A month or so ago I won a James Upshall B grade Egg and the quality of the thing is like a perfect diamond. But if it’s any better than about a hundred Star Grade Lees I own it’s not by much, and only in the hand shaping.
Half and Half tobacco has not changed any that I can remember, since the first 25 package I bought to smoke in my 75 cent Missouri Meerschaum in 1972.
And although it costs about five dollars now, MM still makes a cob about like my first one.
Where the newer MM pipes get much bigger and better is about $15. I bought this General last night from E A Carey for $15.95 delivered.
That one will replace another General I kept in the back of my Rhino, and it accidentally got soaked in my mix of Roundup, Remedy, and 24D I use to keep fence rows looking like a flamethrower burned them clean. I’m not so poor as to risk smoking a cob contaminated with herbicide, especially not my special mix.
But today I’m smoking some of the two pounds of Luxury Navy Flake I have in two Planter’s Peanut jars, knowing I have six more pounds of it aging, when that’s gone, in a rusticated MM Freehand that only cost $25 delivered. Six pounds of Luxury Navy Flake only cost $240, or $40 a pound. That’s about the same as Half and Half bought in smaller quantities.
Those Amish friends of mine are building the last mile of fence at the farm to where I have 300 acres of fenced pasture, all cross fenced, with two house places fenced out.
Next June I’ll spray about six miles of fence rows, and love every minute knowing my place in the Ozarks is starting to look a lot like Kansas used to look when we’d drive to Colorado each year on vacation.
Smoking tobacco is a vice, that I was warned against at home, church and school. But I’ve gotten more from tobacco over the last fifty years, than it’s taken from me.
I keep solid gold country music playing most of the time from a Bluetooth speaker in the bed of my Rhino, and life is very sweet indeed, in my little corner of paradise.
Last weekend my youngest son and I legally shot five deer on the place, and my Amish renter killed four more.
Years from now I hope they fondly remember the silver haired old Daddy that kept urging them to kill every damned one of those black meated varmits that could kill a mother with her babes asleep as she drove to town.
Just so long as they keep that brush out of the fence rows, you know?
