Choosing your first pipe

Okay, so you’ve decided to step up and claim your spot among men….congratulations!!  Be forewarned, there will be detractors who will attempt to dissuade you by sharing their vast knowledge or opinions of just about everything including the things you should or should not do with your life.

They’ll be quick to remind you that smoking is horribly frowned upon in today's utopian inspired society and anyone besides another pipe smoker will cast you wicked glances and women will shield their children's eyes at all your ugly smokey wickedness!!.

The best nugget of wisdom anyone will try to lay on you will come as they are pulling on their scrubs and in their best Dr. Meredith Gray impression proceed to inform you that smoking a pipe will take ten years off your life…..when confronted with this I generally jump on the long black train with them and admit that I am very much aware that smoking will take ten years off my life, but then I quickly remind them that the last ten years of one’s life usually involves shitty your pants and drooling all over yourself and if possible those are the years I would rather choose to avoid anyway….This usually shuts them up once they realize I don’t give a rats ass about their unsolicited opinions or comments…(My father has smoked two/three packs of lucky strikes, Pall Malls a day for sixty plus years and is still living in his own home today at the ripe old age of 84 yrs old)…...I digress…….back to selecting your first pipe!

First thing you have to know is that in the pipe smoking world there are unlimited styles and classes of smoking tools….you can spend next to nothing or you can spend literally thousands of dollars on a single pipe. Pipes are like women, they come in every shape and size with some  built for performance and others pleasure, but rest assured you will eventually find a handful that can satisfy your every need….Pipes...not women!!

It is my ever humble opinion that your first pipe should be a Missouri Meerschaum better know as a Corn Cob or simply a Cob!! They are incredibly cheap to buy and deliver a cool sweet smoke that almost everyone enjoys. You will have plenty of time, later on, to throw your money away on high dollar smokers that in most cases do no better job of delivering smoke to your palate than a cob but looks a little better doing it, and everyone knows chicks love a big Nording or enjoy a stiff Savinelli!

As a new smoker, you shouldn’t worry about how anything looks at this point because most new smokers tend to stay hidden away from the public eye while they perfect the art of smoking a pipe. I’m not implying that Cobs are an embarrassment, or should not be smoked in public as there are a lot of very respected tobacco aficionados that only smoke Cobs regardless of time, place or company.

If you don’t want to start with a cob, there are literally a million different options for you to choose from and countless online marketplaces that can surely satisfy whatever your taste and budget can afford.

However, I must warn you that buying pipes and searching for the perfect smoker can and will become as addictive as crack cocaine! You’ll start with that single Cob but before you know it you’ll have dozens of briars, meerschaums, or rosewoods pipes socked away in your underwear drawer so the Mrs. doesn’t question you about your new obsession.  You’ll find yourself hiding your billiards, Canadians, bulldogs, and Dublin's in shoes, between linens or behind pictures! You’ll need racks to keep your Savinellis, Wades, Grabow, Nordings, Petersons and Yello’s. Collecting is part of the fun of smoking pipes, just think of them as Hotwheels for Men!!  Have Fun!!

Deciding to Start Smoking a Pipe

How does one decide to begin smoking a pipe? Did someone from their past smoke a pipe, someone they respected and wants to emulate? Did they observe a stranger smoking a pipe and think to themselves, that looks interesting?  Perhaps the potential pipe smoker is trying to quit those nasty cigarettes or chewing tobacco and is hoping the pipe can help free themselves from bondage?

Every pipe smoker at some point in their life had to have made a conscious decision to pick up a pipe and begin down a path of failures and rewards. The failures, come as a  result of not knowing anything about smoking a pipe and experiencing such things as tongue bite, leather tongue, hell's’ furnace, terrible tobacco blends and a multitude of other unpleasantries to cause the now tortured soul to pitch the fire breather out the window to never consider picking one up again.

The rewards come with learning how to correctly smoke a pipe and the wonderful and pleasurable experiences that come from sitting in a favorite spot, reading a favorite author, watching the tip of a fishing pole or just contemplating life itself.  There is an unexplainable satisfaction that only a pipe can bring, and only those who are patient enough to learn how to handle the briar can relate to these written words. The majority of pipe smokers if asked who they would choose to sit and enjoy an afternoon with would more than likely choose their favorite pipe loaded with their favorite blend.

If you are a beginning pipe smoker and don’t want to experience the common failures but instead would prefer to skip right along to the rewards, you only need to do one thing, slow down!! Almost every new pipe smoker, myself included couldn’t wait to experience all these fantastic pleasures that they have heard or read so much about so they get in a hurry and don’t learn or practice the basics. The old adage you have to crawl before you walk rings very true in pipe smoking.

If you’re going to be a serious pipe guy, there is a few things you’re going to need in order to do it correctly the first time out of the gate, these are the basics.

• Quality Pipes
• Quality Tobaccos
• Tampers
• Lighters

If you noticed I pluralized everything on the list due to the fact that you you will indeed need multiples of everything in order to enjoy your pipe. You have to rest and rotate pipes, one tobacco is always boring, tampers and lighters are like damned socks that get lost or misplaced every time you turn around.

I will attempt to write a beginners guide to pipe smoking and expound on other sub-topics that I hope you will find helpful