On another thread a friend suggested there should be a thread to expose pipe myths.
When I was growing up nearly all our mothers, had been or were still school teachers. Raising the children was as much their sole prerogative and domain and responsibility as doing the farming chores was for our fathers. When we repeated to our mothers something we thought might be a myth, that was very dangerous, you know? The least that could happen was we’d prepare her a book report on our erroneous assumptions those old men had us believe were true. The worst was our fathers would catch hell for exposing us to such audacious lies, at our tender and impressionable age.
On the other hand, our fathers allowed us to listen to any tall tale or superstition or myth the old men repeated in the barber shops, confident we’d learn the difference between fact and fable, on our own.
Over fifty years of smoking pipes, has convinced me there is something to these pipe smoking myths.
Feel free to disagree or add your own.
1. Briar breathes
Not as much as meerschaum or a cob, but if briar doesn’t breathe how does an almost thousand degree ember lose enough heat in that small distance to where we can hold the pipe? I remove all varnish from pipes to help the briar breathe.
2. Brands matter
Monday morning in Sparta North Carolina a man will be in charge of about forty employees who turn out about 200,000 pipes a year. There’s a master of the briar selection at Dr. Grabow, and he’s a lot better briar picker than I’ll ever be.
3. Briar pipes add flavor.
It is common knowledge raw briar burls are cured and dried before carving. And we all have experienced the taste of a new briar pipe before it’s broken in. I’m convinced that briar flavor never completely leaves.
There’s a discussion starter.
My grandmother Ma Agee recounted in The Index a time when her and Sy Thomas and Saydee were trying to hang pictures on the wall, and they asked Pa to judge if they were straight.
Pa said he didn’t want to take no sides.
So those that don’t speak up, sit a spell and listen to us that do.
