Grandfather's Tobacco

[LOREN]

This was brought up kind of like a side bar in another thread, and it made me curious. My grandfather only had Prince Albert pipe tobacco, and King Edward cigars. I don't know when he started but he smoked until he passed in his early 80's. I believe he only had two pipes, the "pot" shape for both. His only pipe tool was his finger, the only tobacco I ever saw him take out of his pipe was what he could loosen with his finger and then hit his pipe on the heel of his hand. He always had the large tin of Prince Albert by his chair, but he also had many of the tins that could fit in your shirt pocket. He used the small tins when he was outside in the yard and he could hold his pipe and tin and load his pipe with one hand. His Zippo was always set for a really large flame. He always had the King Edward cigars with him whenever he left his home, for an errand or something. In the early 70's I remember I wanted to buy him cigars for his birthday ( I couldn't have been more than 12 or 13) and my mother gave me the money and I walked to the store and purchased them by myself. I don't recall what type of store it was. Not too long after that I got a hold of a pipe and Palladin's black cherry, boy did i ever scorch my mouth!

 

[Old School 3319]

I remember as a kid being able to go into a store and by tobacco. I remember buying my first chewing tobacco at around 8 yrs old and telling the guy behind the counter it was for my Dad.

 

[mso489]

King Edward Cigars! Do they still make those? My dad was an all-day pipe smoker, but he took a few years off and smoked only King Edward Cigars. He smoked all the time but he never spent much. With pipes it was always Granger, cigars King Edward. They smelled pretty good. All of my surreptitious smoking as a child were cigarettes purloined by my next-door friend in nearly empty cartons his dad had almost finished. They made me sick enough, I never did smoke cigarettes. Dad could smoke walking to the train, riding the smoking car on the train (Chicago and Northwestern at the time), and in the office at work.

 

[wyfbane]

My grandfather smoked Half and Half or some cherry stuff. It always smelled good.

 

[kcghost]

It is amazing what the old timers smoked. I would have been out of luck because I can't stand burley.

 

[sandollars]

It is amazing what the old timers smoked. I would have been out of luck because I can't stand burley.

My dad, to this day (he is 92), refers to Burley as the only tobacco fit for smoking!

"It has to be cube cut with no flavoring or additives!" says he.

Of course, at his age, a pipe every 3 or 4 months is all he ever allows himself... It has been a BITCH finding him a blend that is "Suitable" for that rare smoke too!

 

[ray47]

My Great Grandfather smoked only Prince Albert in his one Dr. Grabow (according to family). I really don't remember him. He passed when I was 5, but I sure wish I had his pipe. Here's a photo from my 1st birthday party in 1948.

 

[Irish-piper68]

My Dad smoked unfiltered Camels his entire life. I too remember walking or biking to the corner store to buy cigarettes for my Mom and Dad without ever being questioned about the purchase; those were just different times I guess, now you can’t even watch a movie without a warning that scenes depict smoking.

 

[troyniss]

My grandfather also smoked a pipe. According to my father, he would smoke while driving up to the cabin in the Northern part of Michigan while my dad sat on his lap. Not sure of when he quit, but it was before I was born. I never got to really know my grandfather as he had a stroke in the early 1990's that limited his speech quite severely to a few stutters and 4 or 5 word sentences at best with a ton of effort. It would have been nice to know what he smoked or where his pipes were. No one else in my family smoked pipes or anything.