Pipes in the Dark Days
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Fred Brown - Feb 1, 2022
- 6 min read
“Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind.”—William Shakespeare
“How now?”
“Even so quickly may one catch the plague?” — William Shakespeare
There we were, thinking the plague seemed to be fading. And then, omicron, the little Greek “o” with a big “Omen” arrived and set the world ablaze with virus.
Sometime, in the days before the current darkness, at a pipe show in Raleigh, Va., PipesMagazine’s Radio Show host Brian Levine, the pipes and tobacco veteran, told me an old tale: a British doctor was perplexed by the plague of typhoid deaths. He happened by a water source in which the citizenry pumped their daily water from a public well supplied by an underground aquifer.
He studied the source and then advised town authorities the way to be rid of the scourge: “take the handle off the pump.”
That was in the late 19th century, and it was later discovered that typhoid, Salmonella enterica, was the culprit. Historically, the bacteria were said to have caused the death of Pericles, Greek Athenian leader of sometime in the 460s BC.
Oh, the horror!
All, right, enough of this sorrowful start. Onward, shall we?
I have been thinking of an old friend who smoked nothing but Bugler tobacco. That tobacco, manufactured in 1932, was primarily for roll-your-own cigarette smokers.
My friend, a really fine writer who once authored a book published by Random House, smoked Bugler because it was a cheap blend of Turkish and burley or Virginia or both. It was a grand-slam mixture of tobacco and is still produced for cigarette smokers.
I tried a bowl given to me by my writer buddy, who later became a public relations spokesman for a prominent Washington politician.
That one bowlful taught me a valuable lesson: watch what you ask for in pipe tobacco. To say that I had an out of body, otherworldly experience, envisioning an alternative existence—pretty well sums up my one and only foray into Bugler tobacco!
I never sampled that sort again and have remained cautious about burleys and Virginia combos ever since.
One more note about strong tobaccos. Now, I realize many of you are stout enough, experienced enough—to smoke old shoe leather, but take heed as I share another tale.
Once upon a time, in a now-departed brick and mortar pipes and tobaccos store a young pipe smoker wanted to try one of Samuel Gawith’s strongest tobaccos.
My tobacco merchant friend recommended Samuel Gawith’s 1792 Flake, a Virginia based of Tanzanian leaf laced with strong Tonquin bean but recommended caution. The Newbie cast restraint to the winds, stated with youthful confidence he could handle it, opened the tin, filled his pipe, lit it up and took a deep draw: Newbie hit the deck after that big puff.
Why go into all this? Well, the Pundit has been contemplating a great deal about pipes and tobacco in our time of plague. They comfort us, and if we follow our instincts about smoking a pipe, follow our feelings, follow our best thoughts, we will find enjoyment at the end of these dark days.
I moved on from that early Bugler experience to find wonderful tobacco blends, from aromatics to, yes, burley and Virginias—but touched up with Perique, and Orientals.
So this bit of advice for all you new pipe smokers out there. Don’t give up. You will find that right blend.
However, if a pipe reviewer such as Jiminks on tobaccoreviews.com says your choice is strong, beware. Jiminks is an exceptionally reliable source, a veteran pipe smoker, who knows blends, strengths, nicotine power and more.
Another piece of advice from an old deep South barbecue chef whose famous restaurant I once frequented: slow and low is how you cook the best “Q.”
Of course, you must also have the right “Q” sauce, which I won’t reveal here on pain of severe punishment from my barbecue chef pal.
But slow and low is how I prefer to puff. No matter whether or not it’s an aro or one of those magical mixtures by true masters of tobacco blending.
And here is another old-world tip from the Pundit: Yes, I like pipe lighters, and I have drawerfuls of ‘em; some famous brand names, some collectibles, some lesser knowns.
But the best and safest method by which to light your bowl I have found is with an old-fashioned wooden kitchen match. Say, the “Diamond” brand. The stick is, roughly speaking, two and three-eighths inches long and the flame is soft and round enough so as to not scorch that beautiful birdseye rim on your precious pipes.
By the way, for those of you of insatiable curiosity on all things tobacco and pipe-related, Chuck Stanion has an excellent essay on pipe rims in his August 2020 Pipe Line column on SmokingPipes.Com
Now, with cobs, or, say, an old basket pipe, I haul out flame throwers.
This month, the shortest of the year, we honor a rather famous World War II journalist, author, historian and pipe smoker: William L. Shirer.
Shirer, who wrote the top-selling The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany in 1960, was born Feb. 23, 1904, in Chicago, Ill., and died Dec. 28, 1993, in Boston. He was 89.
Shirer, who was once characterized as something of a “pipe-smoking” professorial type, was a prolific writer. He also combined his journalistic skills with radio broadcasting back to the U.S. with CBS while in Berlin during the opening year of World War II.
His two books that put the Pundit on the road to delving into World War II history were Berlin Diary, published in 1941, and his work on the Third Reich.
In particular the Pundit likes this Shirer quote:
History must speak for itself. A historian is content if he has been able to shed more light.
And, before I let you go not so gently into that good and dark February night, our time together would not be complete if we did not consider our Founding Fathers. With hallowed President’s Day soon upon us, it is important not to forget this is also the month we honor U.S. presidents on President’s Day.
The holiday was begun initially to honor President George Washington on his birthday, Feb. 22. But all that changed due to calendar goofs and then a move to honor all presidents.
This year, President’s Day falls on Feb. 21, and Washington’s birthday is Feb. 22.
Confused? So is the Pundit. Just know that many of our Founding Fathers were tobacco planters, and most of them enjoyed a bowl or two during their busy founding days.
And in modern times, we have accounts of Presidential pipe smoker Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006), 38th President (1974–77), who was rarely seen without his pipe.
Photo by Fred Brown
Written by Fred Brown
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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. 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.
