Well I might be a year older and maybe not too much wiser, but I had a nice evening, and another cheap pipe I got on ebay came in the mail today. Great timing even if it took 2 weeks to get from Penn. to Miss. I have had only one other Alpha pipe in my life, and it was just ok. I guess once I got it, I couldn't fall in love with it like some of my other pipes. It became history long ago. Then I spotted this on ebay and it was love at first sight! I didn't even know it was an Alpha at first, as it didn't look like any type of Alpha pipe I'd ever seen. For some reason they named the style, "Gremlin". (I had to shudder a little as an image of the little car of the same name came to mind.) It looked to need some cleaning up, and the pics of it were not great, but I just loved the shape. Turns out it didn't need as much work as I thought. The top of the bowl was badly charred, and the whole pipe was dirty, but the stem was lucite which was a surprise. Got it cleaned and polished in time to take it over to my cousin-in-laws new house that has a huge porch, with a nice stone fireplace. It was pretty chilly and windy, but smoking on the porch was doable, so I tried one of the new variety packs of tobacco I just got from Pipes&Cigars.com. I choose Troost, which I have never tried before. For some reason, I thought the name was Dutch, but it's Danish tobacco. Really quite nice, a mild smoke I think, but it was colored by the Meyers Rum I was sipping on, so I'll have to try it again soon to get a better idea. Then it was inside for some deep fried venison nuggets, baked potato, and a salad. Great day, keepin it simple.
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