Coming Back to an Old Hobby: My Story
- Thread starter demian_dec
- Start date
SmokingPipes.com Updates
Watch for Updates Twice a Week
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
Site Sponsors
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
Hello and welcome to the Forum from Deep in the Heart of Texas. You will find this site to be informative and the members insightful (and at times, most entertaining). Enjoy your stay!Good day fellow pipe smokers,
my name is Demian. Greetings from Germany!
My story of pipe smoking is a lovely one - with a few darker spots. On my fifteenth birthday, my best friend - our fathers are also best friends since school, so we got to continue the lore - gifted me his father's old pipe, which he used to smoke in his younger days, two old pouches of "Amphora Full" tobacco, and a pack of "Stanwell" pipe cleaners.
It was a great Lovat - a bit on the shorter side - pipe made out of pear by our local pipe manufacturer. It wasn't expensive, but it was a fabulous relic - in this case, the literal price has no word. I, however - even though a fan at the time - didn't dive deep enough into the rabbithole of pipe smoking hobby to even know how to pack and light it, so, surely enough, I put it aside for a couple of years, taking it out on a rare occasion and slamming my head into the lack of knowledge on the matter of art each single time.
Time passed, the pipe followed me throughout my life adventures. Funny enough, at some point I even tried to smoke some cherry flavoured shag cut cigarette tobacco in it - please don't stone me.
Around the time I almost turned sixteen, another pipe was gifted to me by my mother's friend - a short Churchwarden with intricate carving all around the bowl and the shank, also made by our local manufacturer, but a different one this time. I'm not sure if it was made of briar, but one thing I now recall clearly is a weird thin metal valve looking piece sticking out of the moutpiece, where the tenon is - todayI suppose it was a certain stinger-type condensation/filtration device. This pipe I didn't even try to smoke, and just let it sit on my writing table for the sake of its beauty.
A smudge less than a year later, end of the winter, the war struck. I was almost on the brink of being old enough to be fetched by the enlisting commission. In the first days of it I obeyed my father's will, packed the essentials and caught the rerfugee evacuation train to Poland - along with my mother, who left us when I was around eight, moved to her home city, and took no part in my life, and my younger sister, whom she took with herself.
We were picked up on the Polish border by her friends, and driven through the entireties of Poland and Germany, to land in Paris with an elderly couple - my mother knew the woman, and her husband was the one driving us. The man was as French as one gets - in the best sense possible. He smoked pipe as we took stops on our way there, and could be seen clenching it at any time at home. He had fresh baguette, good wine and old cheese lying on the table each time we settled to eat. The aroma of the tobacco he smoked lingered out of his study into the rest of the apartment, and was... spectacular. I connected very well with him, and regretted leaving my pipes in the hurry.
This is where the shit started going down. After around a week my mother showed her true character - I won't go into details - and our host was not pleased to say the least, as was I myself. So she realised it was a slight hint towards the fact this isn't going to work, and the next week we took the train back to the West of Germany, where she had another friend.
We settled there, and for almost two years I endured her abuse - again, not going into the details, believe me, I am endurant, but it crossed all imaginable moral and legal lines - which was only worsening with time, and in the end managed to get away from her, with the involvance of law enforcers. She was, however, very, very different towards the sister. Quite an unstatistical case, huh?
I won my freedom and independency around this Christmas, and spend around a month living with my classmate and good friend's family, until I found my own apartment. Around the time he noticed there's a tobacco store in the mall - so I, somewhat naturally gravitating towards it, paid a visit one evening.
It was a tiny store that had more in common with a gas station than a true tobacco store, but they had pipes and tobacco - it was the moment I saw it. A dark-red pouch with golden rimming. "Amphora Full". I instatly knew what my soul oh so desired.
I bought a cheap Jean Claude pipe - a straight smooth billiard, once again naturally gravitating towards the fimiliar shape - and a pouch of that beloved tobacco, packed the bowl full and smoked it as soon as I set foot on the street. It was by far not a even an average smoke - the bowl was packed too tightly, and I couldn't get a proper charring to set a true fire, because I just didn't know about it, and even if I did, I had no tamper, and I constantly got a tongue bite and what not... BUT IT SMOKED. And oh boy, did I like it...
Since then I constantly used and "abused" that billiard. I learned the basics, bought a tamper, and tried different blends. I quickly got damn good at it, but my smokes were not what one could call "slow and relaxing". It wasn't until I moved to my very own apartment that I ran low on tobacco, and discovered a 200 year old tobacconist store hidden deep in the downtown - naturally, I was simply obligated to pay a visit.
The lingering tobacco aroma pleasantly struck my nose. It felt like my eyes were running apart. Directly at the entrance a long row of shelves filled with most different pipes started - and I took my time exploring all of them. A very friendly lady helped me in the process, as my billiard's tenon started to fit quite loosely, and, as a result, constantly leaked tar when smoking. I figured a couple I liked, but postponed the deed, and we moved on to the tobacco. Once again, long and tall shelves filled with jars, tins, and pouches of all kinds. I bought two big tins of their own production - a loose-cut, light, mixed aromatic one, that smelled like bitter gingerbread and cinnamon, and a pure Virginia flake, ready rubbed and with no casing. I settled in the "men's cave" to try the Virginia blend, spent a good pleasant hour in a comfortable leather armchair tasting it. This was the moment I started to understand the slow and relaxed pace of pipe smoking. And since then I became a regular visitor.
As my apartment got the first furniture, I slowly started to smoke inside - and figuring the art out naturally on my own, not without a mistake of course. I cured the loose tenon with a beewax candle, but soon enough, after hours of consideration in the store, bought my first "serious" pipe - a fully bent Savinelli Regimental 614 - and continued my journey with it, smoking the old billiard time to time for a change.
I learned to love the pipe, and to relax, truly enjyoing a smoke. I stumbled upon the "breathe method" and easily adopted it, and even learned to control the temperature of the bowl. A few weeks ago I discovered flake tobacco, and the fold & stuff method for it - a Burley one was my next purchase. I then was impressed by Rustica, and bought a tin for a special occasion. At the same time, the blue "Capstan" caught my eye, so a tin of it ended up in my "collection" as well.
Now I smoke my pipes "religiously". Not a ton, but "religiously". It oddly reconnects me with my early youth, and everything about it - my father, my friends, my adventures. And there's something very soothing about it. I am, indeed, sentimental - that pouch of "Amphora" because it was the first, and that blue "Capstan" because my father loves Tolkien, as do I, and that flake is notorious for being smoked by him in the past. It's the little things I always have with myself...
And I do like writing - as one may have noticed by now
I'm thankful to you for reading this story to its end, and sincerely hope there's a wisdom in it you may extract for yourself. Looking forward to pleasant interactions on the forum,
sincerely yours,
Demian
Welcome! That was a very thorough introduction. Do you have a photo of that first pipe you received?
wait I have to ask how old you are. I wonder so that I can place your story in time a little more precisely and not by estimation. Welcome from PA which has a lot of Germans and German stuff by the way.
️
Thanks! It's not every day I get a compliment like that - also not every day I get to write that much
I had a wonderful English teacher from fourth to eighths grade - she plaited love for the language deep into me, and from there it was just consuming overwhelmingly English content.
Luckily I do! My father did a couple, as he is preparing to send me a package containing some goods from him - and the pipe. I can't wait to get my hands on it again
That’s wonderful! Please share the others when they arrive.Luckily I do! My father did a couple, as he is preparing to send me a package containing some goods from him - and the pipe. I can't wait to get my hands on it again
View attachment 294314View attachment 294315
