clenched between my teeth most of the day. I tried not to smoke my pipe in my sleep (apologies to Mr. Twain).
Also by this time, my pipe collection had exceeded some 30 briars and meerschaums. One of the meers was given to me by a college classmate, who said it was "old and no good." I still smoke it today!
And, by the way, all of those pipes purchased in the 1960s have their own little place in my pipe racks today, with the exception of one of my beloved Edwards, which I foolishly traded away at a pipe show. I have regretted that deal ever since.
Yes, I know every pipe I have ever purchased. I can recall the time and place. I have refrained from naming all of them, with the exception of a claw-meer, which is the Jeff Davis (this has nothing to do with politics or wars; Davis, president of the Confederacy, smoked a claw-meer).
I have named another my Shelby Foote (the famed Southern author, whom I knew and interviewed several times); the William Faulkner (whom I did not know, but have read and admire); the JRR Tolkien and the C.S. Lewis (for obvious reasons).
At some point, my hobby, no longer a fad, switched gears and became a serious obsession, a movement of its own, an avalanche of emotion, feeling, desire and need.
I admit it. Pipes and their lure have besotted me, taken over my very being. I am incurable at this point, I fear. Yes, this is an expensive hobby and an even more costly obsession. So are alpine skiing, climbing mountains, flying, scuba diving, fly-fishing, cars and stamps.
But at this stage, I don’t know what I would do with a day without being able to see, to hold, to cherish my pipes and the fine tobaccos I put in them.
Note: I define fine tobaccos as any tobacco that I choose to smoke, be it Codger Blend, a Match Blend of the Codgers, the latest from Mr. Pease, Cornell & Diehl, or any of PipeMagazine’s excellent sponsors.
Frankly, I have tried just about all varieties (of course that is unabashedly hyperbole; no one could smoke all the fine tobacco blends out today; but, god knows, I have tried, I have tried).
My pipes are a part of who I am. There, I’ve said it and it is the truth. I shall go to my grave holding one of my pipes in my hand, filled with tobacco, and hoping that St. Peter has a match at the other end.
|
|
Written by Kevin Godbee
6 Responses
Recent Posts
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.
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.
A super article and so very like my own pipe history, with a regular and longstanding hobby/habit now totally ingrained within me so that I am, quite simply, a pipe smoker per se. It has become part of me, it helps define me and has done so for many, many years. I cannot imagine life without a pipe and even though the ravages of age and ill health may one day force an eventual abandonment of my beloved pipes, at this moment it would be unthinkable. I have yet to fully understand the psychological make-up of myself as a confirmed pipe smoker; I only know that from a young age I knew I would smoke a pipe and that it felt absolutely right. Perhaps the era in which I grew up, when pipes were a common sight amongst both young and old smokers, gave me the predilection. I do know that many of my teachers were pipe men and several of my school chums and colleagues took up the briar at a relatively young age and no one seemed to be surprised in the least. Oh to see pipe smokers around more.
I, too, am besotted about the pipe, though I am now smoking as a simple, daily habit and simplifying my practice right down to the essentials. The expense of maintaining the habit as a hobby has made me slow down, cut back and rein in the indulgences. However, my smoking has become even more precious and enjoyable as a result, perhaps because I am not under pressure to keep on buying and acquiring. I smoke because I am a smoker. I smoke a pipe because I love it. And I hope I may continue to do so for as long as I possibly can in (relatively) good health.
Many thanks for a stimulating and encouraging article. It thrilled me to bits to read it. Enjoy your pipes today, wherever you are.
Good article.
Oh, how I miss those days in the ’60s and ’70s when pipe smoking and even smoking in general was not so objectionable as it is today.
At least pipe smoking is not so denigrated as cigarette smoking. I have received no objectionable comments to my pipe and have actually received compliments though they also say I do remind them of their grandfather with pipe (grin).
I guess it reminds them also of a more peaceful time before the intrusion of the health nuts and the anti’s and big government.
I, too, will go to my grave with pipe and have instructed my loving wife to place one of my favorite pipes, tobacco, tamper and lighter with me.
Your path took you to Royal Cigar, mine to Peretti’s of Boston and yes I too still have those pipes I purchased for Mr. Peretti. It was a great trip back in time. Things were different then for many reasons but it seems we all have those pleasant memories. Thanks for the moment of reflection. It did bring a smile to my face.
You’re not alone in this magnificent obsession, Mr. Brown! Thanks for a nicely written article that triggered a few cherished memories of my visits to the local B&M.
Fred – many thanks for a great article. You hit the nail on the head when you described the apparently seamless transition from hobby to daily pastime. I’m not a pipe or tobacco collector – I’m a pipe smoker. Simple.
Thank you fred for a most enjoyable article