Some say that the closest thing to heaven is a quiet corner and a good book – I might add and a pipe. I have just finished reading The Western Island by Robin Flower. The book relates Life on the Great Blasket Island off Ireland’s west coast in the 1930’s. Robin Flower was a professor of Gaelic language and this island was one of the last colonies of Gaelic speakers. His summers were spent with the people of the Great Blasket and one person he always spent time with was Big Peg, an elderly woman and one of the finest Gaelic speakers known to him. He often sat with her by her smouldering peat fire…”and taking a pipe from the hole in the wall at the back of the fire, picked up a burning fragment of turf in the tongs, set it on the bowl of the pipe and began to draw the smoke through the short stem.” The room note from this peat smoke must have been eye watering. Well, if they ever ban tobacco, we can always follow Big Peg’s example. In the meantime, I will enjoy Capstan Navy Flake packed into my Dunhill with a large mug of black coffee. Happy New Year! |
I finally found some info on pipephil.eu (LOVE that website), it says they were produced by Sparta/Dr. Grabow in North Carolina from the early 60's to the mid 70's. I can't find any info beyond that but if your dad got one in the 50's I'm wondering if "Willard" was an independent pipe company/brand prior to the 60's, that Sparta/Dr. Grabow bought up? I hope you still have that pipe JimInks!Willard pipes were sold in drugstores, too. My father bought one in the late 1950s, though he didn't stick with pipe smoking. And that became the pipe I started with.
I do. It's the most important pipe I own because it was my dad's. It's the bottom pipe.I finally found some info on pipephil.eu (LOVE that website), it says they were produced by Sparta/Dr. Grabow in North Carolina from the early 60's to the mid 70's. I can't find any info beyond that but if your dad got one in the 50's I'm wondering if "Willard" was an independent pipe company/brand prior to the 60's, that Sparta/Dr. Grabow bought up? I hope you still have that pipe JimInks!
Part way through this bowl of Chris Morgan Jackalope in a straight smooth medium brown year 1912 Henry Tongue bulldog with a silver cap and band and an amber saddle stem with an orific bit.
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