What Got You Into Pipe Smoking?

[Searock Fan]

As a kid I remember an uncle of mine who smoked a pipe. He would buy the cheapest "yello bowl" he could find, smoke it till is was totally clogged, throw it away and get another one. Don't think he ever used a pipe cleaner in his like, but I do remember him once taking a straw from a broom to unblock it.

 

[DTXHobbit]

For me, it was my father. I remember sitting inside watching him light up and viewing his awesome collection from the 70's and 80's in the den. Some really nice pieces there including several Petersons and Nording freehand designs. To this day those are some of my favorite pipes. After he would smoke one and put it back in the rack, the smell would linger in that room and I was always fascinated with it. To me, pipe smoke smells like home. I remember sneaking in and grabbing a bowl here and there, and then later enjoying some with him after visiting the local pipe shop where I had my first real pipe (after the requisite Dr. Grabow and half and half lol).

It was an Army fishtail, the 120 model. Great smoker. I think I loved the warmth of that pipe and the way it brought out the taste and flavors of a good English blend. A good pipe is like a good friend, your relationship deepens with time.

Would love to hear from you guys about your earliest memories if you care to share. I am far from home at the moment, and while I do have my pipe here to comfort me, it's nice to chat and feel connected to other pipers. Thanks!

For me, I have much less nostalgia connected to it. Me and my buddies always loved a good cigar, and the B&M we smoked at frequently had a big wall of pipes and tobacco. Another friend and I just decided one day to buy a couple of cobs and got some "Aristocrat" house blend (most definitely Lane 1Q). I knew very little about pipe smoking except that it looked awesome and I ended up getting horrible tongue bite. Even so, pipes have always called to me since then and I've gone from an 85% cigar 15% pipe smoker to the opposite over the past few years.

Like @SBC I do wish I had more of a family background connected to it. I hope for the smell of a pipe to always remind my kids of me and maybe one day they'd care to join me.

 

[hauntedmyst]

When I was a kid, we spent holidays with my grandma and my uncle. My uncle smoked a pipe and I always loved the smell. He would sit in his chair and next to him were his pipes on the stand and his tobacco. No one sat in Uncle Jim's chair unless you wanted to be grabbed by the back of the pants and be carried into the hall way and thrown five feet onto the bed! What kid didn't want that? So we all sat in his chair. Naturally by the time he got done throwing one kid, there would be another kid sitting there waiting for their turn to bed tossed. That was until his arm got too tired to toss kids and he would just sit on the last kid until they yelled "I give!" One time when I was 8, I saw one of Uncle Jim's pipes and a pouch of tobacco sitting away from his chair. I took it, found some matches and snuck into the basement to give it a try. Grandma's basement was a magically place to us kids. There was a fireplace, a pool table, old cameras, a punching bag, my uncles fishing equipment and his guns. More importantly, no old people since they all stayed up stairs.

The thing is, kids are dumb. They think they are sneaky like ninja's but inevitably they get found. I got found smoking Uncle Jim's pipe! Mom was furious! I got yelled at and grounded. As an additional punishment, she got a full tan of Half & Half and made me sit in the basement and smoke that pipe until I was sick of it. Well that plan backfired! After I didn't come up stairs for 4 hours, she was sure I fell asleep, sick to my stomach. Instead what she found when she came down was me smoking that pipe, half a can of the tobacco gone and me enjoying a glass of Merlot from my uncle's wine collection. "What the hell are you doing?" she yelled. "Seeing if this wine is a better pairing for this tobacco than any of the bourbons I tried earlier. Get me a cup of decaf, would you toots?"

And that's the story of how I got a beating and became an 8 year old pipe smoking alcoholic.

 

[FLDRD]

When I was a kid, we spent holidays with my grandma and my uncle. My uncle smoked a pipe and I always loved the smell. He would sit in his chair and next to him were his pipes on the stand and his tobacco. No one sat in Uncle Jim's chair unless you wanted to be grabbed by the back of the pants and be carried into the hall way and thrown five feet onto the bed! What kid didn't want that? So we all sat in his chair. Naturally by the time he got done throwing one kid, there would be another kid sitting there waiting for their turn to bed tossed. That was until his arm got too tired to toss kids and he would just sit on the last kid until they yelled "I give!" One time when I was 8, I saw one of Uncle Jim's pipes and a pouch of tobacco sitting away from his chair. I took it, found some matches and snuck into the basement to give it a try. Grandma's basement was a magically place to us kids. There was a fireplace, a pool table, old cameras, a punching bag, my uncles fishing equipment and his guns. More importantly, no old people since they all stayed up stairs.

The thing is, kids are dumb. They think they are sneaky like ninja's but inevitably they get found. I got found smoking Uncle Jim's pipe! Mom was furious! I got yelled at and grounded. As an additional punishment, she got a full tan of Half & Half and made me sit in the basement and smoke that pipe until I was sick of it. Well that plan backfired! After I didn't come up stairs for 4 hours, she was sure I fell asleep, sick to my stomach. Instead what she found when she came down was me smoking that pipe, half a can of the tobacco gone and me enjoying a glass of Merlot from my uncle's wine collection. "What the hell are you doing?" she yelled. "Seeing if this wine is a better pairing for this tobacco than any of the bourbons I tried earlier. Get me a cup of decaf, would you toots?"

And that's the story of how I got a beating and became an 8 year old pipe smoking alcoholic.

I actually wanted to hit the "report" button and report that this was one of the funniest damn stories I've read on here, but I didn't know how much that would backfire. Great story.

 

[Peter - CCB]

I bought my first pipe 12 years before I really started smoking pipes. I was into cigars for many years already and at 30 or so, I always thought they were just beautiful pieces of art. I was the cigar shop and randomly bought a Viking Classic Bent Apple. They gave me some bulk in aromatic and non … didn’t know anything at all. I smoked it 6-10 times but didn’t tick. Searching for cigars, I saw some tins and grabbed one blindly. It was lane 1-a. I tried it and it just hit me perfectly that time. I went from smoking a few cigars a day to having had one cigar since then. In a 2 year time frame, I’ve gone from not pipe smoking to 300+ pipes, it’s my business, hobby, passion and fun. Looking forward to building a shop this spring. So I went in deep, fast. I’m smoking some FVF in a Viprati right now but smoke all blends and all levels of pipes. . Beauty though. Also, people often get into something because of an emotional feeling that pops into their head. How they will feel if they do this or get that. Pipes seemed cool, esoteric, relaxing. But the grain got me.

 

[johnscs]

What drew me to pipes and pipe smoking was the whole package. As a kid, I loved the aroma of my Grandpa's pipe tobacco (Amphora, Sir Walter Raleigh Aromatic), even though I really disliked other kinds of tobacco smoke (still do). I liked the ritual of packing, tamping, lighting, relighting, etc. I admired the look of a pipe, which seemed like a cooler way to smoke. Fewer men smoked pipes than cigarettes and cigars, so I developed the impression that pipes were smoked by a smaller population of discerning gentlemen like my Grandpa.

A couple of times, my Grandpa encouraged my Dad to switch to pipes, and I absolutely loved the frequent scent of his tobacco smoke in and around the house (I remember he liked Borkum Riff for a while). I enjoyed sniffing his unsmoked tobacco from the pouch. Even as a young kid, I looked forward to my first chance to try smoking tobacco in a pipe, and I paid close attention to the technique.

Another aspect of pipe smoking that appealed to me was that you could smoke a pipe as a hobby, rather than letting it become an addictive habit. It never occurred to me to try cigarettes because they didn't appeal to me. Mild cigars had some allure when I was a teenager, partly because they were easy to buy with no problem (life was more permissive in the 80s). The cigars were okay but lacked the nice scent of pipe tobacco. They definitely made me wonder what made people want to smoke cigars because I just couldn't detect a lot of flavor.

I had to give pipes a serious try, so I did - with one of my Dad's pipes. First few experiences were sketchy, but I took to it after a little while around age 15. After I returned Dad's pipe, a friend and I bought Dr. Gs and smoked the blends we could borrow from the pipe smokers in our families. I really enjoyed the slow process of packing and lighting a pipe, savoring the smoke and relaxing for a while. The secrecy made me nervous, but it also added to the specialness of a private bowl. I figured that getting busted for smoking a tobacco pipe might result in a lighter penalty than smoking cigarettes or weed. Thankfully, I was mostly right about that when I decided it was nutty to sneak around with my pipe when I was a college freshman. Parents were already fairly positive about pipes, so they were on board. The generally friendly attitude toward pipes, pipe tobacco, and pipe smoking definitely added to my enjoyment of the hobby.

[I hope no one minds that I plagiarized myself by copying and editing content from an earlier post. ;-) ]

 

[FLDRD]

I had a cousin come through my area a couple days ago that I hadn't seen in decades, and I remembered that I had another influence regarding pipes. I had completely forgotten that this particular uncle (father of cousin) had actually been a pipe smoker. We visited them mostly when I was about 10 and he was always smiles and always fun. Yep, tucked away in the noggin was another + for pipe smoking.
At this point I'm not sure if I've turned into a pipe smoker or a pipe tobacco smoker. Meaning that some days I'm drawn to the experience by desiring to taste a particular blend/style, and sometimes it's because I'm drawn to the unique interactions of a particular pipe. Of course, I'm both because each are simply a facet of the experience for me. As well as agreeing with the reasons stated that include slowing down, being contemplative, enjoying the flavor, the relaxation, etc. I'm actually not cognizant of the nicotine and definitely don't smoke to get it. I very rarely get a nic "hit" or buzz, but when I do I feel I've had too much or that blend is too strong for the moment and I'll slow down or put it down for a few.
And of course, I also started smoking a pipe because the whole world knows that pipe smokers are intelligent and bursting with wisdom that exceeds mere normal non-pipe smoking human comprehension.
?‍

 

[Andriko]

I have been a Gitanes/Gauloises smoker since I was 18, but the growing lack of cigarette variety (and Brexit) meant that finally, this year, I could no longer get hold of them. And I can't stand the other crap available. So I figured I'd give a pipe a go.

It's also been great because I was already cutting down on cigarettes (to make the few Gauloises last!) and found that there is a big less is more thing with smoking, so I was at a point where I'd have about 5 cigs a day and make time and savour each one. This was a perfect set up for smoking a pipe, for which I take an hour out of the afternoon and enjoy it.

 

[a town piper]

Dad had a good friend that smoked a pipe. I always thought the smell was amazing I was to young to ask what he smoked.

 

[SoulStation]

My dad. He smoked a pipe, cigars and cigarettes... the cheapest stuff out there. He bought a tin of erinmore once, and everyone told him it smelled horrible. One day he just quit. I have to admit I was disappointed. I enjoyed the aroma, and it kinda made him a badass in my adolescent mind.

 

[perdurabo]

It was the obvious manly thing to do.

 

[TheDesertPiper]

A combination of I thought it would be cool and watchin muttonchop videos.

 

[olereb]

My parents have always been very anti tobacco anything but growing up my grandpas and all thier friends smoked pipes and chewed tobacco,they chewed during the day on the farms and smoked pipes when the days work was done. I always loved the smell of thier houses and when i got to go to the local tobacco store with the big indian outside and what seemed like a thousand jars of great smelling tobacco on the shelves. It just always seemed right to me.

 

[judcole]

I started in college because I thought it was part of being a "College Man", all those decades ago.

 

[TheWhale13]

I've always wanted to do it for all my life. I felt like it so I just started. It feels like destiny.

 

[Es0teric]

One day I bought an abandoned storage unit that belonged to a family member of my girlfriend's and I found a La Rocca Meerschaum Lined Bent Billiard in good shape and that started my journey in pipe smoking. I was always into cigars and when I found the pipe I figured I would give pipe smoking a shot. I purchased a bunch of different blends and tried everything I could. Now years later, I smoke a lot more pipes than I do cigars.

 

[MidnightPuff]

Growing up my parents both smoked cigarettes and of course I started with those. After about a year of playing around with cigs I discovered smokeless tobacco products and fell in love but I still like to smoke at least once a day to relax. Started with small cigars (parodi's and stuff like that) and eventually thanks to Matches860, Timberdrifter and Muttonchop videos' I found the pipe. I love it.

 

[Pipeoff]

60 yrs. ago I watched my grand father relaxing in his favorite chair after a hard days work. He never encouraged me to take up the pipe or showed me how to smoke but I am thankful his example led me down this road.

 

[Ag®o]

As stated in the presentation I am from cigar smoking, and I do not have a pipe smoker in the family.
I was at a Christmas dinner in the club made up of cigar and pipe smokers, an acquaintance next to me lit his pipe and the usual ritual questions started.
The woodworm took office that evening, then shortly after my wife gave me one and the hamster syndrome started..

 

[ssjones]

11 years ago, I was occasional cigar smoker, and my wife was not a fan. On vacation in Destin FL, a gentleman across from us would pop out on his balcony twice a day, to smoke a pipe. My wife said "I wish you smoked a pipe instead of those cigars", it reminds me of my grandfather. I said "I'm too young to smoke a pie". But, a week later, I had a pipe and have rarely smoked a cigar since. She didn't envision a cabinet full of tobacco, another full of pipes and a section of the garage devoted to pipe restoration work....