What's your pipe story?

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Aaron

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Hello everyone, I was in the car talking to my wife today about how I got into smoking a pipe in the first place. Now I am curious what you guys' story is. I'll start.

My story is pretty simple really, my friend Lauren has a pipe she got from her dad that she never smoked and I thought it was very interesting and it got me into looking at pipes. So I went to my local tobacco shop and picked up a cheep 20 dollar pipe and some samples of black Cavendish a pipe tool and some cleaners and smoked it a few times but it wasn't until I became friends with a few local pipe smokers that it really took off for me and now I have a bit of a collection going and am trying to learn as much about pipes and pipe smoking as I can.

The first pipe led to a Meerschaum, then to a cob, to a Peterson and the list goes on... So yeah, what's your story?
 
My grandpa smoked a pipe all the time. He had a few, but he had one or two that he had with him all the time. The only thing he ever smoked was Prince Albert.

Fast forward to about 5 years ago - I asked for his pipes when he passed away and sadly only got three and nothing else. The coolest thing about it though was that one of them still had his very last bowl sitting in it. I sat them on my bookshelf and picked them up a while back. The two that were empty I started looking at and thought I'd try my hand at it since I was feeling nostalgic.

Went and got some super value vanilla pouch at this little cigarette hut in town. Came home and was SEVERELY disappointed. Went back and found some Captain Black and came back home... still disappointed.

That's when I hit the net and found this place. What started as trying to find a decent tobacco to smoke in my grandpa's pipe has turned into full blown pad and tad.

I quickly purchased two Dr. Grabows, about 5 cobs to test different tobaccos in, and finally a gorgeous Peterson that is now my favorite - plus a stash of tobaccos jarred up in what is the beginning of my cellar.

All because I loved the smell of my grandpa's pipe.
 
I started fishing when I was younger and thought that smokey treats would be nice. My first pipe was a Dr. Grabow that I took fishing with me on MANY occasions and on many mountain drives as well. I guess the biggest thing that got me turned onto pipe tobacco was a little package of black and milds....i know i know, not the best stuff, but that was my first intro to pipe tobacco...i quickly moved to the dr grabow mentioned above and now to 2 boswells, a GBD, and an aldo morelli
 
My dad smoked a pipe and I have always been fascinated by them. I smoked one on and off most of my life beginning around 14 years old, and on a daily basis now for over 10 years. Before I found out how diverse the pipe world is on the internet I didn't pay much attention to anything other than what could be purchased in the drug store with the exception of the occasional visit to the Tinder Box. No single great event or revelation that lead to it. Probably the fascination with a time that has gone by that most of us long for. I have just always been around them and never really cared for cigarettes or cigars.
 
I had been on on again/off again cigar smoker and enjoyed them. I remembered my grandfather smoking a pipe and the smell of someone's pipe smoke always intrigued me. Found a local pipe shop/B&M and checked it out. I was lucky in the fact the owner helped me out picking out a pipe and a blend. That was about eighteen years ago now.
 
I was managing a steak house type restaurant in 1981. The daytime cook and I both smoked cigarettes and we started talking about switching to pipes. We kept talking about it and then one day he came to work with a full bent pipe and some bulk Lane tobacco from the local pipe shop. This was around the first of December. I kept talking about it and when Christmas arrived, my wife gave me a pipe, lighter, pipe tool, and some Lane 1-Q from the pipe shop. I still have that pipe, lighter, and pipe tool (that was our first Christmas as a family; we got married in April 1981).

LtMac
 
For me it started about when I was 15yrs old. A guy I knew got one of his dad's old Dr. Grabows and some pipe tobacco. I was a rebel in my youth to put it mildly. A buddy of mine met him out behind the school one evening and we passed a pipe around. I loved it from the start. My mother not wanting me to smoke cigarettes bought me a Pioneer meerschaum from the local tinderbox. From there I just kept going. I started with aromatics then on to english blends and finally VA's. I went to high school in the early 1970's and grew up around guys much older than I was. The pipe probably kept me from getting into more trouble than I did. As I said, I was on the wild side in those days and experimented with alot of substances. Thank God for the pipe.
 
One of my best friends dads smoked a pipe, I loved being around the aroma. He smoked Sir Walter Raleigh exclusively, always just scoped the tobacco right out of the tub. He drove a pickup truck and always had that tub in the seat along with a case of paper matches. He was a mans man, an avid outdoorsman, always hunting, fishing camping or just being outside he was also our cub scout leader. So when my buddy and I were about 17 or so we would get cheap cobs and a pouch of Capt Black and sit around puffing, I loved it from the start. I alternated between cigars, cigerettes and pipes on and off for quite a while, sometimes going for years without a smoke. Over the last few years I've been drawn back to the pipe, slowly at first then by this spring pretty much full time.
:pipe: on brothers!
 
Some of my earliest memories are of going to the Owl Shop in New Haven, CT with my parents--neither of them smoked, but they understood the wonder and importance of an old tobacconist's shop. Years later, they bought me a meerschaum that captivated me, from the tobacco store that used to live on Main Street, USA, in Disney World. Around that time, I used a friend's billiard as a prop in a play (I was a WW1 aviator), a Grabow or Kaywoodie if memory serves. It's fair to say that I have always admired pipes and s=pipe-smoking. But in all that time, I never actually smoked a pipe, nor much of anything besides a special-occasion cigar.

About four years ago, at a teacher's retreat in the Adirondacks, some buddies and I thought it would be perfect to get some corn cob pipes and Captain Black from the General Store to enjoy out on the lake. My friends were frustrated by the process (and quickly resorted to using their cobs for... :drunken: not-tobacco...) But I, despite smoking hot and damp, and relighting every two puffs, was totally sucked in.

Geek that I am, I went straight to the internet for "how to smoke a pipe" advice; when I found pipes.priss.org (fallow but still online today), I realized I had a whole lifetime ahead to explore my new hobby. I went from cobs and aros to briars and VAs to full-blown PAD and TAD. And that presents your humble Brother today.
 
Even after growing up around tobacco all my life, I never smoked cigarettes; really couldn't stand the things. Always enjoyed the aroma of pipe tobacco though; mostly the old burley standbys of yore...PA, Carter Hall, George Washington, Granger, etc. and , of course, the aromatics, Cherry Blend, Mix #79, etc. Got to college in fall of '64, still could smoke in class!! Buddy of mine got me to try a pipe, a Dr. Plumb (still have it!). Been on a roll since then! Finally figured out I really liked English-style tobacco; been a real joy since then. Worked in a pipe shop for two years while going to school. Learned a lot from the various salesmen about briar, meer, different tobaccos & blends. The shop carried about every pipe tobacco known to man!! Wish I could still get some of those!! :pipe: FTRPLT
 
My dad smoked pipe on and off,,he had many friends who smoked pipes,,,as a kid I remember the long pinochle games well into the night and all the different smells as they traded tobaccos,,Dad used to smoke pipe when we milked the cows,,,until one night one of the cows swished her tail and wrapped around his pipe,,,threw it across the barn into the gutter,,,from that point on he smoked his Lucky Strikes when milking,,,,I started smoking pipe when I got married, and picked up some nice upscale specimens really cheap from a shop in Lake Placid,,,a couple beautiful Canadians, a gourd calabash, a pair of squat bulldogs,,,when divorce hit, my soon to be ex tossed everything out,,,years later I ran across one of my dads pipes, but it was in bad shape,,too expensive to repair, so I bought one like it, it brought back memories of my dad and all his friends,,,now life has slowed down and I can appreciate taking the time to enjoy it,,,every now and then during a long bowl, I remember things I long ago forgot,,,things we did together,,,
 
The year was 1963. I had just been raked over the coals by my dad who caught me smoking
a Lucky Strike. Dad told me that if I wanted to smoke it had better be a pipe or forget it
'cause he wasn't going to have another ciggie smoker in the house!!

Dad told me to get my hat 'cause we were going to the drug story to get me a pipe and
some tobacco. He bought me a small (very small) pipe and pouch of Prince Albert tobacco
and a zippo lighter. On the way home dad said that a pipe was a better choice if I wanted
to smoke.

Fast forward to today. Dad is gone and I still smoke a pipe yet today. Never touched a
ciggie again after dad chewed me out. I never again saw my dad angry like that ever again.
He'd get ticked off but never angry after that. Gosh, I miss him................
 
OK, you asked for it. I dug this out of hiding. It is basically my pipe smoking bio. It may be a bit dated since I originally wrote it in the late 1990's but updated it last year. Hope it doesn't bore anyone...


The Pipe Smoking Bio of Lou Carbone

July 2008

Looking back on it now, at 47 years old, I could say that ever since I could remember, my Dad smoked a pipe. My earliest memories of him consist of him smoking his pipe on a Sunday afternoon. At about the age of 5, I used to join my father for his ritual "Sunday Drive" in his 1960 Chevy Impala. He loved that car and I surmise that his ritual began long before I was. One of his rituals was smoking his pipe while taking that long drive on the Long Island Expressway on a trip to nowhere. You see, he worked two jobs and even on Saturday, so he was never able to use the car during the week – there simply was no time. He was a firm believer in the idea that if you did not use the car much you should take it on a long ride when the opportunity arrived. I don't know the validity of this idea but it worked for him. So, after we got out of church, as Mom cooked her marinara sauce at home, Dad and I would embark on a trip to really, nowhere. We would just drive for about an hour and then turn around and head back. I think he just loved the idea that he could "get away" for a bit and smoke his pipe and drive his car. I can still picture him sitting behind the wheel, smoking his pipe filled with Holiday Tobacco, the aroma of the tobacco blowing around me in the passenger seat, it smelled great. I loved that time we spent together, actually for two reasons; I didn't get to see much of him during the week and I loved the smell of his pipe.

As for his collection, he had about three circular racks of twelve with the glass humidor in the middle. One humidor lid even had two horses heads carved out of the wood. The racks were filled with various pipes. I don't believe he owned any that would be considered a high grade. He must have bought them anywhere from the late 1950's to early 1960's. I don't remember him ever buying a pipe during the times that I could remember. I remember many with a white shamrock logo - Kaywoodies, others were from E.A. Carey's as I would come to know later on. As for the humidors, they were always filled with Holiday or, later, Capt. Black. He smoked these blends exclusively. He was content with his modest collection and along with some pipe cleaners and a pipe tool, he was happy.

These are my earliest memories of pipe smoking and I think it laid the foundation to my own passion that followed in my adult life. I would say that life went on pretty much the same until my teen years, when teens try to detach themselves from their parents and establish their own identities. The Sunday drives continued for my dad but unfortunately, without me. At the age of fifteen, I got bold. I would go downstairs to the basement to the shelves where my father's pipes were, select one that appealed to me, fill it with Holiday and then go to the back door, light up and blow the smoke into the alley behind the house. This went on for a while and I enjoyed it. Once, I asked my mother when she thought it would be appropriate for me to take up the pipe and she said, "When you get a little older, Louis". As far as I was concerned, that wasn't a "no", so at the age of sixteen I was able to scrape up $15.00 and with that I went down to Arnold's Tobacco Shop located in Queens Center Mall and purchased my first pipe, an Italian second. To me, it was the greatest pipe I had ever seen. Though it was loaded with fills, it was my own. So, with that, a couple of ounces of an aromatic called "Cake Box", some new pipe cleaners and a brand spankin' new three in one pipe tool, I was well on my way into the world of Kapnismology. Kinda' weird to be smoking a pipe at the age of sixteen. I was the only one of my friends to do so. Everyone else smoked cigarettes, but I loved it. Even more to my delight was to find out that the Hobbits loved to smoke pipes. That's right, I found my way to some great reading by Tolkien and could not believe that the Hobbits smoked pipes. This was great, I would light up in my room, open a window and read The Lord of the Rings into the night. At sixteen this was heavy duty. It was around this time that I met my good friend Fred Alvarez. We met at a teen club that was held in my old grammar school in Middle Village. We shared similar interests and started hanging out. You would not believe this but Fred, who was two years older, also happened to be a pipe smoker. He smoked cigarettes too but he loved his pipe. We could not believe this. There was nobody our age who smoked pipes. So, we shared tobacco and how to's on pipe smoking.
Things went on like this for some time. I was in high school and didn't work so new pipes didn't come by so easy. I managed to obtain a few more pipes from Arnold's, nothing to mention but I loved all of them, about five in all. Years passed all the while smoking when I could, through high school and college. I never met anyone else who enjoyed the pipe beside Fred, even at Queens College. He too obtained a few non descript pipes for his collection. Once I did start working, at Maspeth Federal S & L Assoc. things picked up. I remember going to Arnold's one day and I bought my first meerschaum. It was the head of a Viking. I am a Minnesota Vikings fan so this pipe was a must buy. It was carved by Yunis, have you heard of him? It is a beautiful pipe; colored great in 23 years of on - off smoking. Also around this time, 1985, I received a catalog from Wally Frank, since their main distributor/warehouse was located in the neighboring town of Middle Village, I lived in Maspeth. BTW, Wally Frank is now somebody else and is located in Texas. I also received a catalog from E.A. Carey's, a company I remember seeing on the shanks of some of my father's pipes. He BTW, still smoked his pipes throughout these years as well. He didn't seem too interested when I told him I started smoking pipes and he was not the talkative type. Anyway, I bought some pipes from both of these companies, turned Fred on to their phone numbers and the both of us started to amass a collection. I bought some Savinelli's, some GBD's and some tobaccos. At this time I also started seeking out tobacconists in the area. Besides Arnold's in Queens Center Mall, the only place to find tobacconists was Manhattan, so I visited Pipeworks at Wilke, De La Concha, Arnold's Manhattan and Barclay Rex. There was a Wally Frank's store in Roosevelt Field Mall were I bought a few pipes like Micloi, Butz-Choquin and some seconds as well as tobacco and supplies. But it was the Manhattan stores that I got my first look at "high grades". WOW!!! Pipes like Dunhill, Ashton, Jacapo, Peterson, etc... All of these pipes were out of my range for sure. However, one day in the mail I struck gold. I was somehow, by the magic of mailing lists, found by the late Barry Levin of then Levin Pipes. BINGO, he sold pipes that were already smoked, sounded gross but could you believe those prices!!! Now I could conceivably afford the high grades that I could only drool over in the stores. So it was that I began my second life in Kapnismology. Of course, Fred learned of Barry Levin also. I bought as many pipes as I could afford and even when I couldn't. I amassed a great collection of assorted brands and artisans. I also learned of Hacker's book, The Ultimate Pipe Book, and an instant "ultimate" education ensued. Other mailers followed like Bob Hamlin of Pipe Collectors Club of America, Edwards Tobacco Shop and others. I also had the privilege, via Hacker's book, of finding out about Tom Dunn and the Pipe Smokers Ephemeris, who, by this publication has done more for our hobby in the last 30+ years than anyone. By it I have received countless amounts of information to feed my passion. So, over the last 37+ years I have delved deeply into the fine art of pipe smoking. I have attended many of the N.Y. Pipe Club Shows, attend NY Pipe Club meetings, and have met a great number of fine fellows and friends. A sad note to all of this was finding out about the passing of Barry Levin when I attended the Second Annual N.Y. Pipe Show. It was sudden and tragic and it sent a shock wave throughout the world of pipe smoking. I have him to thank for teaching me the finer points and the refinements of our hobby.

I must say that if you can find a local tobacconist, and I mean tobacconist, he/she is overwhelmingly deserving of our support. My "local" tobacconist happens to be located about 20 miles from my house but he has my support. I am speaking of one of the kindest friends I also have the privilege of knowing and that is Joe Nastri of Trinity East Tobacco Shop located on the Sunrise Highway in Rockville Center, Long Island. He is "the" premier tobacconist this side of the East River. He will never fail to go out of his way to help you find just the right pipe and tobacco. Too many shops are closing their doors and it seems that the tobacconist is a dying breed. This is a shame. We can prevent it by supporting our local tobacconist. Getting back to my
likes, I smoke either English blends of assorted kinds and Tinned Virginias and Matured Virginias, the kind that McClelland's puts out. My Favorite pipes are whatever catches my eye as my collection is diversified with many different brands and artisans. I must say that I smoke exclusively bents or semi-bents as I really don't think I am comfortable with straight pipes. My favorite pipes would be those made in England; Ashton and Dunhill, Charatan, Barling and Italy; Castello, Radice, Jacapo, and old Caminetto's, but I will smoke any and all in between. As long as the pipe has no fills and I like what it looks like I would consider adding it to my collection. I have about 142 pipes of Briar and Meerschaum.

So, basically this is my pipe story take it or leave it. I hope that some can relate and I hope it didn't bore anyone, sorry if it did. I smoke about a pipeful a day during the week and about two to three on Sat. and Sun. My friend Fred has moved away but still enjoys his pipes as well and we enjoy chatting about our experiences with them. My Dad has since passed away, in 1997, and unfortunately I never had the privilege of sharing a bowl with him – I can only do it in his “honor” now. I am still trying to re-claim his pipes back from my uncle, his brother, who says that he has them for me – hopefully he will deliver. I still work for Maspeth Federal Savings , 23 years later. I’m married to a wonderful wife who supports my pipe enthusiasm and have three children: 2 boys and a girl. I try to stay as informed as I could and am proud of my pipe related reading material collection of books and magazines, including P&T Magazine, The Pipe Collector, Pipe Friendly, Pipe Magazine, and many old photograph and mailers from days gone by. Of course no collection would be complete without copies of the Pipe Smokers Ephemeris by Tom Dunn. Electronically there is alt.smokers.pipes newsgroup, P&T Foundations, www.pipes.org and many, many other forums and discussion groups who through their contribution provide a forum for us to share our knowledge, ask questions and learn. A most noble effort on that part of these fine folk, for sure.

So, I hope you enjoyed a look into my world.

Stay Well and Happy Smoking,

Lou, NY
 
I wouldn't exactly call mine a pipe story, but rather a pipe, monkey see monkey do.

A couple years ago, a friend of the family smoked a pipe occasionally and she got my husband interested. Aaron started off with cigarettes, and I would sometimes join him, though I never could bring myself to inhale. So I would just hold the smoke in my mouth, usually from a menthol or (though incredibly unhealthy) a clove cigarette.

But when he switched over to pipe smoking, I switched as well. It almost seemed natural that I would rather smoke in a way that does not require me to inhale. I'm not a frequent smoker by any means, but rather prefer to save the pleasures of an aromatic for the occational endulgance. One reason I don't like to smoke every day is because I am a singer and the smoke sometimes interferes with my voice, but the other is that I think it is important that all things be taken in moderation.

Like I said, not much of a story, but I suppose it counts. :pipe:
 
Funny story. April 1966. Standing on the corner outside of Drexel tech, slide rule by my side, pocket protector glistening with dozens of pens and pencils, attired rather preppily smoking a Benson and Hedges cigarette, staring at my penny loafers, when two old hairy guys, flannel shirts and overalls, throw me in the back of a '51 Chevy split front window pick-up truck, and force me to smoke cheap burley tobacco in a cracked kaywoodie. We drove around for hours, drinking black reheated Luzianne coffee and swapping lies. They were, of course, the Tobacco Codgers, feared but benevolent guardians of The Burleys, congenial and seductive to the ways of the Old Guys. I awakened, later, disheveled and reeking of cheap tobacco smoke, bearded clad in plaid flannel and khakis, a convert to the Codgers, an acolyte in the Church of Burley, scarred forever, forces to wander the world, preaching the Epistles of Edgeworth

Almost true. I started pipe-smoking in April 1966, because I was surrounded by pipesmokers, and grew up w/ pipesmokers, then I went to work for the US Geological Survey, where they were all pipesmokers, and had a KMA attitude about life. They were good friends, and better teachers.
 
Thanks guys! Keep these stories coming! I know there are a lot of you out there with stories yet to be told.
 
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