I think I understand. When I got into pipe smoking in 1979, in part it stuck because of two people who helped me along the way, one of whom had worked at a Tinderbox in the past. He and the other person took me to Royal Cigar in downtown Atlanta. The tobacco they advised me to start with was their #7, a Lane English or Balkan blend. So, drugstore blends were never seriously on my radar screen.
However, over the next few years I did try many of the ones mentioned. Most of them were terrible. The chemicals were just too overwhelming. I do recall, from hanging around the Edward's in Clarkston (a suburb of Atlanta), that many of its customers had smoked these blends in the past and that "they" had "ruined" them. This would have been in the 1981-1987 time frame. And I am talking about a lot of people who sure looked like codgers to me!
Fromm the conversations here, and the reviews on TR, I have resolved to try to expand my horizons beyond what I was smoking when I got out of pipes in 2001, which was about 80% Virginia's and VaPers,and the rest some variety of Oriental or Latakia mixes. I just don't have the nerve to try anything that still comes in a pouch. I have never bought a tobacco in that form that doesn't have the tell tale slickness that, to me, is a sure sign of a product that has been laced with chemicals that are meant to assure "freshness" until the second coming.
So, I ordered several tins of product during the IPSD promotion s that seem to have been blended to emulate the best qualities of these blends, to wit, Edward G Robinson, Haunted Bookshelf, OJK, Billy Budd, etc. The only one I have gotten around to is Haunted Bookshop. It seems to me to be very much in the style of the Edwards blends I mentioned in the post above. I smoked half a dozen bowls in a variety of pipes, and I thought highly enough of it to jar the balance of an 8 ounce tin.
I picked off two tins of Pelican last week from Ries, and to ease the burden of the shipping costs, I had them toss in 7 ounces of Dr. Bradley's and 7 ounces of Old Colonial. Since I had just jarred the Haunted Bookshop, I popped the Bradley's. I have only smoked the one bowl, and my verdict is that it, too, reminds me of the old Edwards style.
The owner of the Edwards franchise used to tell us younger types that his blends were like what your father or grandfather would have smoked. The older customers would nod in agreement. But most of them had fled drugstore blends, and chose to patronize Edwards instead of the Lane and Sherman style aromatics that they could have bought out of the jars at any one of the five or six Tinderbox franchises around Atlanta at that time.
So, maybe Dr. Bradley's is not strictly a codger blend as that term is used here. I am OK with that. But it is a throwback to a style of tobacco I liked, along with Haunted Bookshop. I look forward to trying the others I have.
