Your Very First Smoke

[bryanf]

17 years ago, when I was 20 years old. A jazz trumpeter I was living with gave me a puff or two from his pipe. It was some kind of aromatic. I thought it was nice, but the nicotine wasn't there so I kept on with cigarettes.
I don't think it counts, but when I was 13, a friend used to pilfer his dad's pipe tobacco and we would roll cigarettes from it. Did that quite a bit, and since I inhaled, used to get a good buzz. I believe it was some sort of English blend.

 

[shutterbugg]

First smoke was one of my grandfather's 42-ring Bances double maduro cigars when I was 11 or 12. Smoked cigars exclusively through my teens until I was a freshman in college. People smoked in classrooms then, but just taking a cigar out of my pocket I was hit with "Do NOT even think about lighting that f'ing thing!" from the girls. So I asked if a pipe would be ok, and they all said "sure, we love the smell of a pipe!" There was a tobacconist shop on campus run by a knowledgable and helpful guy, so luckily I avoided the usual beginner's pitfall of a cheap, varnished drugstore pipe and a pouch of goopy fruit-flavored crap tobacco. My first pipe was a Savinelli Punto Oro black sandblast tapered-stem billiard. He had a line of huge glass apothecary jars of house blends, starting with the aros, and I opened each one to take a whiff, trying to decide which one to get. Suddenly I came to one that the stench nearly knocked me over. I told the guy one of his tobaccos had gone rancid, it smelled like feet. He laughed and said it was an English blend, that what smelled to me like feet was Latakia. I asked him if it smelled the same way lit, and he said yes. Most women can't stand it he said. Recalling the girls in class who had refused to let me light my cigar, I smiled to myself. So my first smoke was a heavy English in a top-end (for the time) Italian pipe. And the girls turned green when I lit it in class, which was an added bonus. (There weren't any of them I was attracted to LOL!)

 

[kashmir]

I had been a cigarette smoker since early highschool. (Smokin'in the boy's room ...). But in my early twenties I used work in a restaurant in Santa Cruz, CA, called the Cooper House (big old yellow brick Victorian house on the mall; it subsequently fell down in the Loma Prieta earthquake in '89). I eventually was Head Chef there. Jerry Garcia used to eat there, as well as other musicians playing at the famous Catalyst, down the street. Here's a picture of the original Cooper House, where I spent many years enjoying the never ending party.
The original Cooper House

After the earthquake.

Anyhoo, one of our loyal customers used to smoke a pipe. In the evenings I would bartend in the same establishment, and came to know the older gentleman well. He smoked Dunhill shell straight billiards. He swore by the brand, and told me, instead of buying a cheap beginners pipe, and not investing in the practice fully, why, then, as soon as I hit a road block, or was having a difficult time with it, I would be less likely to give it up. Having invested what at the time was a small fortune for me. So, my first pipe was a small group 3 Dunhill Shell, bought new in SF, in 1984. I still have the pipe. Since then, I've gone through many many pipes and blends. But I always kept my first pipe. Here's a picture of it.

 

[petes03]

@shutterbug, I loved that story! Funny stuff!
@Kash, A Dunhill for your first pipe? Wow!

 

[wilson]

Amphora, in a Grabow. I still have, and occasionally smoke, the Grabow. Amphora . . . not so much. I don't even think it is available any more?

 

[numbersix]

Pipe still lies at the bottom of Lake Peter.

lol!
I smoked my first cigarette at age 10 (and managed to burn a hole in my pocket at the same time!) I smoked cigarettes off and on for years. Technically I had my first pipe (tobacco) at around age 13, same year I tried that other naturally growing weed. I didn't start really smoking a tobacco pipe until a couple of years ago - but once I did, I was hooked (in a good way).
My first (technically second) smoke at that time was with a cheap basket pipe (which actually is a decent smoker) and it went very well for a first smoke and having done zero research. I haven't looked back since.