Let’s Solve Why Pipe Smoking is 1% of 1935

[Briar Lee]

All my life until I was a teenager, my father had 25 milking Holstein cows that without fail, had to be milked in the morning and again in the evening.

The majority of prosperous families around Humansville all milked cows.

You will never own any pet dog more gentle than a herd of Holstein milk cows at a one man dairy. They would come in anytime after noon until two in the morning to be milked for the evening milking. Morning milking could be delayed until noon. But they had to be milked twice a day, every day, all year long. You couldn’t get very far from home.

Books, and conversation, and debate were our entertainment.

Three times a week we all gladly went to church and read the Old and New Testament and discussed the teachings of Jesus.

That was one religion.

The other one was pursuit of knowledge for our own entertainment. The World Book Almanac and World Book Encyclopedia were the final arbitrators of any debate.

I have a discussion topic.

Why was the world’s population 2.2 billion in 1935, and its 8.2 billion today, and world tobacco production is about the same 6.5 million tons, and yet 90 years ago pipe production was more than one hundred times more than today?

True, a good briar pipe made in 1935 is still good today, I smoke quite a few of them. Most of my stash of pipes is over seventy years old. They’ll last nearly forever if well kept.

But the world uses six and a half million tons of tobacco but only a tiny fraction in pipes.

Here’s my theory.

My father could not smoke a pipe . He never had the time. He couldn’t smoke in the milk barn, he couldn’t smoke in Mama’s house, he couldn’t smoke in church.

The men who could smoke pipes in 1935 had the luxury of time, and could smoke them almost anywhere.

What nearly killed off pipe smoking was universal air conditioning and central heating.

Pipe smoking produces a whole bunch of smoke, and mothers won’t allow that long around their kids, you know? Today a man has to smoke outside or in a place he controls.

Mama won’t allow no pipe smoking, no more.

Roy Acuff (advertising Prince Albert)

Mama Don’t Allow

If that first man Adam hadn’t gotten lonesome, and asked for a help mate, there’d be lots more pipe smoking today.




What’s your theory?

 

[Auxsender]

Tobacco related diseases kill hundreds of thousands of people every single year.
Perhaps that has something to do with it.
Also, the average modern, western jamoke likes things fast and easy and convenient and pipe smoking is none of those.

 

[Briar Lee]

Tobacco related diseases kill hundreds of thousands of people every single year.
Perhaps that has something to do with it.
Also, the average modern, western jamoke likes things fast and easy and convenient and pipe smoking is none of those.

The concern over the smoker’s health is a factor, I’ll admit.

But look at the incredible rise in the numbers of huge SUVs.

My wife’s latest Suburban has 355 horsepower (but surely not the plug horse dobbin kind), has 22 inch rims, and will cruise all day in tomb like silence at 80 miles an hour and, she won’t let me smoke in it.

Pipe only smokers who never inhale live longer, not by much, but some little bit, than nonsmokers.

I can smoke a quick cigarrete in five minutes after I gas up her Suburban.

Mostly it’s Mama that’s clamped down on pipe smoking.

 

[Law]

From what I gathered and I could be wrong is that pipe smoking at the time, like most smoking or nicotine products today or yesteryears, is only a delivery method to the addiction of nicotine. Simply put, the introduction of cigarettes and its mass production with such consistency and versatility made it effortless to the conumers who are just looking for their nicotine fix. Cigars also got the hit, not just pipes. When talking now, most pipe smokers choose to smoke a pipe rather than the other, more viable and readily available, nicotine products. That means to the someone looking inwardly is that there is something more to the pipe than just a nicotine delivery product. The flavors, the contemplation, and history, the beauty of the pipes, and all the factors that make it special, it also has to deliver nicotine. Nicotine feels good. Pipe smoking was used, for most, as only put your codger tobacco inside that one pipe you own, because why own more than one? You keep smoking that thing until it meets an unfortunate end. In every corner of any subject or hobby, there is the few connoisseurs, enthusiasts, "aficionado" and love all things of that thing. Within the pipe smoking "hobby", they are the ones that come and meet in pipe clubs, try different blends, build a cellar of their favorite blends, hunt for unicorns, and end up in forums typing all of this. We are the few, and in every facet of life, there is the general smokers who are the majority and there are the few niche smokers who end up wanting more from their smoking. Pipe smokers now are looking for something more than just nicotine delivery system. Wanting more than just nicotine in our smoking makes us the few.

 

[Auxsender]

Mostly it’s Mama that’s clamped down on pipe smoking.

And you’ve answered your own question. It’s mama’s fault.

 

[Auxsender]

From what I gathered and I could be wrong is that pipe smoking at the time, like most smoking or nicotine products today or yesteryears, is only a delivery method to the addiction of nicotine. Simply put, the introduction of cigarettes and its mass production with such consistency and versatility made it effortless to the conumers who are just looking for their nicotine fix. Cigars also got the hit, not just pipes. When talking now, most pipe smokers choose to smoke a pipe rather than the other, more viable and readily available, nicotine products. That means to the someone looking inwardly is that there is something more to the pipe than just a nicotine delivery product. The flavors, the contemplation, and history, the beauty of the pipes, and all the factors that make it special, it also has to deliver nicotine. Nicotine feels good. Pipe smoking was used, for most, as only put your codger tobacco inside that one pipe you own, because why own more than one? You keep smoking that thing until it meets an unfortunate end. In every corner of any subject or hobby, there is the few connoisseurs, enthusiasts, "aficionado" and love all things of that thing. Within the pipe smoking "hobby", they are the ones that come and meet in pipe clubs, try different blends, build a cellar of their favorite blends, hunt for unicorns, and end up in forums typing all of this. We are the few, and in every facet of life, there is the general smokers who are the majority and there are the few niche smokers who end up wanting more from their smoking. Pipe smokers now are looking for something more than just nicotine delivery system. Wanting more than just nicotine in our smoking makes us the few.

I hate the way nicotine makes me feel. The second I feel it, that’s my que to put the pipe down. Luckily I can get through 2-ish bowls before the “uh-oh feeling” creeps in.

 

[Waning Embers]

Other than health concerns pipe smoking creates too much clutter.

 

[Briar Lee]

Other than health concerns pipe smoking creates too much clutter.

Let’s talk about the fiddly aspect of pipe smoking a minute.

A cigarette or cigar needs no tools, no paraphernalia, no fiddling, except a light.

The best story teller I’ll ever know, Alva Rains, said he smoked a pipe until another cattle trader at Osceola outbid him while he was fiddling with his pipe. After that Alva smoked Rum Crook cigars.

A pipe needs care. It’s valuable and you don’t want to break it or loose it. The tobacco is separate, as are the lighter and pipe tool (or pocketknife). Packing it takes experience. It should be tamped. You may need to relight it. Ashtrays aren’t made for it. You need a pipe tool. Where do you sit it down? It’s difficult to talk with a pipe clenched. And a smoke lasts quite a long time.

It’s more trouble.

Yet 90 years ago at the height of pipe smoking popularity there were cigarettes and cigars aplenty.

American pipe makers made and sold over thirty million briar pipes a year, over 100 times more than today.

 

[LeafErikson]

I think you already came to one of the correct conclusions, Briar Lee.

Pipe smoking takes a serious amount of time and people simply can’t smoke indoors. If I could smoke anywhere I wanted I would almost always have a pipe in my mouth.

The other variable is that pipe smoking is just much harder than smoking a cigarette or a cigar. Once cigarettes became more profuse during WWI and throughout the rest of the first half of the 20th century, so many more guys switched to cigarettes.

Why do you think supermarkets have such a big frozen-food section with so many ready-made meals to pop in the microwave? Pipe smoking is the laborious, home-cooked meal of tobacco-use.

 

[Law]

I hate the way nicotine makes me feel. The second I feel it, that’s my que to put the pipe down. Luckily I can get through 2-ish bowls before the “uh-oh feeling” creeps in.

I guess more so nicotine sickness or a strong hit of nicotine at a relatively short period of time makes you feel off. For me, as long as a constant nicotine dosage flowing in low frequency is where I feel great. Strong tobacco's give me that bold hit of nicotine at once that just feels too strong to enjoy smoking itself, so I am usually wary of those blends.

 

[LeafErikson]

Yet 90 years ago at the height of pipe smoking popularity there were cigarettes and cigars aplenty.

After the advent of cigarettes, pipe smoking was still a significant percentage of tobacco users, but not dominant. Your statistics speaks more to the sheer amount of tobacco consumed at that point in history than the popularity of pipes themselves.

As you know, pipe smoking/cigars were the ONLY ways to smoke tobacco for hundreds of years. The fact that more pipes were sold in the 1930s just highlights that era as maybe the peak of tobacco consumption.

 

[JOHN72]

Reading this thread, I was reminded. Until recently I could smoke on the terrace of the golf club's swimming pool. And it turns out that a new anti-smoking law has just come out, which prohibits precisely this type of areas. So the next visit to the golf club, I will have to ask the waiters before lighting up. The only thing left to do is to smoke at home, or under an abandoned bridge.

 

[telescopes]

smoking in an abandoned bridge sounds interesting.

 

[warren]

Smoking in the barn? Of course not! But, in the field, on the tractor? I knew many a farmer who'd not be without a pipe in his maw while attending to the fields.

Free cigarettes for our fighting man created a grand market.

But, trying to parse, often superficially, all of the reasons for growth or diminishing use of tobacco use, particularly the pipe, is a past time for those with much time on their hands. Could be time well wasted though if done while enjoying a bowl. Still, essentially a waste of one's time though. So many serious subjects exist for one to muse over. Well, in my mind anyway. Too little time remains before me to find answers, sadly. On with the never ending quest though.

 

[anotherbob]

I think the smoking bans effected pipes more then anything else. While a cigar still would be harder to have as ones main and only nicotine, you don't have to invest in pipes and stuff.

 

[Briar Lee]

The smartest man I ever knew, a machinist, pilot, raconteur, inventor, manufacturer, expert witness, alcoholic philosopher who chomped a Dutch Master President until he died one night in his sleep almost 90 years old, used to say the only thing men wanted was to live longer and have sex.

I’d argue Jack, what about the pursuit of money, and power, and pleasure?

He’d say those are all just ways to live longer and attract younger and prettier girls.

The first man I ever saw smoke a hundred dollar pipe, was K B Youngblood who built an A Frame cafe in Humansville in 1975 and made so much money he bought a Dairy Queen in Kansas City, Missouri on the JC Nichols Plaza.

I found out he owned the Dairy Queen when I took my new girlfriend, who was a part time model and daughter of the wealthiest banker in Southwest Missouri down to the Plaza and we ate at Dairy Queen.

K B Youngblood came over with his hundred dollar Nording and sat down and started talking to me and my girl and it turned out he knew her father, who’d made him the loan on his cafe in Humansville and he kept smoking that hundred dollar pipe.

Libby looked at him, and said where did you buy that pipe, and he said there’s a tobacco shop on the Plaza, and directed us to it.

On the way out there was a photo of the ribbon cutting for the Dairy Queen he showed us, and my girl said oh your wife is so pretty, and your children are just little darlings.


We walked to the tobacco shop, and I’d started with sixty dollars and only had a little more than fifty left.

My $100 size Nording only cost $35, because there’s a tiny dimple, only I can see, when I hold it up to a light.



Libby picked out some tobacco she liked the smell of, and I was cutting it really close to broke, after I bought us ice cream at the Dairy Queen and we strolled by the fountains.



I learned a lot that day, I soon forgot.

One thing is a Danish pipe is a booger to break in, they don’t age their briar.

Time for a song.

14 Carat Mind

A lot of pipes were sold to impress a girl, you know?

 

[VDL_Piper]

I think it’s a time related thing that mostly affected pipe smoking as this world today wants it now, actually they want it before they even get it these days as they are in so much of a hurry and for the life of me I don’t know why. I wish we could still poll on here as I’d love to know how many pipe smokers today can light their pipe and clench it and not take it out of their mouth to either relight or tamp. I do it a lot and it frees up your hands to do your work and my father never took his pipe out whilst smoking very much at all so it negated the need for a smoke break and thus he was more productive than less. The advent of tailor made cigarettes and their adoption was the catalyst for smoking bans in my opinion and the demise of pipe smoking as they made tobacco consumption so convenient

 

[Waning Embers]

A cigarette or cigar needs no tools, no paraphernalia, no fiddling, except a light.

Neither does a pipe.

A pipe needs care.

Strongly disagree. I've seen more pipes damaged from cleaning and maintenance than just smoking them. Prior to getting rid of my pipes they were kept like this and never damaged.

Ashtrays aren’t made for it.

Sure they are.

You may need to relight it.

Cigarettes and cigars often need relighting.

Where do you sit it down?

I was rarely seated when smoking a pipe.

It’s difficult to talk with a pipe clenched.

Um, okay.

I think your posts illustrate the reason for the decline. New prospective smokers listened to the older guys' contradicting anecdotes about smoking techniques and they shied away from the easiest most thoughtless form of smoking.

 

[Hutch Piper]

Most people don’t slow down these days. It’s go go go.

 

[VDL_Piper]

Neither does a pipe.

I think your posts illustrate the reason for the decline. New prospective smokers listened to the older guys' contradicting anecdotes about smoking techniques and they shied away from the easiest most thoughtless form of smoking.

I think you're spot on CE. There seems to be some mythical status wrapped around a pipe and how to smoke it but it's really just stuff it and smoke it. The new generation also has a tendency to over analyse everything and then become paralysed by information and that's not what pipe smoking is about. The things that make pipe smoking a little more difficult are mostly natures elements like high humidity, strong wind etc as these will impact the performance of the pipe or its smoker or both.