HIS LITTLE GLOWING EYES

He stopped barking when I came closer, and was enthusiastic when I petted him. That being the dog of someone smoking a cigar on the veranda. There are some dogs who vocalize merely to say 'hi', and when you don't respond, they express sadness. Naturally I encourage everyone to bark back.

I envision all of society barking.


This past Sunday, at the meeting of the pipe club, one of the members told us he's going to get a new dog. His previous furry companion passed away in April, and he feels an emptiness. Followed a conversation about the dogs various members have known. From this you may deduce that many of the members are middle-aged or older, and presently single. Which is odd; unlike the cigar smokers, we are likable fellows, clean, and have recently read books. Just a random guess, but modern American women probably don't like nice men who maintain reasonable standards of cleanliness and have literature.

Many pipe smokers do not own a motorbike.

What most American women want is a smelly dude garbed in black leather, a stogie clamped in his iron and unshaven jaw, rough hands firmly gripping the apehanger of his Harley while roaring down highway 101 on a sunlit day scaring children and small animals.

There's roadkill all over Marin between the bridge and the Sonoma border.

Seeing as I choose the company of men who can disquisition on Dickens or explain why a piece of wood of a particular shape recalls people and places of the past -- the drafting department at the aerodynamics company years ago, sun slanting in, or the Heidelberger Degel Automat which got jammed when they had to complete a print run, and a technician had to be called, or even hosing out the tanks of the glue works outside East Spotsdale after that unfortunate accident with the Sunday School class -- over hairy cigar smokers reclining in the lounge arguing Dungeons and Dragons, I am aware of modern American womanhood, but know very few actual exemplars.

One of whom recently communicated that you must never kick the chicken.

Other than that she's married and on the East Coast, she'd fit right in with the pipe smokers as well as the cigar crowd. There are people like that.


NEVER! KICK! THE CHICKEN!

Not all pipe smokers are animal people. That is to say, not all of them have four-footed companions, but I suspect that other than smokers of Captain Black or Molto Dolce, most of them easily establish friendly relations with dogs and cats that intersect with their lives.

[Many smokers of Captain Black pipe tobacco, or Molto Dolce, are the kind of people who believe that books should be burned, have tattoos or piercings, were thrown out of Sunday School when they hit twenty one, and voted for someone Christian who hates foreigners. Especially smokers of Captain Black Grape, a smoking mixture with no discernible hint of tobacco whatsoever. As part of a manufacturer's test run, I huffed several bowls of that one day, two different trial versions. Candy. Grape soda. Perversion. Extraordinarily well-made.]


Or they will befriend the raccoons in the abandoned church past which they walk on Autumn evenings while smoking their pipes. Who have ensconced themselves there and formed a furry community, a free and democratic republic of the potentially rabid.
Whom I encouraged to adopt some of the neighborhood children years ago, because the idea of little Johnny furtively raiding the cat bowl before running away on all fours had a certain appeal.

[The church was torn down a while back, and a condo building was put up on that site. It's an elegant building, rather handsome. But the raccoons are no longer there, and I miss them.]

We prefer animals over brats.

Most of us do not know how to play Dungeons and Dragons.



Anyhow, I hope he gets his new dog soon, because he lives by himself, and will benefit from the company. He smokes clean medium-full Latakia blends.




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