What Did Your Fathers and Grandfathers Smoke?

[homewaters]

My grandfather passed when I was 1 so I don't remember him but my father told me he smoked his own "tabac canadien" that he grew commercially on the farm mixed with some SAIL Green. Apparently, back in the 1950s, tobacco was a huge industry in Quebec (Canada). Sometimes I try to imagine what he would think if he saw my collection of pipes. I'd give anything to bring him back and have a bowl together... This is him:

 

[aldecaker]

Quite the dapper gent, wasn't he?

 

[homewaters]

Thanks, indeed. I was told that during the summer, he loved sitting on the porch in his rocking chair after a hard day of work on the farm and puff away while looking at the St. Lawrence River in the distance. I remember growing up, my father had one of his pipes in a box of nuts and bolts in the garage. I remember holding it in my hands, I must have been 5 or 6 at the most. It was a well used straight apple smooth. I've never been able to find it. I am hoping some day I'll get a call from my father telling me he found it!

 

[mikethompson]

I have no idea what was in his pipes, or what pipes he had, or where they are now. I think he had a falling out with pipe smoking and got rid of it all. But I would love to have one of his pipes and his blend.
That bewildered cherub in his arm is yours truly.

 

[dochudson]

The old man smoked a minimum of 2 packs of Lucky Strikes a day.

 

[btwes7]

Dad smoked Captain Black White and Grandfather smoked Half & Half.

 

[sparroa]

I never met my grandfather but he was a heavy cigarette smoker who regularly enjoyed Amphora pipe tobacco.

 

[bottils]

My grandfather smoked a shag cut RYO tobacco in his pipes. Petterøe's no. 3, pretty common in his day and still is to this day to a certain degree here in Norway. He kept his pipe pretty heavily caked up and never reamed it or cleaned it except when it went absolutely clogged up. More of the old school "pipes as "nicotine delivery system" kinda aproach. He would keep using one pipe at a time until they wore out and litteraly fell apart. His last pipe before he passed away at age 86 was a sturdy thick walled Peterson billiard he used for over ten years, exclusively.

 

[craiginthecorn]

My dad smoked Pall Malls and Chesterfield Kings, which I'm certain contributed to his premature death by heart attack at age 57. My paternal grandfather smoked cigarettes, which I know only because of a newspaper article I found starting that he fell asleep in his parked car with a lit cigarette in his mouth, resulting in the car catching fire. He died a couple days later. On a slightly happier note, my maternal grandfather smoked cigars and a pipe. He looked a bit like Winston Churchill, so a cigar suited him well. Unfortunately, my grandmother kept none of his smoking gear, so I don't have his pipe and don't know which tobacco he smoked. My older brother, who was four years old when our grandfather died, remembers him smoking a pipe.

 

[markus]

My Grandfather smoked a mixture 50/50 of Prince Albert and Middleton's Cherry for as long as I can remember, and my Dad always smoked Captain Black in the white pouch.

I Have tried all of them and my preference is just straight Prince Albert.

I absolutely hate Middleton's Cherry... and Captain Black only slightly less!

 

[lochinvar]

My Dad's dad cured his own tobacco and made chewing tobacco. Dad started (in kindergarten) with cigarettes, Indian Cigars (Catawba tree beans), and rabbit tobacco, Camels as a young man and before he quit he went through White Owl cigars like they were coffin nails.
Mom's dad smoked Camels from WWII on, until he quit in the late '80s.

 

[panamacharlie]

If it would be possible to light one pipe from another one, my dad would have been called a chain smoker. He seemed to always have a lit pipe in his mouth. From the 50's till he died in the 80's, it was nothing but Philosopher form the Tinderbox. I still have a couple of his well smoked pipes, but I could never get into the Philosopher, probably too much Latakia for me.

 

[armonts]

My 2 grandfathers only smoked French tobacco / corporal,nothing else would have interested them...

 

[armonts]

And when I was a kid in the 60s my cousin's great-grandfather, a 95-year-old boy sitting next to the fireplace was smoking all day in a little pipe of chewing tobacco he cut in small pieces with his knife.

(very strong black / brown tobacco rolled tight in a carrot).
As he burned badly from time to time he bent down to take a small red firebrand between two fingers in the fireplace, and tapping on his pipe … 8O
He must have horn on his fingers! :D

 

[madox07]

Both my granddads smoked cigarettes ... Carpathian filter less. I am told they were harsh, but pretty good, esteemed by the older people now days as "organic tobacco" as opposed to additive filled smokes of today. You can no longer find Carpathian, for that matter you cannot find any Romanian made cigarettes anymore - a result of globalization and national corporations taking over the local tobacco industry. My great grand dad rolled his own. My father remembers that after the second world war you could find rolling paper in general stores, or coop stores as they were called back then, and everybody used to grow tobacco which they sold to the cooperation (a communist owned type of agricultural corporation), so yeah getting dried leaf for cheap wasn't a big deal. When I visited our village this year for Easter, some neighbors saw me smoking a pipe and started telling me a story about "old man so and so" the only dude in the village they remembered smoking a pipe. On my mother's side, I know little to nothing about my great grand dad, let alone his smoking habit. I do know he smoked though ...

 

[bnichols23]

Mike, be honest -- were you ever *really* a cherub? -evyl grin-
My dad was always a Winsto man as long as I can remember. His dad smoked cigars, & my mom's never smoked anything (a good VA Presbyterian). AFAIK I was the family's first pipe smoker

 

[scloyd]

My dad smoked Lucky Strikes. When I was a teenager I would give my dad a carton of LS and a bag of the candy orange circus peanuts for Father's Day.

 

[dino]

Papa and Mama smoked cigarettes. But, sometimes, Papa smoked "Cookie Jar" in one of his basket pipes. He gave me one of the pipes and a pouch of "Cookie Jar" when I was fourteen, in order to discourage me from smoking cigarettes. I never told him I'd been swiping his Parliament's and Mama's Kent's, for nearly two years. It's a wonder I actually continued smoking a pipe, after nearly frying my tongue with "Cookie Jar." Now, nearly 60 years later, I would love to be able to share a pipe with him.