My first pipe was a MM cob I burned up within a few months of purchase in 1972. My first decent briar was an E A Carey smooth apple I bought when I was 16 in 1974, and I think I know where it is in my father’s Grade A milk barn.
Then one fall day in 1977, my new girlfriend and I went to visit the Kansas State Capitol at Wichita, and at an old time full service gas station, there was a box full of laundry detergent soaked pipes the new owner had discovered and was selling for $5 each. The previous owner was a widow of a man who must have hidden his pipes from her in a box under a shelf where she laundered the employees uniforms. The new owner stopped the practice of laundered uniforms and found a box of dead man’s pipes.
He offered me the whole box for $40, and my girlfriend offered to either give them to me, or loan me the money, but I’ve always kept some pride, about such matters.
$5 bought my first really high quality pipe. It took a while to get the Tide ghost out.
WDC Giant Wellington
Most of the other pipes I didn’t buy had little white shamrocks on them. There were a couple of dozen, at least.
It was a while later, I understood what that meant.
When I went back with forty dollars they were long gone.
