VIBRANT TIMES

You know, you CAN make coffee at home, don't you? There is really no need to blow ten to twenty bucks a day down at the Bean-o-mat at the end of your street to wake up. Especially as they don't open till seven, you have to be at the office at eight, and Pooky needs to pooh sometime before then. And you're a non-pipesmoker. You can stay home. Set the pot on, go snort your brainfood on that little plate you keep in the bathroom so that Jeff your yuppified U.S. Marine boyfriend won't know you take drugs, pop your pills, and have a lovely cup of Java waiting for you when you come out. Don't forget to flush.

In short, get off my street. It's barely six o'clock and I really don't want to see any pudgy white Americans at this hour. I've seen them all weekend.

Nowadays, whenever I see pudgy white Americans, I wonder to myself how rightwing and bigoted they are. Did they vote for the big orange turd? Did they do a thumbs down on hiring the black college grad because they didn't feel comfortable with a bubble breach? Do they sneer at stuff made in China while wearing designer togs they paid too much for, that were made in China? Did their parents try to tell me years ago that chilies were bad for the body only used when the meat was rotten just something those people ate because they couldn't cook and would inflame bestial passions while making people impotent and a commie plot to sap our nations vital juices?

There's a history with y'all. I've worked with pudgy white people all my life.
And many of you have been wrong most of that time.
Plus I've seen the crap you like.
1970s fashions.

The pipe I was smoking on my morning walk was in use since before that time. I don't know much about the previous owner -- his effects were eventually disposed of by a distant relative after his passing -- but it's a good piece. He had relatively clean tobacco habits, none of the sickening shite that became popular in the flower power era, just basic old-style Burley and Virginia blends like good men favoured in the pre-Kennedy period. And none of the sugary crap that was far too popular in the fifties either. His carbon layers were sound.

[Sugary fifties crap: Son, you've come back from the war smoking ciggies. Which is understandable. But now you have a desk job, prospects, and wear a suit and tie. It's time to buy a suburban rancho, get married, and act like a mature adult. Here's a brand new pipe and pound of Watson's Honey Bucket Blend (as advertised by a Hollywood star).
Next month we'll go hunting by the lake with the boys! And start wearing houndstooth sportscoats!]

He wasn't a smoker of flakes. Which the three or four briars from his collection that I have are filled with nowadays, along with some nice flue-cured ribbon and a touch of condimental leaf compounds. A solid man. His most vibrant life period was probably the nineteen sixties. I can imagine him being in his late thirties then, and driving a Studebaker down 101 on sunny days heading to the track. By the late seventies he would have been puttering in the garden of his suburban cottage, and wondering which colleges his kids would go to.

They had probably graduated by the end of the eighties, and by the nineties he retired. More time for the garden. Swearing at the new-fangled computer. Smoking a little less because of lectures from the young ones. Glad that the smell of patchouli was finally gone.

Probably said 'hi' to Saint Peter during the Bush years.



My routine, irrespective of my work schedule, is to get up at a beastly hour, have coffee, and head out for a long amble with a pipe to aid the digestion. Being a packrat I have numerous pipes. A number of Dunhills and Charatans, several Petersons, Comoys, and Comoy made offbrands and private labels (stamped with the names of now forgotten pipe shops). Comoy made the Sunrise in all of the familiar shapes into the sixties. Those that survived to the present in decent condition are well-worth owning. Good smokers.

NO, I do not miss Honey Bucket Blend. I wasn't alive then.
But I've heard the horror stories about that stuff.


I am on my second cup of strong coffee now. With milk and sugar.
No oat milk. I didn't run out. I just never buy it.
Son, in my day we didn't milk oats.
Our hands were too big.



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