ALL THE GOOD MEN

You should know that right at this moment, I am being insulted in Cantonese by a turkey vulture because I did not bring back home the fatty inner thighs he so passionately craves. I should have harvested them from the pipe smokers who gathered for the meeting of the local pipe club! What else are those elderly fossils good for?!?!?

Indeed, a number of us are over forty. But I would not describe them as "elderly fossils".

Gentlemen on their second or third adolescence, perhaps. A few of whom are realizing that the body's hardware may have worn out a bit. In connection thereto, I'm seeing a medical specialist this Tuesday so that we can discuss a deep ream and clean of some of the blood vessels in my lower extremities, which are a bit rusty. A peripheral angioplasty.
Should be fun.

About a dozen people out on the patio, with their pipes, enjoying the afternoon sunlight and each other's conversation. Several fine briars. A number of tins of tobacco.
At least two walking sticks.


The lady members didn't make the trek from Sacramento this time. A pity, but I'm still fairly certain that despite their absence no sports were discussed, as the sports nuts were precisely the men who "couldn't make it sorry". What with being inside some low dive screaming at the teevee. The only important game this weekend was PSV against Alkmaar (PSV won, 3-0), and that was yesterday. All other sportive events were surely anticlimactic. Who? What? Eh? The remarkable pipe pictured here is something I got via one of the other members. A Danish pipe from a company that is long gone, but which for over a generation produced some very good smokers.

As everyone knows, "a Kriswill pipe is the emblem of a man". That is not exactly a philosophy to which I subscribe, as a well made pipe, in a traditional British or French shape, with good grain, is utterly feminine too. In fact, when the president of the club mentioned that his daughter was moving out I made sure to stress that she'd be fine as long as she had sound taste in pipes and tobacco, because it would inculcate sound judgement in other things, and if a person she was interested in did not like her briars and her preferred smoking mixtures, that should serve as a cautionary warning.

The pipe above is considerably more bohemian than many of my smokers. But it's a lightweight little number, and rather jaunty.


Every young person setting up on their own should have a few pipes.
It helps while away the tedium of living alone.
And inculcates sound habits.

TOBACCO INDEX


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