A Pipe Holds So Many Memories...

[Dimitri]

EDIT: Fixed Capitalization in Title (See Rule 9)

...the thought came to me strongly very recently when i picked up the very first 13 year old pipe I bought when I was 20, a full bent billiard "basket" pipe, and decided to smoke the very first pipe tobacco I ever tried, a very pungent aromatic called Skandinavik Exotic which I have a few pouches of. (Not 13 year old pouches mind you, but the same blend none the less!)

The pipe is a gurgler, the stem oxidised and ugly and even loose after taking it out when hot too many times. Thick cake and Im sure severely goasted. The tobacco has terrible reviews on Tobaccoreviews, and even for an aro has failed to make lasting impressions on people.

But for me, that combination, is just wonderful.
That pipe with that blend takes me back to those long summers in Corfu, smoking under the stars on a beach with my closest friends, having an easy stress free job and an easy stress free life on a beautiful island, tstaying out all night in gorgeous old Corfu town, drinking wine out the bottle looking over the rooftops.

All from a pipe and tobacco that everybody else would throw away.

 

[Chasing Embers]

All from a pipe and tobacco that everybody else would throw away.

Though I have thrown away hundreds of pipes over the last thirty years, I have a handful that are momentos. Most are little more than a hammer as they are just tools for burning tobacco.

 

[Guppy]

Still have my first pipe which I dusted off, fixed up, and smoked for the first time in about 10 years not too long ago. Same tobacco as well, in this case Peterson 965 instead of Dunhill. While my tastes have changed over the last 25 years, leaving behind P lips and English blends for the most part, firing it up brings forth a flood of pleasant memories.

 

[tradition]

I have and use pipes I bought over 40 years ago.

 

[mso489]

Any pipe that takes you back to "those long summers in Corfu" is a good pipe, I'd say. Some of my briars are over forty years old. I still have my first Tinder Box St. Ives pipe from the 1970's. The once unfinished Savinelli now a deep walnut that I bought at my local independent pipe shop in the 80's, and so on. Pipes are a time capsule, a scrapbook, a time machine. I have a string of pipes from my go-to carver Jerry Perry beginning in 2002, another thread through time.

 

[kwg116]

That’s one of the things that drew me to pipes. The guy that taught me how to smoke told me that pipes hold a lifetime of memories. I have pipes in my collection that I smoked throughout the last 20+ years. When I smoke them I think about all the good times and great bowls they provided. I still smoke my first pipe quite often and it’s one of my best smokers. Probably the best $125 I have ever spent.

 

[saltedplug]

Each time we smoke a pipe we strengthen the memory of it. It is from these neurons that our feeling for the pipe emanates.

 

[mikethompson]

It is part of the human condition I think, to apply emotions to an inanimate object. It applies to pipes, but also to cars, a house, a mug.

 

[troyniss]

I donated my first pipe to my landlord who lives upstairs. He's an older Korean guy and was really interested in my pipes when he saw me smoke them. I only had 3 pipes at the time and I wasn't about to give him my Petersons. It was a basket pipe from Tinderbox that I bought back in 2008 or 2009 during college while on lunch break when I worked at the clothing retailer Banana Republic.
It has some good memories, but I have moved on from it and it makes a great gift to someone who I think will appreciate it more than I, as a souvenir of some sorts, or as I can imagine him saying "Remember that one foreigner who lived below us *insert years ago*?"

I didn't smoke it that much, and one time my neighbor smoked synthetic marijuana, or spice, out of it. It was a gurgler apart from my horrible smoking technique and the goopy aromatics that I never dried out. I was naive then.

However now, I cherish my 317 Peterson as my first real pipe that got me into deep into the rabbit hole two years ago.

 

[Chasing Embers]

It is part of the human condition I think, to apply emotions to an inanimate object.

Never really thought that way. Objects are usually just the means to an end.

 

[Magpiety]

This is very true. I bought my first pipe right after my wife and I purchased our little farm. The neighboring farmer introduced me to it, but I rushed my decision because I wanted a pipe to use in a "pints and pipes" reading group that had formed at the law school I was attending. It's a terrible little basket pipe with "Roma" stamped on the side. The tenon came loose in the mortise after just a couple of smokes, and it gurgled constantly.

But I can't quite bring myself to pitch it because it got me started on such a wonderful hobby.

 

[virginialover]

My first pipe is a GBD London Made Billiard, I keep it on the mantelpiece cleaned and polished. It started as an Aro then a Virginia flake and finally as a Latakia mixture pipe. It used to gurgle and overheat because of poor smoking technique and goopy Aros. It fared better once I started smoking Latakia mixtures with it.

 

[winton]

I have a different issue, "I know I have had this pipe for many years, but I can't remember when I got it or why."

 

[hauntedmyst]

A Pipe Holds So Many Memories...”.

So true. The other day a young Lovat came into my therapist office. Turns out he was having flashback memories to what his uncle the Canadian did to him and it was giving him nightmares. The therapist held up a stuffed pipe for him so he could show him where his uncle touched him. Horrors.