HAPPY MONDAY

Several years ago, a brash young fellow walked into a tobacconist and said something to the effect of "hey man, got anything with Latakia?" Now you have to understand that in that time and that place, tobacco shops catered primarily to old coots huffing cigars, and the somewhat 'afzijdige' types who occasionally puffed a pipe, because they had seen so many advertisements assuring them that smoking Clan pipe tobacco made them irresistible to the ladies.

[Afzijdig: distant, reserved, aloof. Snooty, sometimes pretentious.]

The young man in question had not started smoking a pipe because of that; there had been a pipe in the window of a shop next to a bookstore where he browsed every week -- actually read for entire afternoons in the stacks out of view of the counter -- and bought a magazine to pay for his time there. The pipe had appealled to him. It looked like it would be a comfortable and friendly thing to hold. After two months he bought it, because he didn't want it to disappear. Over the next year he casually explored what to put in it, discovering along the way that many popular pipe tobaccos were crap.

Anyhow, the tobacconist may have looked at him funny, and shoved a tin of a product he couldn't sell across the counter. Maybe he knew something, or suspected he had an interesting eccentric on his hands, or perhaps he said to himself "aha, finally someone who knows tobacco!"

To the young man's joy, the tobacco proved excellent. Great with a pot of tea and a book. Thereafter, people would occasionally tell them that his social life would improve, and he would have more friends, if he smoked Clan pipe tobacco instead, because it smelled so much better.

The tin of tobacco the tobacconist sold him was Balkan Sobranie.

At that time the epitome of English style blends.

Something for solitary types.

Clan pipe tobacco, recommended by so many people, was unsmokable shite. Smelled like the damned candy store caught fire. Cloying perfumy fruit cocktail. On a base of soap flakes and packing paper, absolutely overloaded with humectants, and extra sugar.

I didn't see the infamous advertisements until later, and they never would have worked on me anyway, because if a woman didn't read, and walked around sniffing and worshipping random men, I would not have been interested in her, except for clinical observation.

[For your information, Balkan Sobranie is available again, but the company that makes it now has a different recipe, so while the smell brings back some memories, it is not as profoundly soul stirring, evocative, and off-pissing to complete strangers and 'helpful' busy bodies. Women are nice.]


This morning I left the house before eight with a pipe in my mouth. No, not filled with Balkan Sobranie or anything with Latakia, instead a red Virginia and Perique blend. My tastes shifted about a decade ago. The pot of tea and the book still make regular (frequent) appearances, but one cannot often smoke indoors anymore. Especially if one lives with a person of the other gender. And although we are not a couple, I would rather not piss her off. She's a good apartment mate, clean and trustworthy, and she tolerates my stuffed animals and most of my habits.
She has her own room, and her own stuffed animals.
Though mine are crazier.

The pipe today was the one pictured above. Something I restored a few years back, comfortable in the jaw as well as the hand (the pipe I bought as a teenager is no longer in my possession). Instead of a pot of tea, I had coffee and some pills. I am no longer brash, or a young man.

I am still full of piss-and-vinegar.

Now for an almost obligatory old man rant: The problem with this world is all those playboys smoking disgusting fruit-flavoured tobaccos and stogies, swilling raspberry syrup barrista coffees and listening to pop music! In my day we made our own coffee, smoked rough twist tobacco or fire-cured shag, and listened to opera. Opera! We were serious people!

We were thinkers, and voted for communists!
None of this 'Christian Democrat" shit!


Oops. Wrong country. So sorry.
I do not live there anymore.

But you are all still wrong.


PS. #1: I couldn't actually vote till I came back to the United States, because I was an American citizen living overseas.

PS. #2: It was cold and foggy this morning, and there were very few people about. Probably just as well, because many Caucasian Americans here in the Bay Area are sensitive about tobacco, though the smells of marijuana and dog shit are welcomed. Those are therapeutic.

TOBACCO INDEX


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