JackTales

I thought I’d tell you about some of my pipe stuff. When you start smoking a pipe, it seems pretty straightforward. You need a pipe and tobacco. Well, you have to light the thing, but you can’t use an ordinary lighter, unless you want to singe the hell out of your pipe. So you’re going to need matches or a special lighter. I have one pipe that absolutely demands matches, so I carry “strike anywhere” matches in a waterproof match container. For the rest of them…well, I have a Zippo I’ve been carrying around since 1983. I hated to shelve it, so I bought a pipe insert for it. It’s like a regular lighter insert, but instead of an open flame at the top, there’s a “cage” at the top, with holes in the side. To light a pipe, you turn the Zippo on it’s side. I could buy a specialty butane lighter, but I’m mentally challenged when it comes to filling up butane lighters. Don’t ask me why, I just can’t fill them properly.

Okay, that’s everything. A pipe, something to light it, and tobacco. A little more than you wanted to spend, but that’s alright. After smoking for a while, you find that the pipe stops drawing correctly, and starts smoking hot. Some research, and you discover you need a pipe tamper. There’s custom tampers that cost a fortune, so you settle on the Czech tamper that’s indispensable, and it seems like everyone who smokes a pipe has owned one at one time at or another.

So now you have your pipe, something to light it, tobacco, and a tamper. The tamper doesn’t cost much, maybe $3 or $4 bucks, but it’s a little more than you wanted to spend. That’s alright. Oh, wait, you need something to clean your pipe. Pipe cleaners. Yeah, that’s it. The wiry things you haven’t seen since you were in grade school art class, making little pipe cleaner men. They’re not much, but you’re going to need a lot of them.

Now you have your pipe, something to light it, tobacco, tamper, and a bunch of pipe cleaners. Not much more than you wanted to spend, but that’s alright. You notice your pipe starts tasting funny, so you get pipe sweetener. This is a disinfectant and cleaner you use with a pipe cleaner, to run through your pipe stem. Wow, that tastes much better, even thought it means you’re now using more pipe cleaners. Better get more.

Pipe, something to light it, tobacco, tamper, more pipe cleaners, and pipe sweetener. Okay, that’ll be it for a while. After a bit, you start thinking about a nicer way to store your tobacco than in the bag it came in. I buy bulk, so my tobacco comes in a plain plastic bag. So you decide to buy a tobacco jar. These are air-tight and tinted so direct light doesn’t affect the tobacco.

Pipe, something to light it, tobacco, tamper, pipe cleaners, pipe sweetener, and a tobacco jar. This stuff is starting to take up some room. Better clear off a corner of your desk to make room for it. Time goes by, and somehow, without you doing a single thing, another pipe mysteriously shows up. And another. And another. So now you need someplace to keep these pipes, so you buy a pipe rack.

Now you own pipes, something to light them, tobacco, tamper, pipe cleaners, pipe sweetener, a tobacco jar, and a pipe rack. This has become a lot more expensive than you originally thought. Not that you’re complaining, just a little surprised when you reflect on it.

More pipe stuff begins to show up. A tobacco shredder for when you go through a flake tobacco phase. Shank brushes. Pipe spray, briar wipe, wax, polishing cloths. More pipes. Another pipe rack. Another thing to light your pipes. Cork knockers. The cake inside becomes too thick, so you get a reamer. You start custom making pipe stuff. Salt and alcohol, use to leach tar and tobacco out of your pipes. A sawed off toothbrush to scrub out your meerschaums. Better clean out a shelf to store all this stuff on. Q-tips, portable pipe stands. Wind cap. Somewhere to keep all the bags that your pipes came in.

Okay, so now you’ve spent hundreds of dollars on pipe stuff. Hey, at least pipe tobacco is cheaper than cigarettes. Another two or three years, and you’ll eventually offset your cost. Unless there’s more pipe stuff to buy.

My new meerschaum skull pipe came in. This thing is the size of my fist! I don’t think I’ll ever smoke it, but it’ll be on prominent display on Halloweens to come, I assure you.

Alas, poor Yorick!

-sigh- Halloween came and went, and I still don’t have my pipe. It’s coming from Turkey, and I suspect that with the unrest there, it may be held up in Customs. I’ll try again to get a tracking number and see if I can find out anything.

Halloween was great, though. I only had two days to prepare, but I managed to put up a lot of things, and some new things, and rearranged everything so it was different than last year. My graveyard came out really good looking. I’ll post photos to Flickr as soon as I download them from our camera.

Work is seriously screwed up. Everyone is stressed, and I’m being threatened with a Letter of Warning. Since there’s no union, I want to arrange for legal counsel to be at my Investigative Interview, but they’re refusing me that right. I’m willing to get downright mean about this, as it’s my ass on the line. All I know is that no one better be asking me to come in on my day off from this point on. I was thinking about going off on stress for 12 weeks. Naw, I won’t, but it’s nice to think about.

Hope you had a great Halloween!

Check out the new pipe I bought!

The artist is S. Yanik, and his site is syanik.com

I’m no expert on pipes, but this has been my experience, and maybe you can benefit from it.

I switched from cigarettes to a pipe about a year and a half ago. Smoking a pipe is much different than smoking cigarettes.

First, you don’t inhale, unless you enjoy being wracked with coughing fits. Second, between cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, pipes are the least harmful of the three. Third, it’s relaxing watching the smoke curl up slowly and thickly. Kind of Zen. Fourth, smoking a pipe is like joining a cult, or so my wife says, and she’s right.

Not many people smoke pipes anymore, so you tend to stand out from others. It requires more doodads than a cigarette or a cigar. There’s the tamper, wind cap, special lighters, cork knockers (don’t go there), tobacco pouches, pipe cleaners, pipe sweetener, stands, jars for your tobacco, reamers and more stuff than I can remember at the moment. To make up for this investment, tobacco is much cheaper than either cigarettes or cigars.

Tobaccos vary as much as wines do. Instead of red or white, there’s aromatic or non-aromatic. I’m smoking a very nice aromatic Cavendish at the moment. It tastes nice, and it smells nice too. I know I had the smell right, when people started coming up to me, telling me how nice it smells, and brought back fond memories of their grandfather or father smoking a pipe. There’s some serious nasty shit out there. I tried on type of tobacco and not only did it taste like smoking wood shavings, it smelled like it too. Blegh.

By the way, that remains my favorite pipe smoking experience. When someone comes up to you and tells you how much it reminds them of a grandfather or a father. Pipes tend to be used predominantly by men, although a few women smoke them as well. Very few.

‘Scuse me while I tamper my pipe. You use a tamper to push down on the tobacco so it remains burning and keeps the smoke cool. When I started using a pipe, I puffed like a steam train, I’d burn my tongue, and my bowls would get so hot they’d actually crack. I went through three or four pipes before I figured it out. You can’t burn a Meerschaum pipe easily, but they’re heavy. I did find a couple of briar pipes lined with Meerschaum, which look nice in the traditional wood pipe manner, but have the benefits of the Meerschaum. Meerschaum pipes seem to be a cult of their own. Being a smoker and less of a collector, I’m not really into Meerschaum. Oh, that big pipe of Sherlock Holmes is a gourd lined with Meerschaum. It’s a special type of pipe, but I don’t remember the name at the moment.

Speaking of collecting pipes, it’s hard to use just one. You tend to collect them and rotate them. I’m currently rotating four pipes. I have more, but one turned out to be really cheaper than it initially looked, another a Meerschaum which, like I said, was too heavy. There’s a Doctor-somebody or another, that’s smaller but is designed for a filter, and why buy filters? Finally, I have a very small Meerschaum, but it looks like it’d be used for crack or pot, so it’s kind of embarrassing. Bought it on a whim.

I’ll end this with lighters. You could use a standard lighter, but you have to hold them upside down, which isn’t too safe. I have a pipe inset for my Zippo, which you hold sideways. I also have a Sportsman’s Plug, which is a sort of tube, that you pull apart, which lights the wick. Then you hold it directly over the bowl. Finally, I also use matches. There’s a lot of pipe purists that have issues with one kind of lighter or another, and it’s initial effect of the taste, but hey, you have butane, sulphur, or whatever goes into a Zippo. I seem to be forgetting a lot of stuff tonight. Anyway, they all have a taste that affects the initial puffs.

So if you’re thinking about starting smoking a pipe, choose a $20-30 pipe. Odds are you’ll ruin it, but you won’t be ought of $50-whatever price you’d pay for a finer pipe that you’d still probably ruin. Get good tobacco. I get mine from outwesttobacco.com, and smoke BCA at the moment. That cheap crap in the drugstores taste just like that: crap. You don’t have to buy a tamper right away. You can use a nail turned upside down. Pack the tobacco so the pipe draws like you were sucking a semi-melted shake up a straw. Pack about three pinches or parts of a bowl. Pack the first loose, the second a little harder, and squish down on the third. Smoke slow. Don’t overclean you pipe with a reamer. Let it build up a “cake” about the thickness of a dime before reaming it a little. The “cake” makes the smoke more mellow. Once you get it mastered, you’ll end up buying a few pipes. A friend of mine bought a $300 pipe. That’s just nuts. It smokes the same as a $20 pipe, if you can find a good one. Oh, and consider a dead man’s pipe down the line. You can get great, fancy pipes for much cheaper than new pipes. Check out deadmanspipes.com to see what I’m talking about.

Well, that’s my pipes blather. I hope you enjoyed it.