$80 Muxaing Wine Red Ukulele

[Briar Lee]

The price on this one broke down to $65 for the pipe, $10 shipping, and $5 Missouri sales tax. This makes my fifth and most expensive order. These pipes are made in collaboration with or contracted by a Spanish trading company in Madrid, Spain and made by a factory in a villiage in China named Qidou Village.



Muxaing sells lots of beautiful pipes for $15 to $20 made of olive, ebony or pear wood. The tariff is 30% so when you pay $65 there’s about a $20 tax to the American government cooked into the price. I think these are the greatest bargains in modern times in pipes.

This one looks like a thousand dollar grade London best.




I now have a set of five of these that all together totaled $310 delivered. About half of the total price is tariffs, postage and local taxes.

There’s not a stamp or mark on any of them (except an M on the stem of the $42 one). No flaws, fills or ripples.

I own several Chinese pens and the Chinese are past masters at figured and fancy lucite. They have the best stems of all my pipes, period.

Plus, there’s a 30 day free return. Mine come through Lincoln Nebraska.

Last month my wife and I discovered a delightful upscale tobacco shop on The Hill in St Louis that offered lots of nice new pipes from about $100-$300. None of them compared with the $65 grade of Muxaing, not even close.

Muxaing offers custom orders for a contracted minimum. They might stamp or laser your name if you liked on a big enough order. And anymore every briar pipe will have a 10% tariff baked into the price anyway, at least.

Every briar pipe ever made is a hunk of briar wood and a stem. The raw materials used are a relatively expensive piece of briar and a stem that costs nearly nothing. Most of the price is artistry.

Dianna Effner is a local artist. Thirty some years ago she opened a doll factory and had several employees making realistic dolls that even then sold for close to a thousand dollars. She models dolls using actual children in her family and circle of friends. They are incredible to actually see. But about twenty years ago Effner closed her factory and all the dolls are made in Asia, mostly Taiwan.

And the quality is actually better. The Chinese, for whatever reason, have been able to do artistic hand work on a commercial scale best in the world, since the Ming Dynasty.

 

[cynyr]

Truly a beautiful pipe in a classic shape. The doll, however, had better not show up in my nightmares!

 

[Briar Lee]

Truly a beautiful pipe in a classic shape. The doll, however, had better not show up in my nightmares!

War Story time!

For about three decades, I was the city attorney for the town Effner built her doll factory.

I never charged them a cent, under the condition the town marshal call me first before he arrested anybody without any exceptions.

Why some highly collectible Effner dolls from the 1990s fetch thousands of dollars—-is the eyes.

In person they look real. She uses a real little girl for model (then mostly family members) and at her grand opening they had the children beside the dolls. It was spooky beyond words to describe.

Her husband explained to me, that just about any art student on this earth could make a realistic mould for a doll, and the materials cost nearly nothing.

But only Dianna could paint the eyes.

The 9/11 - Dot Com recession of 2001 hit the market for five hundred to one thousand dollar made in Missouri dolls hard. Nobody needs one. It’s a sheer luxury.

They dropped from close to a dozen employees to just family members not drawing salaries.

One of her son in laws took a few moulds to Taiwan.

Not only did the eyes come back every bit as realistic as Dianna painted them, they were something like twenty times cheaper and every doll’s eyes, would follow you around the room

——-

I had three reasons to be the sole prosector and judge and jury of that beautiful little town, for almost thirty years.

The first was it took me twenty solid years of schooling to earn my law degree, and my mother was still alive.

Before I’d use the powers of that little city against one of it’s own kids I always considered what some mother there would do if I called her instead.

The second was my time was valuable and I’d only donate it for the good of everybody in that town. If they wanted legal advice on how to build a sidewalk, put up a water tower, or get utility easements to a brand new doll factory, then I was happy to help and I’d call the local paper to make sure we all were featured in a news article.

The third one was if they accepted any grants to hire a certified policeman with a gun and a badge and arrest powers, a police car, and a radar gun, then I would quit and donate my time elsewhere.

Finally the grants offered were just too large, and they hired a cop with a badge and a gun and a new police car and a radar, and I quit and another lawyer took over.

The first ticket the cop wrote was the the mother of the homecoming queen for dashing home 80 miles an hour to get her daughter’s crown before halftime at the Homecoming game, when every soul in town except that new cop was in the gym at the school.

She said she felt like slapping the fool, but instead said whatever you write me I’m taking over to Van on Monday morning, in front of the entire crowd, after having taken her little girl’s crown to her with the cop in hot pursuit.



Knowing she had a right to a jury trial of her peers in that little town, the new prosector wisely dismissed the case.

Depriving me, of what surely would have been a lot of fun.

Sing one Junior Brown

Highway Patrol (1995)

 

[lukasstrifeson]

Honestly, that's a pretty good looking pipe for $65.

 

[Briar Lee]

I’ve had my $80 Muxaing in long enough to break it in and use acetone to dull the cheap polyester suit shine down to where it glows, like it should.



Yesterday I was in Versailes at Smoker Friendly and on the way back home decided to pay my respects to my old trusty sideman David Potter who rests in a little Mennonite cemetery not far from Fortuna.



When we performed inside those nursing homes I’d hold up a new pipe I’d bought and David would start scolding me that my Mama taught me not to smoke and there she was in the audience beside his mother and there might be impressionable children there that would become addicted because of my example of showing off that fancy new pipe right there in front of God and everybody.

(And he’d play a few licks of Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down—low and slow—somber like)

And I’d launch into a speech about how my darling sainted widowed mother who worked her high heels down to stubs teaching school to raise me right did tell me not to smoke but the worst thing she ever did was not to try and deny me my only vice other than women——

When I was only a mere boy, at the tender age of 19——

She tried packing me off to Nashville to be a country music star!

(And the crowd would laugh and look at Mama who’d be so proud of me she was about to bust. )

I’d just met the part time model and owner of a dozen banks banker’s daughter who’d become my first wife and Mama tried to win me an audition on the stage of the Ryman in Nashville. There was a talent contest over at the Hickory House in Hickory County where the Cahows, which are Mama’s relatives, are numerous and legion and almost without number. And the top prize was an all expenses paid trip to Nashville to audition for the Grand Ole Opry.

And second prize was a hunnert dollars!!!

And David would say—-A whole hundred dollars?

And I’d say —Yes David—-a whole 1977 hundred dollars!!!

You’d need that David to spark the part time model Emmylou Harris lookalike daughter of a man who owned a dozen banks.

And so it came to pass me and my new girl friend went to the Hickory House that Saturday night and ate with Mama and Cahows packed in that place about seven deep, and there were ten contestants.

And the band was just fabulous.

It cost a hundred 1977 dollars to enter!

So they had a thousand dollar a night band!!!

(David would hit a lot of fancy kicks on his guitar and finish with Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down)

And I was third up to sing, David—

And he said sing for your Mama like you did that night, Van!

Tonight the Bottle Let me Down

Live Merle Haggard and Bonnie Owens and the Strangers version

And the audience always would cheer in their wheelchairs and the nurses would high five Mama and then my Mama would yell let me finsh that story—-

She’d say I was sure he’d won, and he’d get his chance in Nashville.

All my Cahow family there was sure he’d win

His girlfriend was scared to death he’d win.

I’d paid his hundred dollar entry fee.

But then at the very last a beautiful little girl got up playing a banjo and sang Rocky Top, and I looked over at my Vanny and said

Keep the hundred dollars, you’re going to need it, son.

Rocky Top

Random pretty girl holding a banjo on YouTube version

I showed off my fancy new wine red Ukulele pipe to David, and then called Joe Potter in California, the only true bona fide Hollywood movie star I know and Kelly was out there visiting with her University professor boyfriend and asked how David’s children and grandchildren were all doing.

Please never try to convince me good souls like David are just buried in the ground.

There’s another world beyond the sunset, you know?

Beyond the Sunset

Definitive Hank Williams version

David and I would always follow up Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down with Swinging Doors, the second song I sang that night at the Hickory House when I was certain sure I was headed for Nashville Tennessee to sing on the stage at the Ryman, but wound up with a hundred dollars and a great story instead about being humble. There’s always a better entertainer out there, you know?

It was also the second song the stupid hot girl with a banjo who led off with Rocky Top sang that night in 1977.

David always lifted me up, whenever he could.

Swinging Doors

Merle Haggard version

Terri Clark version

 

[Briar Lee]

On a truly fine pipe, once you’ve beaten back the cheap shine and removed some of the stain they put on to delight the customers right out of the fancy hard box, you can use carnauba wax to really put the glow to a top shelf pipe.



David Potter was not only my side man he guided us in Arkansas on the White River and I appointed him Chief Cook and Supply Officer for Deer Camp.




The song David loved the most to sing lead himself was

The Homecoming

Tom T Hall (1970)

And I knew David’s voice was perfect for Tom T songs so after he slew Homecoming with his father and mother both in the audience

I’d shout out

Who owes you Forty Dollars, David?

And his Daddy Preacher Man Billy would start hollering and clapping but David’s Mama Rose was too busy playing an imaginary piano with my Mama helping her to realize who David was, most days.


And I could only play chords while David ran all up and down the neck of the Martin HD28 he gave me when he joined the Mennonite Church by Fortuna to spark a 47 year old maiden Mennonite girl, or find salvation, or maybe both at the same time, you know?

Ballad of Forty Dollars

Tom T Hall (Live 1971)

I wonder if she’ll eventually be buried beside David there, in that little churchyard?

He died before their church would allow her to marry a former English.

David was every inch the sideman Don Rich was, on his and now my Martin HD28.

Will There Be Sweethearts in Heaven

Buck Owens and Don Rich slow dance version

David could sing any solo Stonewall Jackson could.

Tragic Romance

Stonewall Jackson

Some romances must have happy forever and ever endings beyond heaven’s gate, you know?

Joey and Rory

Waltz of the Angels live before she died too young of cancer, same as David

At David’s funeral I was a pall bearer but I had my youngest son Paul sit beside David’s fiancé and tell her what a wonderful Christian David had always been, in the nursing home, in Arkansas, at our farm, and his farm and every breath he ever took he knew of.