Chapter 2

There is a little time available this evening and I hoped to try to write a chapter a week each Sunday; this puts me two days behind, which is not all that terrible, is it? My excuse is [and yes, I do understand that there are no excuses in life. “You may have your reasons,” Sgt. Wardell Payne (may his tribe increase), our drill instructor in Basic Training told us, “but there is no excuse.” In other words, do what you are obligated to do and do it on time and without complaint. It’s not always easy to live up to, but it is worth a try.] that I am preparing for the short presentation that the Virtual Pipe Club has invited me to do this coming Saturday. Here we are, though, about to push on into and through Chapter 2. It’s the one where I buy my first pipe.
You all have first-pipe stories, and many of them are similar, undoubtedly. Only the name and location changes. This one takes place in Manhattan, perhaps on 6th Ave., aka Avenue of the Americas. But maybe not…this was toward the beginning of 1961, shortly after my 18th birthday (nor was age an impediment back then, if memory serves) and what prompted me to want to smoke a pipe is a mystery, unless, as I suggested, it was seeing my father smoke a pipe the one week each year he stopped working two jobs and relaxed with his family. Otherwise, I did not smoke. I had a cigar once, at my cousin Paul’s Bar Mitzvah and got very sick and when my father found out he came over to chew me out, saw I was in that green state just before a welcomed death, shook his head and walked away. He saw that the lecture he would have delivered was already self-inflicted.
Allow me to give myself some credit. Instead of walking into a drug store or other anonymous place where I could have picked up a blister pack pipe and a pouch of drug store tobacco and placed it on the counter without having to reveal complete ignorance about pipes and tobacco I walked into a pipe shop. There were plenty of them in NYC at the time, so I can’t recall which one this might have been, although I believe there was a “Rogers” in that neighborhood and this might have been that place.
A little digression here. It has long been a personal contention that one reason so many pipe smokers in the U.S. smoke inexpensive, shellacked pipes is because of what was briefly described above. It is easier for many to pick up a pipe and tobacco in a place where you don’t have to express any knowledge of the product than to go into a specialty shop, like a good pipe or tobacco shop and deal with arcane lingo and details about which you are unfamiliar and unsure. It can be threatening. Like a typical guy going into a woman’s lingerie shop. Well, maybe not exactly like that but you get the picture. Understanding that is why I always tried to remember to treat new customers to Sherlock’s Haven in as gentle a manner as possible, and made sure not to look down on their inexperience. I’d also kid with them a little to help them feel comfortable. Come to think of it, looking at that lingerie shop analogy, maybe that’s part of the reason there aren’t more women pipe smokers in the U.S. Most women are likely to feel uncomfortable walking into what is considered a male bastion. More women customers, more customers, was always a goal of mine. Consider this…a woman smoking a cigarette or a woman smoking a handsomely carved pipe…which is more attractive (if you can get past the cultural habituation)? Not close, is it? A woman smoking a pipe can be real sexy.
The shop I walked into in Manhattan, not surprisingly, was staffed by an old geezer who did not have my supportive technique under his belt. What he did was pick out a pipe…more or less a basket sandblast, and threw a pouch of some aromatic at me and took my money. He plainly didn’t want some punk kid bothering him. Nor did I know a single bit of pipe or tobacco terminology. I didn’t know enough to ask a question, an intelligent one or otherwise. It was a start, though, whether I understood that much or not. Next chapter will deal with my foray into finding a tobacco I could enjoy…perhaps the absolute key to becoming a pipe smoker. Thanks for reading.