ENTIRELY AN INTELLECTUAL CONCEIT

Grampa, wearing his bib overalls and his Hechtenstein Machine Parts baseball hat, is on his tractor doing the back forty, and smoking, which Mawmaw doesn't let him do in the house. He's got a corncob, and a full load of 'Old Wonkers' Burley Blend going. Do not disturb. Unmentioned are the rodents in his crotch or the scabs on his dermis, those aren't part of the narrative. Old Wonkers would be a drugstore tobacco formerly much loved because it was advertised be Dale Dronk And His Merry Moonshiners on the weekly Barn Dog Family Hour back in the fifties, sponsored by Amalgamated Tobacco & Asbestos Co. in Milwaukee, Larsen's PotAsh Soap, and The Almighty Joy in Jesus Church of Tennessee.

[Three products were advertised: a pipe tobacco, a farmstead soap, and a gentle aftershave for Sundays.]


The narrative is what kind of man still smokes burley blends. Which, largely, is the neo-senile demographic. Two old codgers in the hinterland beyond Placerville. Who own stationwagons which they drive in to town two or three times a year to buy a new bar of soap.
Along with Hav-a-Tampa cigars and pipe tobacco.

There used to be many blends like Old Wonkers, all of them based on burley and some flue-cured leaf, most of them lightly flavoured with a shpritz of aftershave or Bourbon whiskey to disguise the smell of the firecured used lightly to add interest. They were smoked by hip junior advertising execs, and college professors at schools with football teams.

[Both types of men wore houndstooth sportscoats. It was their unique style.]

They're not much huffed in this day and age.

Which is sad.

One of my favourite pipes is a Dutch item made for Amphora. A straight bulldog, very English looking. I have no idea what the erstwhile owner was like, but he smoked fairly decent burley blends, and kept his gear reasonably clean; it did not require much work when I restored it.

Possibly he had a can of Coopvaert or Voortrekker on a shelf in the potting shed, which he bought long ago when those were still available, but he preferred burley over Maryland.

Coopvaert and Voortrekker, both thin ribbons made of leaf exported from the Chesapeake (hence the Dutch term 'Baai tabak'), were simple unflavoured tobaccos much smoked in the Netherlands, with which I was very familiar by the time I returned to the United States. The people who owned farmsteads out in the Brabant countryside (like the one in the illustration above) had grown up on them. They were cheap. They were decent. They tasted all right.

Honest tobacco, paired with black coffee from Douwe Egberts or Erven De Weduwe Van Nelle, a black and white television showing something with crappy production values from VARA, and, perhaps, a slice of buttered Ontbijt Koek with Succade on the top.

The equivalent, if you will, of old style burleys.


Many old codgers, including myself (I am not old, dammit), have an intellectual liking for such products. That is to say we love the concept, but the reality, even if it is a very fine blend, is something we seldom smoke. I have a tin of a burley mix I've been working on for a decade now which smells delicious, but it wallops me every time, and may take another decade to finish. There are several tins of it and its cousins sitting on a shelf, puffed with age.

It's good stuff. Perhaps I need a back forty.

I'd smoke Coopvaert and Voortrekker if they were available here. Not often, because I've grown away from such products, but I remember them rather fondly. They pair well with strong coffee and pastries.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to drive the stationwagon into town to vote. Perhaps I'll buy some soap while I'm there. And I'll put on some nice aftershave so I don't scare anyone.



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