Normally it takes savage herding with cattle prods to achieve that.
Especially here in the Bay Area, where tobacco is loathed.
Pot is fine though. Because everyone knows that marijuana is grown by little green men in the rainforests, who hug trees, save dolphins, sing lovely melodies, recycle, and are deeply wise and spiritual beings.
Tobacco is horrible and victimizes the little children.
Pot is therapeutic, meaningful, and green.
Actually, as a confirmed lover of pipes and fine tobacco, I really do want to rope in the precious wee kiddy-winkies. Because when I am a doddering old cripple in my nineties several decades hence, the only legal smoking area in the entire region will probably be out in the middle of the tidal flats, and I'll need someone young and vibrant to push my wheel chair out there.
I will not be able to count on my fellow pipe men for that.
So I had best recruit converts now.
Fresh blood.
Come here, little girl, would you like some nice brown Virginia flake? There is just a smidge of fire cured in it, for excitement. You like excitement, yes?
I have several briars I can lend you. But you must take good care of them, and not smoke sleazy aromatic compounds. Use pipe cleaners, don't huff furiously, and let the leaf dry out a bit. All tobacco is far too moist when packaged, which keeps it from crumbling to dust if it's shipped halfway around the world, and gives the impression that it's fresh.
Given that it was aged both before and after blending, fresh is wrong.
You want something with a few years on it.
Mature.
I started off the day with a bowl full of Arango's Balkan Supreme, while introducing a Cantonese speaker from the city to pipe smoking. He was mighty impressed. And rightly so, because it is a damned fine mixture, rich with Latakia, Turkish, and a great Virginia and black fundament. After that, two bowls of a full-bodied Virginia and Perique compound made by Cornell and Diehl, courtesy of Joe who waltzed in around mid day. Lovely stuff. Washed everything down with enough tea to float the Titanic. Then salami, zesty herb dip, cheese, bread, smoked meat, and some crunchy chips. Didn't touch the wine, because I do not drink liquor till evening.
Dan brought in some homemade pressed Virginia and Perique, which smells earthy, and which I will likely smoke Tuesday morning once my apartment mate has left for the day and I've shut her bedroom door.
It will probably go well with strong coffee.
Oh, and everybody wished me a happy birthday, which it was recently.
I am not the youngest member of the pipe club.
But okay, older now.
[Stubborn crotchets and birthdays are a bad mix.]
The ideal companion for a middle aged pipesmoker, and this may surprise you, is someone very much like the young lady in the illustration above.
Intelligent, individualistic, and intellectually curious. But mature enough to appreciate the finer things in life (like flue-cured leaves, or a resinous and perfumy Balkan blend), and of a calm and restrained temperament.
Someone who can see the value of craftsmanship.
Or why a new anvil is necessary.
Maybe likes music.
Books.
By the way, I should mention that I am single.
All the other members of the pipe club aren't.
They are taken. Quite entirely off the market.
Avoid pot. It's used by f*&cking degenerates only, rots the brain, and inveigles people into a life of sin, decadence, and depravities.
Only fools and perverts smoke pot.
TOBACCO INDEX
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