Yes, I did promise to type chapters of my pipe life onto this space, and yes, a lot of time has passed without progress in that department, it has looked as though I’ve mostly abandoned that promise. In fact, it was a promise made solely because I could not think of anything else to post on the home page, not because my pipe stories might be of interest. I could, one supposes, put a featured pipe of the week up there, but wouldn’t that be sending a message that all the other pipes on the site weren’t featured? And how would those unfeatured pipes feel about the neglect? Not good, and they might take out the resentment on the way they smoked, bringing down this business, this website and what’s left of my reputation. Can’t let that happen.
Which brings us to the next chapter in my pipe life. The reason it has been delayed for so long is because it is a particularly boring chapter. Nothing happened. I was in college, flunking as many courses as I was passing, or so it seemed (and so it seemed to the Dean, as well. He displayed a terribly negative attitude toward my scholastic efforts).
Well some things happened. With the typically empty pockets of a student, no pipes were purchased. The thin accumulation of about 4 pipes stayed the same. But four was enough. Youth doesn’t feel the same deprivation as do we elders. Hell, I just this morning received a call from an old customer who is now in assisted living, and he wants another pipe. I asked if he wasn’t allowed to bring any of the pipes he owns to his assisted living apartment, but he said he had plenty of pipes with him. He just wants another. Maybe acquisitiveness is somehow attached to age and increases the need for comfort and stability, which doesn’t seem to attend the young quite as much.
What I do remember is that towards the end of my college years a wonderful friend, John Spadaro, may his tribe increase, dug what must have been very deep into his pockets to buy me a large, Black Castello Billiard as a graduation (although that was still in doubt at the time…let me tell you, it was a near dead heat) and good-bye present, although I didn’t know it was good-bye at the time. As novelist Mark Harris said in the title of one of his Henry Wiggins books, it looked like forever. It was 1965 and the first I had heard of the brand, which isn’t saying much because my knowledge of pipes at the time was miniscule. I didn’t even know there was anything to know.
The memory of Spadaro is still strong, as I consider him one of the wittiest people I’ve ever met and use the word ‘witty’ in its widest application. That Castello is also a memory. When I moved to San Francisco in 1969 some guy kept crossing my path who wanted that Castello. He nagged me about it incessantly until he finally pried it away from me, probably because him getting that pipe meant surcease from his pestering. I didn’t like him then and I like him less now, despite having not even a vague recollection of his name.
What must also have happened was the cementing of my predilection for Latakia as the near sole tobacco I wanted to smoke. That persists. Not all Latakia blends, to be sure. Very few fit the bill, which is why I don’t like it when people want me to try a tobacco, or worse, give me some as a gift. The tobacco I mostly settled on, after breaking in with Gallaher’s Latakia was Dunhill’s Standard Mixture Medium. That old version (up until about 1970) still rates in my top 5 favorites. I did try, of course, blends like Balkan Sobranie, Marcovitch, the Four Square blends and doubtless many others I can’t recall. The important thing is that I had become a committed pipe smoker. Never a heavy smoker…rarely, I imagine, more than two bowls a day, but someone who appreciated the pleasure of a quality tobacco in a good tasting pipe. (The few I had were Dunhills, thanks to a friend who worked the pipe counter at a NY department store. Two of the original four are in my cabinet today.)
I only smoked in my room at college, so as not to look silly walking around as an 18 year old with a pipe in my mouth. Thus, I don’t believe I knew of a single other person who smoked a pipe, other than the R.A. in my freshman year.
That’s about the end of this chapter. Don’t expect other episodes to be as short, and definitely not as linear. With your permission, I’ll go all over the place, as one story triggers memories of others. That would give a more accurate picture anyhow. “Time’s arrow” probably only applies to books on astrophysics; life is different, isn’t it?