A PEACEFUL MOMENT

Well over a decade ago I wrote about grasshoppers. No,not the insect. The drink of doubtful life decisions. Which consists of equal parts Crème de Menthe, clear Crème de Cacao, and half&half. Shaken well over ice and poured into a large cocktail glass. Several of my friends despise concoctions like that, but there are pipesmokers in this country who would love it as an aromatic tobacco flavour. I'm sure Sutliff or Peterson's have experimentd with it, as well as probably Samuel Gawith. 'Oh, just slap a colourful label on the tin and name it "Hobbit's Hearth" or some such poofle, the Americans will love it. They'll smoke anything'.

It probably did the rounds of all the pipeclubs, to great acclaim.
Much like Rattray's 'Passion Fruit Orange cupcake'.
Not it's real name, lovely tin art.


I myself have nearly a full tin of that stuff. As an American I'm occasionally subject to fits of depravity, and bought it on a perverse whim. I smoked all of three bowls. Same number as 'The Beast', by Cornell & Diehl, a far better product even though it's over fifty percent rum soaked Perique, and smells very remarkably like an erupted sebaceous cyst.

It's been nearly three years. Haven't done a fourth bowl.
But I might try 'The Beast' again.
Just because.


Civlized pipe tobacco, as everyone knows, has no flavourings added but stands on it's own, precisely like decent coffee and tea concoctions. Fruity crap is for imbeciles, juveniles, and people of exceptionally poor judgement.

I still remember the Englishman at the cigar dive who smoked strawberry and vanilla cream pipetobacco. No, he hadn't gone native, he was just visiting, but he had extremely bad taste.

At present I am puffing on a bowl of dark flake, enjoying a cup of tea, and reading Simenon. The sun is obliquely lighting up the room, and there is a stuffed turkey vulture sleeping in the other chair. If I were tromping through a soggy cow-pasture, side stepping fresh pies, I might find the perfume of strawberry vanilla cream welcome, but that is not the case.

Dark flake is subtle. Delicate and old-fashioned.

It presents a lingering fragrance that fades into the background, not at all objectionable, which my apartment mate will only subconscious register when she returns home.
By which time I'll have put the pipe down and will look studiously innocent.

The turkey vulture will not rat me out.
I bribed him with noodles.
And he's asleep.



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