What is Your Fondest Memory Related to Pipe Smoking?

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Beowoulf

Can't Leave
Oct 16, 2022
446
7,341
For me, it was the time a United States Secret Service agent took me to dinner in a really nice restaurant. While we were sitting there, talking and eating, a terrifically pleasing aroma wafted over to our table. I had to find out where it was coming from. I followed the smell into the bar section of the restaurant where a guy was smoking his pipe. I told him how much I liked it. (This was, of course, before the governments outlawed public smoking.) I'm sure that experience contributes to why I like to smoke room-pleasing aromatics today. Although, as I am consigned to smoking in my office in the cellar of the house with an air purifier running, I'm not expecting many compliments. It's a pity they lump pipe-smokers in with all the other tobacco users. We really are different.
 

mikestanley

Lifer
May 10, 2009
1,698
1,127
Akron area of Ohio
For me, there is no single one. For years, starting with the first Ohio Pipe Collectors (now NASPC) all the wonderful folks I've shared conversation over pipes and tobacco. The late Charles Frank, a pipe maker from Zanesville for instance. We worked the front table together for a number of years. He may have actually "ruined" me by gifting me the old, original Craven Mixture. lol. Dr. Fred Hanna gave me a sample of the prototype of Wilderness or Legend. That was when you could enjoy your pipe on the floor and my palette was so over loaded, I couldn't tell one blend from another. Many chats with Bill Unger, Regis McCafferty, Law Dog, Bob Hamlin, Tim West, Clarence Mickles. I met Greg Pease, Mary and Mike McNiel. Michael Parks the Tarlers. So many in this fine thing we do.
Mike Stanley
 

Briar Lee

Lifer
Sep 4, 2021
4,960
14,329
Humansville Missouri
For me, it was the time a United States Secret Service agent took me to dinner in a really nice restaurant. While we were sitting there, talking and eating, a terrifically pleasing aroma wafted over to our table. I had to find out where it was coming from. I followed the smell into the bar section of the restaurant where a guy was smoking his pipe. I told him how much I liked it. (This was, of course, before the governments outlawed public smoking.) I'm sure that experience contributes to why I like to smoke room-pleasing aromatics today. Although, as I am consigned to smoking in my office in the cellar of the house with an air purifier running, I'm not expecting many compliments. It's a pity they lump pipe-smokers in with all the other tobacco users. We really are different.
I had a client about thirty years ago who I could tell had been in my office even if I arrived an hour afterwards.

I had two identical twin, twenty some year old assistants who had the man’s wife buy them the Full Aromatic Amphora blend he smoked so they could give it to their boyfriends, and watching those women coo and purr around that man convinced me I needed to find a better smelling blend, you know?
 
Jul 26, 2021
2,411
9,780
Metro-Detroit
I first picked up a pipe in undergrad at Michigan State from Campbell's Smoke Shop, which is still around along with the smaller shopkeeper in a sweater and glasses. For those who don't know, everything in East Lansing constantly changes, but yet stays the same.

Living in a fraternity house on "sorority row" about 2 blocks from the bar made "porching it" a favorite activity (watching people, having some beverages, playing some tunes, and having conversations with whoever joined me either on the porch or walking by).

I would often smoke my pipe while porching it, which added to the find memories of many weekends (and some weeknights).
 
Jun 9, 2015
3,970
24,838
42
Mission, Ks
My fondest memory is of being at my aunt and uncles house as kid, my uncle nearly always had a pipe in his mouth. He smoked what I now suspect was HGL, and it always smelled so wonderful. I would go in the sitting room where his pipe rack was and stare at all the beautiful pipes, and smell the them. He was wonderful bear of man and their house always smelled so good.
 

Streeper541

Lifer
Jun 16, 2021
3,175
20,149
44
Spencer, OH
Living in a fraternity house on "sorority row" about 2 blocks from the bar made "porching it" a favorite activity (watching people, having some beverages, playing some tunes, and having conversations with whoever joined me either on the porch or walking by).

I would often smoke my pipe while porching it, which added to the find memories of many weekends (and some weeknights).
You lucky dog you...

We sat on the front porch of our house as well, and sometimes the porch roof. The people watching was fantastic...

Of course, my fraternity house was four blocks from the college in a ghetto neighborhood on the main road from the freeway to the refinery. Our house was next door to a barbershop/ trap house and down the street from the strip center that had a smoke shop, washateria & liquor store.

Fun times! 😆
 
Jul 26, 2021
2,411
9,780
Metro-Detroit
You lucky dog you...

We sat on the front porch of our house as well, and sometimes the porch roof. The people watching was fantastic...

Of course, my fraternity house was four blocks from the college in a ghetto neighborhood on the main road from the freeway to the refinery. Our house was next door to a barbershop/ trap house and down the street from the strip center that had a smoke shop, washateria & liquor store.

Fun times! 😆
Those who haven't "porched it" won't fully understand how awesome it is. I'm glad you are "in the know".

Good drinks, tunes, company, conversations, and tobacco had by all with people coming and going as they please. Some drama would occur, as what happens when adult beverages are consumed and random groups of people are flocking to and from the bar. However, the drama was nominal and people watching was better than going to the mall or sporting event.
 

warren

Lifer
Sep 13, 2013
12,284
18,266
Foothills of the Chugach Range, AK
We really are different.
Not really, at least not all of us. I mostly smoke for the nicotine. Pipes, cigars, cigarettes or a wad in the cheek are all satisfying at the correct time and place. I attribute no unnatural, mystical or other special properties to dead piece of wood filled with a blend I enjoy. I simply enjoy it at the right time. But, the same goes for chewing, cigarettes and so forth. The pipe is simply the most convenient and pleasing. most of the time, for me. I would never so presumptuous as to speak for all of the other pipe smokers though, ever!

My most memorable memory involving a pipe? My wife, rest her soul, purchased me a pipe she knew I coveted, secretly to prevent me from purchasing it. She presented it to my on my birthday. It's the only pipe I own which I found to be an unsatisfactory smoker that I have kept.
 

Beowoulf

Can't Leave
Oct 16, 2022
446
7,341
When I talk about pipe smoking being different, I was only referring to its ability to oftentimes smell really good to the people surrounding us. Cigarettes, cigars, chew or snuff just don't have that ability. Regardless of the pipe smoker, Evening Stroll, for instance, is going to smell really good. That is the only point I was making. I wasn't referring to the value of the person or group of people smoking it. Any tobacco user is going to fall into the "loveable" category in God's eyes. LOL
 

trouttimes

Lifer
Nov 26, 2018
6,027
24,387
Lake Martin, AL
My grandpa was and old time rancher and a chain gang warden. He died when I was young but I will always have a vision of him, hat crooked on his head, axe over his shoulder with a spool of barbed wire and a pipe in his mouth as he headed across the pasture. People say I’m the spitting image of him in many ways. I could have done a lot worse. He always told me…Rabbit-Tracks, don’t listen to what a man says. Look at what he does.
 

ashdigger

Lifer
Jul 30, 2016
11,392
70,232
61
Vegas Baby!!!
My fondest memories were hanging out with my grandpa when he smoked his pipe.

Approximately 20 years after his death I was at a seminar in Lexington Kentucky (9-13-2011) and went into the tobacconist that was attached to a small in hotel convenience store near the hotel lobby and the clerk was smoking a pipe.

The smell almost knocked me on my ass with power memories.

That was the day I became a pipe smoker.
 

Don_Muertos

Starting to Get Obsessed
Feb 1, 2023
103
232
Nicaragua
The first time I smoked a pipe. I was 15 and spending a summer on the family tobacco farm. I met some kids in town and they invited me out for the night. After drinking entirely too much 'shine and running out of cigs, I asked someone for a smoke and got handed a corn cob full of flue cured KY burly. I choked and wheezed enough that someone told me to not inhale and sinus the exhale. It was fantastic! I'm asthmatic so it actually gave me a fat nic punch. I then got the old cow tipping prank pulled on me. We proceed to smoke bowls and do brodies in farrow fields. The next morning my grandma said "I smell you met the local boys" and she had a lovely day of ditch digging lined up for me. I got my great-uncle to get me a corn cob and pouch of rough tobacco from the co-op. I've favored a pipe ever since.