Masterpiece of writing:
Xxxx
Even after all these years, it’s still unfathomable to me that one pipe can deliver a really good smoke, while another can transcend. Beyond purity of taste, there’s some sort of fascinating interplay, an inexplicable synergy between certain tobaccos and briars that transforms the smoking experience into something more, something sublime.
Xxxxx
I own a few magical pipes, not many.
The first one, is a Grabow that Marie White found behind the counter of her dead father’s cabinet that she found when she had it moved about 1990 to clean, at the Lead Mine General Store.
The best Grabows, the ten dollar ones, she remembered her Daddy set out on top of the display. It must have fallen behind the cabinet.
Marie White taught school with my mother at Wheatland, and she always inquired as to her health and well being.
I was married to a daughter of the wealthiest banker in Southwest Missouri who bought a ranch on the Little Niangua with a mile and a half of river frontage. Lead Mine was the closet store.
Marie found the pipe, and saved it for me. The charge was $9.95 and tax, as the sticker was marked.
I guess I can say now, that day she asked me, if I minded answering a legal question, and of course I didn’t mind at all.
She asked if it might be possible for a lady in her late fifties, but in good health, to adopt a child.
I said that children to adopt were scarce, and the preference was first to a married couple.
A decade later my first wife and I agreed to disagree and we divorced, and I lost track of Marie and the Lead Mine store. When I went back, the Amish owned it.
I asked the Amish there, what became of Marie White, and they said she got married, and sold them the old store.
Then when my mother was dying of heart failure and sometimes mistook me for my father, she said Bruce, don’t you wish we could go again soon to Lead Mine, along with Malvern and Ugene? They always have such a good band playing.
Maybe I’ll sing Jealous Heart again for you, and she giggled.
Then she looked up and said, I thought you were Bruce for a minute.
I said Mama, he hears you, as well as I do.
I need to dig out that magic Grabow again, you know?
From the first smoke it was amazingly delicious.
