BryLogan

Hello from Washington, DC.

I've been lurking among these various forums for a while now and thought it was about time to come out in the open.

I've been a smoker for the better part of my 70-some years since my teens. Nobody in my immediate family smoked.

During my US Navy enlistment I met a fellow -- about my age -- who smoked a pipe. I was fascinated by the pipe and by the wonderful aromas of his tobacco, and I knew no one our age who smoked a pipe. One day I asked him about pipe smoking and he gave me some basic advice which consisted of get a pipe, get some tobacco, start smoking. I asked him what was the marvelous smelling tobacco that he smoked he said "cherry blend". I now believe that he referred to Middleton's Cherry Blend but at the time I took it to mean a generic cherry flavored tobacco. So, off I went and got a pipe (probably a Dr. Grabow as that's what I think was the most ubiquitous drug store brand then) and some "cherry blend" and rammed it in the pipe like I had seen them do in the movies and lit up.

The experience was not a pleasant one.

After a few more unsuccessful attempts I never picked that pipe up again and, for years, stuck to my Winston's.

Fast forward to the early 1990s. While having coffee at my local bookstore/café I picked up a copy of Cigar Aficionado. I don't know why; it was almost certainly because of the cover photo because I HATED cigars and their smell. I had no interest in cigars whatsoever. But that magazine proved to be an eye opener. When I read the articles and reviews I was amazed. Cigars had flavors?!? One article in particular got to me; a hand-rolled premium cigar and a drug store cigar were two entirely different things. As I had only known of "drug store" cigars (such as White Owl and El Producto) I never knew any other kind existed. SO, off I went, this time to a real tobacconist and, based on his suggestions (after answering his numerous queries) I came away with 5 or 6 brands to try. The first one was heaven, as were those that followed.

Well, I thought, maybe I ought to give that pipe thing another try. SO, off I go -- to the drug store, of course (!) -- and picked up a pipe (an Italian semi-clone of a Peterson system pipe complete with a faux P-lip, which I still smoke occasionally) and back to the tobacconist for some "cherry blend" that he measured out from a huge apothecary jar. At home, I rammed my new tobacco into the pipe, just like they did in the movies and lit up.

The experience, if anything, was worse than my first encounter with a pipe! My tongue felt like it was blistered and somehow, in my exuberant determination to keep the thing lit, I managed to suck some vile liquid all the way up the stem into my mouth. OK, I thought no more pipe for me. I was content with my cigarettes and weekly cigar.

Then, in 2016 I had a stroke. No previous symptoms, no advance warning, no nothing. I was driving from DC to our beach place in NC and at a refueling stop on the VA-NC state line noticed that my right leg was having some trouble keeping up with the rest of me. The next day I was in the hospital with a confirmed stroke diagnosis. To this day they don't know if my stroke was due to a clot or plaque. So before my release from the hospital, I had a long talk with my attending physician about smoking as I knew that my days with cigarettes was over. How about cigars, I asked him. He hemmed and hawed, at first not giving me a flat authoritative answer but then (I sensed) grudgingly gave me the standard AMA "advice" to avoid tobacco use. But he prefaced his statement with "I have to say this ..." and then admitted that he enjoyed an occasional cigar himself! So, I made the decision to continue with cigars.

Somewhere along the line I learned that there were pipe tobaccos aside from those monster sized apothecary jars in the tobacconist shops. What?!? Could this knowledge mirror my cigar education? Now, thanks to the wealth of info available online, I schooled myself on pipes and pipe tobacco. After weeks of teaching myself how to properly pack and draw on a pipe, cigars have receded to the distant occasion.

So now, I'm here. I'm sure many have issued a TL;DNR about now.