OLD SOCK

Several years ago something I compounded was in the running as the club blend for a local pipe club. The project ran into three problems: 1) Some members whined that the name should be something old timey, romantically stirring, and redolent of San Francisco and the Golden Gate (I favoured a simple uncomplicated non-pretentious name: "Old Sock", or "Grandma's Ashes"); 2) a few people kept asking why it couldn't have vanilla and caramel, or a fruit flavour (because they wanted a Hello Kitty candy perfume); 3) and the tobacco company I was dealing with started acting shy and uninterested. So it died.

The problem with names is that what something is called ends up gilded by fond memories after several years. Nothing starts off like that. To crusty old fossils, the numbers 965 recall golden moments, relatives who said "why does your tobacco smell like burning corpses?" and fond memories of going to McSweeney's Beauty Academy And Cigarre Shoppe for another tin every week, rain or shine, while fighting off the hordes of Flying Dutchman addicts.
To new pipe smokers it will not have that resonance.
A romantically stirring San Francisco name would look kind of silly: "Rose-coloured Dawn Over North Beach In The Fog". Yeah, okay, great title for a cheesy painting.

Vanilla and Caramel? Hello Kitty Sultry Mango? Sorry, I don't do that, serious pipe smokers won't touch such crap, and good lord that sounds disgusting.

Naturally I kept the recipe, and I still have a batch of Old Sock. It's a medium-full Balkan Blend with a nice base of aged Virginias. Each one of the blending components are from the tobacco company with which I now have very little contact, though two of their employees are friends whom I appreciate, one of them being the husband of a woman with strange taste in tattoos, tobaccos, and seasonally suitable yard decoration.

And I am still a member of the pipe club.


As of this writing I am quite enjoying a bowl of something else I put together a long time ago which I call "Wet Dog".

It contains aged Virginias, unflavoured blending Cavendish, Latakia, booze, and fruit essences. Plus a touch of Firecured Kentucky and cigar leaf.

It has a fragrance reminiscent of your severe maiden aunt's secret lingerie drawer.

What? You didn't know that she had a past before you discovered that?

What did you think her contribution to the war effort was, boy?



It's more than a little bit perverse. Borderline degenerate. I did good. The pipe reminds me of a friend who asked me to restore his oldest Peterson, because if he died (as was not unlikely at the time) he wanted to be buried with it. It also reminds me of my first Pete, which I purchased as an act independence when I was a college student away from home, plus a half year living in Oakland, several people whom I've known over the years, and an angry young person I have not seen since he ran his business into the ground and returned to Texas.

The tobacco brings back the last time it really rained in San Francisco, office building elevators, brawny sailors and firefighters, and a friend who intensely disliked a Danish tobacco blend which I smoked during summer quite a while back.


Pursuant "Old Sock", which I mentioned earlier, that was originally compounded during a rainy Autumn several years ago. And I also associate it in my mind with my ex-girlfriend, of whom I am still quite fond (she hated it, unfortunately). I'm still proud of that recipe. Good stuff.

In early to mid afternoon today I shall head across the hill to Chinatown for lunch. Probably something with bittermelon over rice at a chachanteng. Don't know which pipe (or pipes) I'll have with me, or what tobacco.

Probably something unassuming for which memories still have to be built.

TOBACCO INDEX


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