When told to give up cigarettes back in the 1950’s, then-future President LBJ said, “I’d rather cut my pecker off!” It’s impossible to say whether he meant it literally, but he certainly said it with gusto.
If you told me to ditch the pipe, I wouldn’t offer to sever my member instead. Still, a pipe is more than a simple vice. Whether you think of the pipe as a habit, a hobby, or a spiritual artifact, you’ll be correct. It offers to connect us to history, to contemplation, and to a wider community.
LBJ sucked down cigarettes because his life was rife with drama, his job was nearly impossible, and he needed something to smooth out the edges. For LBJ, cigarettes were a crutch. An escape. Each coffin nail represented a measure of stolen reprieve.
You can’t smoke a pipe in a hurry. It has to be packed properly, lit twice, and then maintained with care. Unlike the cigarette, it doesn’t present a means of escaping the moment, but of sitting with it. Inside it. Rather than stressed and aloof, the pipe smoker appears calm and welcoming.
When I’m spotted smoking a pipe in the wild, passersby don’t hesitate to approach me, to tell me about their grandfather who used to smoke a pipe. They always smile for the memory because they’re recalling an approachable, affable man who invested his time crafting lasting memories.
The men they remember chose to participate in a meditative hobby and were better for it. No one has ever said to me, “My grandfather smoked a pipe. You know, he was a real ass.” By causing our better angels to surface, if only for an hour, the pipe allows us to become communal animals.
During the Spanish-American war, Theodore Roosevelt wrote home that the men fighting in Cuba needed two things most of all: more food rations and more pipe tobacco. But if he had to pick one or the other? This ardent non-smoker said he’d prefer the latter.
It wasn’t only because tobacco staves off hunger, though it does. He preferred pipe tobacco rations because the pipe supplied these enlisted men a communal passtime. Sharing a pipe meant staying in place, engaging each other in sweeping conversations, and best of all: fellowship.
When World War I commenced, a young J. R. R. Tolkein smoked his pipe daily as he and his compatriots traversed war-torn roads and muddy fields. They fought, they bled, and some died. But they ate together, smoked together, shared stories, and formed lasting bonds.
War was hell, but the worst of times – when shared with others – cemented nostalgic moments in his psyche that defined his life. While Tolkein dreamed up orcs and elves of various shades, what he couldn’t imagine was a world without the pipe. Or maybe he simply preferred not to.
As a WWII veteran, President Gerald Ford owned dozens of pipes. When asked about them, he chuckled. He couldn’t imagine how such a commonplace item could inspire intrigue. To him, it was a simple equation: He was a sailor. Sailors smoked, and that was that.
Albert Einstein was never seen without a pipe even after he gave up smoking, yet only one of his pipes found its way to a museum. Why? Because only once did anyone ask him for one. He laughed, but he handed it over. His pipe wasn’t a statement of identity. It was mere reality.
Times changed. World Wars ceased, active duty tobacco rations were relegated to the past, pipe factories closed, and history threatened to swallow the pipe whole – stummel and all. But the pipe refused to be laid to rest.
Where once there were masses, pockets gathered. And they gather still. Varied lives continually convene around this age-old artifact. War stories and jokes are still told, theology and politics still debated. Though the times have changed, the need to sit within the moment persists.
Cigar culture has emerged as a statement of wealth and power. Of manhood, taste, and sophistication. A single stick can now set you back a hundred bucks because when you buy a truly high-end cigar, you’re paying for small farm leaves and experienced labor in the rolling.
But you’re buying more than that. With a cigar, you’re purchasing a singular experience. One-and-done. Each cigar is a statement that’s only uttered once. The cigar is a paragon of fleeting time. Cigars represent tobacco’s yang, the moments of basking in the sun.
Pipes are tobacco’s yin, paying homage to home and shade. Pipes are patient and lasting items meant to be enjoyed ad infinitum. The same vessel can create not a single moment or memory, but a mosaic, fostering and cultivating conversations innumerable. For that reason, a pipe can set you back anywhere from thirty dollars to the rough value of a used Honda.
A pipe is an investment, sure, but it’s also a membership card. It bids you welcome into a conversation with fellow pipe smokers. It marks your entry into a community in which newcomers are always welcome, where friendships are waiting to be formed.
Fresh out of college, I wandered into a pipe shop and found myself surrounded by a dozen veterans, half of whom were named Bob. Most of them fought in Vietnam, but a couple Bobs survived World War II. The stories began at once and I was eager to hear them.
One Bob told me that he’d been injured in battle, but that was okay because he kept wooing the nurse who tended to his wounds. “And by God, was she a looker!” Before the Great War was over, he’d worn down her defenses and she became his date to an officer’s ball.
Another Bob told me that he’d been commissioned to carry an LMG, but that a man of his stature had no business hefting around a firearm that was easily half his body weight. So he chewed tobacco by the bulk, swallowed the spittle, and became so ill that he skated the task.
A third Bob was still haunted by egregious interrogation tactics that he’d seen in Vietnam. He was troubled, but perpetually kind. He came wheeling into the parking lot of our local pipe shop in his Mini Cooper almost daily, armed with half a dozen pipes and a smile on his grizzled face.
Before he passed, he gifted me a pipe he’d purchased in England in the sixties when he was stationed abroad. He was always excited to see me smoke it and each time, he’d recount having bought it. The date of purchase always changed, but it’s unquestionably older than my mom.
All three Bobs have since passed on, but their stories reside rent-free in my mind and I’m glad to have these tenants. Their memories live on, much like the scent of a Virginia tobacco long after the smoke tendrils dissipate, or like that old English pipe that still rests on my desk.
A friend once told me that the greatest things in life can be snugly stuffed into two boxes: relationships, and experiences. I agree with him, but I wonder if the pipe can’t nestle itself neatly into both. As a vessel, it bids us travel into both realms.
A pipe is more than just an object, or an investment, or a nicotine-transferring device. It’s an emblem representing a rich tradition of camaraderie and community. It’s a tradition in which I’m happy to share. It’s a tradition in which I’ll continue, preferably with my pecker intact.
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