Old Leather Tobacco Pouches

[Joe H]

In another thread I posted a picture including one of my dad’s old tobacco pouches. It generated some interest so I’ll start a new thread here to document the daily tobacco storage system used by my dad “back in the day.” In short, dad bought tobacco in 14 ounce or one pound cans of whatever OTC brand was on sale, and stored his day’s tobacco ration in a leather pouch, invariably tucked in the left breast pocket of his plaid flannel work shirts.

I’ve found three of his pouches while cleaning out his house: An everyday pouch and two “dress” pouches in black and brown. As a side note, dad had a lot of work shoes and boots but only one pair each of black and brown dress shoes, so I feel like there was a method in dad’s system. I’ll post a group picture below with some items for scale, and in subsequent posts go into detail about each. If anyone recognizes these pouches, please feel free to add to this thread. And if anyone else has any old pouches you’d like to post a picture of, I think that would be great. If this is all too much ruminating on old worn-out tobacco related junk, please let me know and I’ll be less wordy.

 

[Joe H]

Since no identification marks survived the heavy wear dad’s everyday pouch received over the decades, I guess to start, I ought to try to narrow down just when “back in the day” was. I’m guessing he got it between 1942 and 1947. That guess is based on the information below.

I remember dad’s everyday pouch well. It was already worn out in the 1960s. As a kid I loved to unwrap the cover and smell the tobacco. I once asked dad why he didn’t get a new one and he replied, “this one works fine.” That was how dad was. He grew up on a farm during the depression and it just wasn’t in his DNA to throw away something that worked, no matter how it looked.

Based on the heavy wear, this pouch may have been purchased in the late 1930s or early 1940s when dad was a seminarian at (then) Saint Procopius College in Illinois. He left the seminary and joined the Army shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and it’s also possible (probably likely) he bought it while in service. Certainly his time in the Army during WW2 was when he had more income than a Depression Era farmer or a Benedictine seminarian with vows of poverty.

Dad was stationed on the Aleutian Islands during the war and moved to Anchorage shortly after it ended. There he lived a true subsistence lifestyle in a framed tent with a wood burning stove for heat. His property had a small creek and that was his source of water, even in winter. His bathroom was an outhouse and he protected the toilet paper from the elements and squirrels by keeping it in an old tobacco can. As a kid we still had that old outhouse for years after the house was built with a proper bathroom with proper plumbing.

I went through all those details just to highlight that if this pouch wasn’t purchased prior to when dad moved to Alaska in the late 40s, it’s unlikely he would have bought until the late 1950s when he started working for the City of Anchorage and built the house. All of his major purchases (guns, tools and outdoor equipment) were made during the late 50s. It makes sense that one cannot securely store valuable property in a tent. To my recollection, it seems like the leather had decades of wear by the time I became aware of it in the 60s.

Finding it among the decades of accumulated junk in dad’s old house was a real joy for me. I felt like I was five or six again, unwrapping the flaps and smelling the old tobacco that was still in it. I’ll post some pictures below of this old pouch because I like looking at old tobacco-related pictures, and if anyone has any idea of its provenance, please feel free to speculate here.

 

[grimpeur]

A wonderful thread...and not too wordy at all!

 

[didimauw]

Thank you for the thread, and pictures!

I have a weird thing with well worn items. I don't like to buy used things, so I can be the one to put the wear on it. I'm all for wearing something out until it can go no farther.

My dad was a cigarette smoker, I believe untill I was born. My grandpa on my mom's side used to smoke a pipe (he's 101) this year. But he threw everything away one day.

In storage I have my great grandpa's Dr grabow, his Sears and Roebuck hunting knife, and his tobacco pouch. Oh and his old chairs side pipe hutch.

The pouch in question that he used for his tobacco, was I believe an old leather money pouch or "bankers bag". Something with a metal clasp, where the two pieces meet, and lock into eachother. My dad hung all of them up in a wooden board years ago.

I'll get pictures of it next time I'm at storage.

Loved the stories. Fantastic memories! Thanks for sharing! I hope others can add heirloom pouches to the thread as well!.

 

[Joe H]

Thank you, guys!

Yes, I would love to see other people’s old leather tobacco treasures here (or anywhere). I would have thought such a worn out old thing would be of no interest to anyone but me, but I showed it to the owner of the local pipe shop and he was very interested and gave me a lot of background on old tobacco carrying systems. I was surprised to find on-line old catalogs that refer to the zipper closure as “sliding metal zip fasteners” because the term “zipper” hadn’t achieved popular usage in the 1930s. Amazing really.

This is one of the reasons I signed on to PipesMagazine; to learn and share about a hobby I’ve enjoyed for decades but never really researched. I’ve got two more pouches to photograph and document so stay tuned…

 

[jpmcwjr]

My old black leather foldup is all of ten years old, so no photo. Just wanted to add thanks for an interesting thread.

 

[FurCoat]

Thank you for posting your story. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

[ThomasS]

Not leather, bit this is one of very few things I have from my grandfather

 

[Sobrbiker]

Very cool stuff! I wish I had more surviving stuff from my grandfather and father. I was lucky to get my dad’s pipes, but his ashtray and other accessories had been lost to time prior to me discovering his pipes in his garage. Even worse, I was too young to remember which blends he smoked, and he’s too old.

It’s never to wordy to enjoy your stuff publicly, just gets tedious when the rumination is to just hear yourself ruminate

 

[LeafErikson]

Thank you for sharing the wonderful story and pictures. Is the tobacco pouch rubber lined? What does the inside look like?

 

[STP]

Here’s one that belonged to my father. It say Roger Airlock, and on the other side it says Genuine Leather:

 

[K.E. Powell]

This reminds me of my old work-study job at a local library. I was tasked with mostly digitizing old newsletters and other two-dimensional documents for members of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, a group of WWII POWs. But every now and then, I got to help curate three-dimensional objects, usually donated by widows and family members of recently deceased ADBC members.

One of the items was a leather drawstring tobacco pouch with some Japanese kanji stitched onto it. The tobacco was even still in the pouch! It was such a a cool find. It was likely a keepsake from an airman serving in the Pacific, if memory serves.

 

[Bbailey324]

Great story. Thanks for posting.

 

[Joe H]

Thanks everyone for your insight!

ThomasS, what a cool combo lighter/cigarette case; and that note! I’ve read short stories that don’t convey as much information and emotion; Hemingway would have been impressed. Was the note included in the case when it was gifted in ’46 or written afterwards? Of course it’s all hindsight but: Your grandfather had personalized stationery so was a white-collar working man, he obviously wasn’t timid, he had more than a little money available, your grandmother smoked cigarettes. One wonders if this was a cheeky note of to notify his future wife of his intent to propose? I’d love to hear the back-story on that amazing piece of family history. Thank you for posting that.

STP, bingo! One of my dad’s dress pouches is a Rogers with its rubber “AirLok” liner. I’ll provide details later but yours is a nice example, thank you for the picture. My dad’s is so worn that there are no remaining embossed markings – it took me forever to figure out who made it, and here your picture confirmed it just like that!

K.E. Powell, yes absolutely, there is a lot of fun forensic detective work involved in figuring out why someone keeps this item but throws that one away. Some items mature and improve with use (violins, baboo fly rods, Briar pipes) and so become more valuable with time. In a way I’m lucky my mom preceded my dad to the afterlife because had it been otherwise, most of these old “stinky pipe and tobacco things” would have surly been tossed in the trash.

 

[ThomasS]

The stationery is surely my great-grandfather’s. Grandpa was only 19 or 20 and just home from WWII. (And you wouldn’t have known, but if it was Grandpa’s it would have “Jr.”) Like many GIs, he didn’t waste any time, though it was almost 2 years before Dad

I expect it was in the case when he gave it, that’s the sort of thing he would have done.

 

[Joe H]

Wow! Having a cool keepsake like that with four generations of family history all contained in a single item – fantastic. Thanks for the additional insight, your kids will love getting that eventually.

LeafErikson, it's not lined in any way, just thin leather.

 

[didimauw]

Wow! Having a cool keepsake like that with four generations of family history all contained in a single item – fantastic. Thanks for the additional insight, your kids will love getting that eventually.

LeafErikson, it's not lined in any way, just thin leather.View attachment 322320

Joe, I always wondered about pouches that weren't lined like that one. The rubber lining is always the first to go in my pouches. I've had 2 eventually fail on me before.

I wonder if the leather imparted a flavor into your dad's tobacco. Or vice versa.

 

[Joe H]

I think when dad started using the unlined leather pouch he probably didn’t much care one way or the other. You have to remember that this was in the days before things like mosquito repellant was easily available in local stores in most parts of Alaska. Dad told me he and his work-mates used to mix up potions with aftershave, creosote (used on railroad ties and telephone poles), booze and who knows what to see if it would keep the bugs away. He said in warm weather the stuff would evaporate and make them dizzy. You can imagine that under those conditions, a hint of leather in the pipe tobacco wasn’t a big deal.

Dad wasn’t the kind of guy, nor were his friends, to try and parse out nuances of a tobacco blend anyway. I remember a lot of dad’s friends or coworkers smoked, some pipes, but mostly cigarettes. About the only comment anyone ever made about any form of combusting tobacco was “that smells good.” Never a question about what brand it was or if it was Burley or whatever. If it didn’t smell good, most people in those days would keep their opinion to themselves.

If a new pouch imparted a bit of a leather smell or taste, the prevailing attitude was “so be it.” Soon enough the continuous cycle of tobacco would win the battle anyway, much like a new leather coat or pair of shoes smells nice for a while, but then fades into the neutral background.

The two remaining pouches I have were both rubber lined and with zipper closures. One is still perfect, the other was cracked and I removed the rubber, but the pouch is fine. I’ll document them shortly.

 

[didimauw]

I think when dad started using the unlined leather pouch he probably didn’t much care one way or the other. You have to remember that this was in the days before things like mosquito repellant was easily available in local stores in most parts of Alaska. Dad told me he and his work-mates used to mix up potions with aftershave, creosote (used on railroad ties and telephone poles), booze and who knows what to see if it would keep the bugs away. He said in warm weather the stuff would evaporate and make them dizzy. You can imagine that under those conditions, a hint of leather in the pipe tobacco wasn’t a big deal.

Dad wasn’t the kind of guy, nor were his friends, to try and parse out nuances of a tobacco blend anyway. I remember a lot of dad’s friends or coworkers smoked, some pipes, but mostly cigarettes. About the only comment anyone ever made about any form of combusting tobacco was “that smells good.” Never a question about what brand it was or if it was Burley or whatever. If it didn’t smell good, most people in those days would keep their opinion to themselves.

If a new pouch imparted a bit of a leather smell or taste, the prevailing attitude was “so be it.” Soon enough the continuous cycle of tobacco would win the battle anyway, much like a new leather coat or pair of shoes smells nice for a while, but then fades into the neutral background.

The two remaining pouches I have were both rubber lined and with zipper closures. One is still perfect, the other was cracked and I removed the rubber, but the pouch is fine. I’ll document them shortly.

I can relate. I enjoy Carter hall in cobs! And have a terrible sense of smell. I don't even bother to read reviews, as I know I'll never get those flavors.

Please, @Joe H use the @symbol when replying to specific members, or the reply button. That way we won't miss your replies!

 

[Alejo R.]

It is not related to a pouch, but this old book has interesting writing or exlibris.