An Exciting New Tobacco

I have had a couple of tins of this new tobacco from G.L. Pease for a few weeks, waiting for a good time to open one up. Today I could wait no longer. I have been very curious about the tobacco both from the perspective of its flavor and its form. I suppose it goes along perfectly with my decision to smoke like a curmudgeon (see below) to try a good old fashioned plug tobacco.

Here is the description of this new G.L. Pease tobacco offering:

JackKnife Plug - dark-fired Kentucky leaf and ripe red Virginia tobaccos, with their deep, earthy flavors, are layered on a central core of golden flue-cured for a hint of bright sweetness, then pressed and matured in cakes, and finally cut into 2oz blocks. Slice it thick and rub it out for a ribbon cut, thin for a shag, or chop it into cubes. The choice is yours.



So the first problem is cutting off a slice. I happen to carry a small pen knife on my key chain, and to tell you the truth, it was a chore for this knife. A real jack knife would be better. But I used what I had and managed to get a thin slice, maybe an eighth of an inch or a bit more, of the plug. Then the question of how to "prepare" the cut. I rub it a bit and it came out something like a thick shag with a little bit of the quality of a cube cut. Definitely not a pure ribbon. I was in a bit of a rush. The cut was enough to fill my Rad and throw the remainder into my empty pouch for another bowl full later in the day. Clearly, spending more time rubbing out and also measuring more exactly what I might need for a day or two of smoking is going to be a problem. The truth is this is not a convenient way to carry tobacco these days. Which, I guess, is the whole point. Could I wrap the plug into a pouch or even a sheet of wax paper, throw it into my pocket and cut a slice for every bowl full? Yes, but in some other world than I live in. So I imagine the tin will stay on my desk and I'll cut the occasional slice when I'm home and heading out to the backyard for a pipe.

As for the taste, it reminded me of my youth. this is what I conceive as an old fashioned American tobacco. No perique, no latakia, none of the fire-works of taste that I usually expect. Smooth and cool, easy to smoke day in and day out. But also, for that, a tad uninteresting in a pleasant sort of way. It is a quality blend that seems to me to achieve exactly what it is after and you may have to be sixty years old to appreciate what it is offering. Certainly full bodied and "manly" again in that old fashioned way. This tobacco reminded me of the first pipes of my youth with the great old American drugstore tobaccos before drugstore tobaccos was a derogatory term. I think I will smoke a lot of it and the fact that I keep it for home use and therefore can switch off to my more usual Vapers will be a perfect combination.

CURMUDGEON REPORT

I am now into my second week of smoking only my Rad Davis pipe. Keeping in mind that in this weather I rarely smoke more than two bowls a day, often one, and often with a day between with no smoking, and that I clean thoroughly after each smoke, this may not be a fair analysis. But I'll keep going and see where it leads.

Celebrate International Pipe Smoking Day!

with thanks to A Passion For Pipes

Don't forget to raise a bowl today!

Evolution of a Curmudgeon

What is a pipe smoking curmudgeon? Perhaps there is no official definition, so I will offer one. It doesn't have anything to do with a pipe smoker's personality. Rather, it has to do with the pipe smoker's attitude toward pipes. Specifically, a pipe smoker's attitude toward the socially accepted canons of pipe cleanliness and the preferred rotation of pipes.

Last year, as I tired of these canons I moved to the corn cob pipe as a way of avoiding them. I could smoke a cob all day and not think about it.
The pipe always seemed fresh, at least through three or four bowls which more than covered my usual daily needs. Even so, I developed a rotation of at least seven corn cobs yet still found myself standing before my pipe rack in the morning trying to remember which pipe to take today.

I continued my "Spring Training" of pipe smoking today. I grabbed my Rad Davis for the afternoon and smoked one bowl driving out to teach and one driving home. The pipe has fully passed its initiation stage and is just simply terrific. As I finished the second bowl I began to wonder about what it would be like to become what I am calling the pipe curmudgeon. That is, to go on smoking the Rad Davis bowl after bowl, day after day the way I image old time pipe smoker's, the curmudgeons of my title, did.

Of course, I know that eventually, and not to far off, the pipe would begin to reek and the exquisite satisfaction that I simply wanted to go on and on would disappear. But what if it could be different? What if the perfect pipe could simply go on and on?

What else are pipe dreams for?

Pitchers and Catchers Report

Maybe it is just a coincidence, but as I enjoyed my morning tea this morning I began to feel the nearly forgotten urge to smoke a pipe and determined to do so. Not right at that moment, but after attending our morning service and with a couple of hours free before the web class I teach today, I wandered over to Rittenhouse Square to sit in the still cold weather and enjoy my first pipe of 2011. I chose the Peter Heeschen Blowfish not, surprisingly, one of my cobs, but you never know how these things work. For me, despite the fact that I was still bundled up and surrounded by ice and snow as you can see, this was the beginning of Spring training. As the weather warms, and it will if current predictions hold true this week, I will slowly begin to develop a regular routine again and, hopefully, find some semi-interesting things to blog about pipe-wise. Meanwhile, it is nice to be back and very nice to contemplate a season of sitting in my back yard again listening to the Phillies on the radio while smoking my pipe and enjoying what promises to be an historic season.