The Limitations of Experience

As related to pipe-smoking, few things annoy me so much as the arrogant certainty of some pipe smokers who believe, because they have smoked a pipe for some 30 to 40 years or more, that they know all there is to know on the subject.

Invariably, these people accredit their opinions by their long experience, implying that knowledge and wisdom are conveyed by virtue of having passed time with a pipe in their kisser. They trumpet, “I’ve smoked a pipe for over 40 years, and blah, blah, blah (insert opinion-of-the-day here)….”

Bullshit. Many have smoked a pipe for 1 year and repeated that single year 39 times.

Decades of jamming Prince Albert into a cob pipe will make you conversant with cobs and Prince Albert, but it certainly doesn’t substitute for active inquiry and experimentation with scores of different pipe makers and tobacco blenders over that same 40 years. By making this comparison, I am not denigrating Prince Albert or cobs, both of which are what they are, I am declaring that if that is all you have done, then you haven’t done much. This would be just as true for someone who has smoked Balkan Sobranie in an S. Bang. That experience would be just as limited.

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The 2012 Piper's Dozen

Well, after a year’s hiatus, the Piper’s Dozen is back. This is unquestionably the most difficult post I write during the year. There are so many deserving people and products I consider for each category so I agonize interminably over who and what should be highlighted here.

Then, there was the consideration that the world was supposed to end last Friday according to the Mayans. Why would we give so much credence to a people whose entire population summarily vanished long before their projected day of reckoning? On the off chance that nobody would be around to read this year’s post, I procrastinated on finishing it up. In any event, we’re still here, so here is this year’s Piper’s Dozen:

1. Piper(s) of the Year: Matt and Jon Guss

Borthers Matt (top) and Jon GusIf it weren’t for the brothers Guss, there would’ve been no John Cotton Throwdown, no Balkan Sobranie Throwdown, nor the tremendous enthusiasm generated from  artisanal recreations of famous historic tobacco blends. This hobby has long been focused on pipes and pipe collecting With these new tobacco events, we see excitement created around tobaccos that is every bit the equal of pipes. When one considers  the class and organization of these two Throwdown events that took place at the Chicago show over the last two years, one cannot help but be impressed.

Additionally, Matt Guss is one of the most effective pipe club leaders  and advocates on the American scene. The Seattle Pipe Club’s healthy membership, its extraordinarily fun annual January dinner event, and its sponsorship of events like the Throwdowns are evidence of Matt’s commitment to the role of pipe clubs in advancing the vitality of the hobby.

Jon Guss’ pipes and tobaccos scholarship emerged from considerable research skills that were honed during his days working for one of the major management consulting firms. Today, Jon can be found poring over tax and public record archives in Edinborough or London. His methodological rigor has given pipe and tobacco enthusiasts new insights and plenty of debunked myths, not to mention entertaining reads.

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Wit for Bile

Ever since the Elizabethen days, pipe smokers have had to endure the self-righteous harrassment of the anti-smoking crowd. You would think, with five long centuries of periodic harrassment and ostracism, that we pipe smokers would be better prepared to respond to these puritanical busybodies when they take it upon themselves to publicly reprimand us for smoking our pipes. All too often, however, we are so taken aback by their rude and audacious behavior that we are struck speechless.

Most pipe smokers are gentlemen and deport themselves accordingly. We dislike aggressive behavior, and have no desire to engage in futile arguments with the nasty persons who confront us. I believe it is possible to act as gentlepeople without cowering meekly.

People who engage in this outrageous behavior are not really interested in our health or well-being. They wish to demonstrate their superiority to us. Their intention is to teach us a lesson. To humiliate us. There is no more sincere caring in their remonstrations than one would hear from an agitated rattlesnake.

Even in these Orwellian times, there are still a few, precious freedoms left to us. Where it is legal, we should be able to smoke our pipes in peace. We do not owe explanations or apologies to anyone who disturbs our peace.

Like Churchill and Twain, I have always taken a great deal of interest in the artfully crafted retort. I’ve developed a number of them so that I have one readily available in the event I am  confronted by one of these radical anti-smoking, meddling jackasses. In any case, I am prepared to give them wit when they give me bile. Sadly, I have more than a little experience dealing with this situation, but sometimes things work out better than anticipated.

There is a park near my home where, on nice days, I sometimes go to read and smoke my pipe. There is a trail, beside which are benches and a lover’s swing covered by a small, cedar-shake pavilion. I was sitting there smoking my pipe and reading when a fit, twenty-something young woman jogged up the trail. She saw me, ran over, and – while jogging in place – scolded me, declaring, “Smoking will kill you, you know!”

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Cool and the Geezer Factor

A Whole Lot of Buzz

There is significant buzz among the Internet pipe-smoking community in response to the November launch of Stiff Pipes. It’s amazing, to me how the new Swedish pipe company has managed to build awareness of their new product at near light speed. None of the great icons of pipe-making – not even the legendary Bo Nordh – ever managed to break into the mainstream lifestyle-media space before.

Then, along comes a newbie pipe-making company from Sweden, and they make it happen. I respect that. Stiff deserves a more serious look than they’ve gotten from the mainstream pipe community, if only to understand what they’re trying to do and, may, in fact, accomplish.

Stiff Pipe in blue and dark navy.Proportionately, most of the buzz I’ve read and heard ranges from amusement to outrage. There’s scoffing and scorn, mostly in response to two factors: 1) Stiff pipes are made of thermoplastic  and 2) Stiff has priced their pipes at US $800 – an unthinkably high price to the briar-buying crowd, most of whom would seldom, if ever, spend so much on a crown jewel for their collection, let alone on a pipe with no possibility of straight grain or birdseye.

The Force of Orthodoxy

A conventional billiard pipe: Comoy Blue Riband Billiard: briar and vulcanite.Orthodoxy is so strong among pipe-smokers that our tenets and belief systems are nearly cultish in their force. First among those beliefs is that a good pipe is fashioned from briar. Second is that a sweet smoke emerges from good briar. Third, the most valuable pipes reveal the most exquisite grain, whether the pipe is smooth or sandblast.

Thus, to most pipe people it is all about the briar, be it quality of pipe, quality of smoke, or quality of experience. There is a “thus saith the Lord” force to these precepts. To a pipe-smoker contentedly steeped in pipe orthodoxy, an $800 plastic pipe is not so much gimmick as heresy. Hence, all the “How dare they?” reactions.

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Sixty

1933 Dunhill Root Briar AppleLast week was, perhaps, the best pipe week I can remember. Three pipes came to me as gifts – each of them meaningful and wonderful in so many ways – for my 60th birthday.

I cannot imagine turning 60 years old, even though it has actually happened. Rarely does my imagination lag behind reality. Quite the contrary; my imagination has been known to drag emerging reality (or parts of it) kicking and screaming into being. Usually, my will’s little endowments are made manifest through desire. Occasionally, they are the children of dread. This milestone, however, tramped heavily into last week like a Boston beat cop rousting a loiterer. He came. He saw. He was unwelcome. He came anyway.

These gifts not only softened the arrival of my “graybeard” status, they sweetened it. Considerably. There is nothing like having affection manifest itself into little smoking totems. Pipes: the best birthday present ever – except perhaps gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Still….pipes are great.

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