The time was 1:30 in the afternoon in 1974. My buddy Steve Parsons, who started me on pipe smoking, had a small still which was brewing his alcohol, and we were checking it about that time. The reason I remember the day is obvious. The reason I know the exact time is because I'm an infamous clock watcher, and when I lit up for the first time, I looked at my watch as I often do, and in this case, to record the moment so I could bitch Steve out if I hated it, which I obviously didn't. Btw, the tobacco he handed me was Borkum Riff Bourbon Whiskey, which was half decent in those days if you puffed slowly.
Steve wanted me to try the batch, and I said, "You are out of your freakin' mind, buddy. You made it, you try it." He wouldn't. He fed a sample to a mouse, and the mouse died. That ended the experiment. But, I was forever hooked on pipe smoking, and Steve, of course, quit after high school.
Even though I'm averaging 14-16 bowls a day the last few years, I figure 12 a day is a fair average for all the years. So doing some math, I've smoked 201,624 bowls of pipe tobacco which is about 1334 pounds. If you count the thousands of cigars I've smoked, I've probably smoked nearly a ton of tobacco since I started.
