My Father taught me how to smoke a pipe at age 24. And that happened because of a joke and manly rebellion in my heart.
It started after an absolutely delicious food court dinner at our local shopping mall. My Mother and sister announced that they planned on going to one of the department stores to shop. Not wanting to go to the department store and be purse bearers, I looked at my Dad and then my Mother and sister and said "Well, ladies, that's fine. The men will be retiring to the study for brandy and cigars." My Dad and I laughed at the joke. My Mother did not. We got up from the table and began the trek toward the department store when, lo and behold, in our path lay the mall's Tinderbox shop. My Dad and I started to drift toward the store (only to look) when we were physically steered away, coarse corrected toward the department store. My Dad's and my walk was a bit...deflated, and defeated, and disappointed at being cheated entrance to the Tinderbox temple of manliness. Instead, we were deposited in a bookstore and told to stay there until their return. After the women folk were out of range, I turned toward my Dad and expressed my outrage. How dare they emasculate us! How dare they deny us the rights of all free men to merely step into a Tinderbox and just smell! I was successfully whipping my Father up in a rebellious spirit. "Yeah," was his agreements. "Well, I'll tell you what I am going to do about this outrage. I'm marching back to the Tinderbox and buying an after dinner cigar!" My index finger was raised in the air in defiance and punctuation. And I turned and left the bookstore...with my Dad in tow.
Quickly, we walked back to the Tinderbox and into the humidor. I wish I had more time and space to describe the sensation of my first trip into a cigar humidor. Sufficient to say that I ignorantly (at that time, my knowledge of fine tobacco products was non-existent) grabbed two factory second Churchills, went to the cashier, got a cheap guillotine cutter, a couple of complementary packs of wooden matches, paid for the contraband and hurried back to the bookstore...and waited with cigars conspicuously placed in front shirt pockets.
The girls returned, my Mother seeing me and smiling...until, she saw the offending stick protruding out of my shirt pocket. Her eyes narrowed, she advanced quickly with her claw out attempting to seize and destroy my prize. I fought her off (and my sister), and protected the cigar like it was a newborn. My Dad and I quickly retreated to the parking lot and into the car. The ride home was filled with curses and guilty pronouncements. I was told, with motherly disappointment in the air, that a cigar will not send me to Hell, but I would smell like I had been there.
We arrived home, and my Dad and I ran out into the backyard with out prizes. In our last bit of defiance, we position two lawn chairs in front of the large window of the family room that looked out into the backyard in a way where my Mother and sister could not but see us smoking. They shut the curtains.
And for the next hour, we sat there and smoked those factory second Churchills. And something changed in me, and in my relationship with my Father. I was a man, but not yet a man before the cigar was lit. We talked for that hour. We talked about life, dreams, hopes, desires, faith, philosophy, love and family, successes and failures, and fears. It was probably the most intimate conversation I ever had with him or anybody else, and it changed our relationship forever since. And we smoked those cigars down, past the band and into the nub where we fashioned a handle with matchsticks to keep going. We did not want the moment to end. And, when finally the cigars were un-smokeable, they were stubbed out. And there was silence for about ten minutes, neither of us knowing what to say or do. We just sat there quietly.
And then I broke the silence with "Well, I'm gonna do that again!" My Dad got a huge smile on his face, leaned over and said, "If you liked that cigar, you'll really love a pipe." Within the next week, I purchased a cheap Dr. Grabow from the local drug store, returned to the Tinderbox for an aromatic and cheap pipe tools. He, also, secretly bought a pipe (as all of his had been confiscated/surrendered years earlier). We met again in the backyard where he taught me what he knew, and we were both able to return to that place of bliss we both occupied the week earlier.
My Mother did not "approve" of me smoking cigars or pipes and she tutted a lot; but, she tolerated it (much to her credit). After I graduated from university and moved away to attend law school, my Mom shared with me how much my Dad missed me and our pipe smoking times. Yep, those were golden moments, and they were revisited when we were able to get together later as time moves on.
. My pipe was filthy and I was happy.
