THREE THINGS TO MAKE SURE OF

Upon waking up the key thing one notices is itching somewhere on the upper body, usually the head, plus a pervasive sense of grump, whether it is already light out or not, and quite likely a need to micturate. As well as the presence in the nearby kitchen of a woman cheerful as all git-out fixing herself a hot breakfast. As my apartment mate is likely to do at that hour.
I myself merely need caffeine, nicotine, and highly refined sugar, to be ready for the day. So after my first cup I head out into the neighborhood with my pipe to scare little children and the hordes of anti-tobacco purists of which San Francisco has an abundance.

My apartment mate is a non-smoker. Many women of Chinese ancestry are like that. The men more than make up for it, being veritable chimneys in that regard.
Remarkably, she seldom wakes up grumpy.


Also, there are no ashtrays, pipe tampers, tins of tobacco, or cigar cutters in her room.
More than anything else that suggests eccentricity and peculiarity.
A distinctly non-male gestalt.

The only times I enter her quarters are to retrieve one of the stuffed animals who strayed into semi-unknown territory in search company or a book about jewelry. They like blinky things.
My bedroom has almost no blinky things.

Yesterday I realized that I have enough pipes to provide at least five pipe smokers of either gender with a respectable rotation. The majority are excellent briar.
Unfortunately, I am by no means a total of five pipe smokers.
I'm barely one of them. And only one gender.

They would have to be younger, too. A pipe, properly taken care of, will last the smoker's life time and beyond, and will quite probably be borrowed by a teenager left alone in the house while the parent is off on vacation in London (England) or Modesto (California) for two weeks. "Son (or daughter), there are three things I want you to make sure of: Make sure that there is coffee when I get back, make sure we have toilet paper when I get back, and make sure that the house is still standing, when I get back."

It wasn't exactly like Ferris Bueler's Day Off. I spent most of those two weeks reading, smoking a pipe, and preparing hot beverages.



Reading material: Rudyard Kipling, Georges Simenon, Somerset Maugham, Joyce Carey, George Orwell, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clark, Ray Bradbury. All of The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction (my mother had been one of the contributors), articles in Horizon (we had every issue), National Geographic, and Scientific American.
Plus all of Asterix And Obelix.


Basically, what any well-educated young fellow would do.
Also purchased tins of Balkan Sobranie.
Idem ditto.



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