The Pipe Bit: Glossary #6: On The Outside

By Chris Rentner

 

          We agree that the interior is what truly matters.  But sometimes we have to deal with what’s on the surface.

          The point of buying pipe tobacco is to enjoy the luscious—and expertly blended—product.  Unless you buy your tobacco in bulk, it is sold with some sort of uniform packaging.  This packaging should be portable and sealed well, so the lovely leaf inside is protected.  Over time, several methods of packaging our precious pipe treat have been tried:

          Tins.  One of the oldest-school methods of packaging pipe tobacco, tins are good but not great.  The tobacco is easy to grab-and-go, and tins are (or should be) sold air-tight, preserving the blend’s moisture content.  And you still have the empty tin in the end, perfect for storing your bobby pins.  But—and it’s a big one, and I cannot lie—tins notoriously dry out pipe tobacco once the initial seal is breached.  Tins are not able, once opened, to be made airtight again, so air invades very quickly, drying out the blend.  Plus, tins have become more expensive lately due to the cost of raw materials, and are a bit labor-intensive to fill and seal.  Tins can look handsome, and are collectible…but your blend’s days will fade quickly once a tin is opened.

          Bags and pouches are becoming the default packaging for pipe tobacco.  Portable and resealable with a zipper top, they are inexpensive to produce and have plenty of room for branding (to dip into the noxious pool of marketing).  But try to get a bag that is resealable; pouches like Captain Black and Borkum Riff, once opened, let in air.  Like with tins, you’d benefit by immediately transferring the contents of a non-zipper pouch to a plastic bag with a zip top.  The expert tobacconist will, of course, sell the tobacco already in resealable bags, as Uhle’s does (blushes modestly, kicks pebble, faints at keyboard, etc.).

          Bulk tobacco is a great value.  You can get the exact quantity you want, four ounces or four pounds.  It’s also a bit cheaper, and the more you buy, the more you save.  Distributors receive most bulk tobaccos packed in five-pound bags.  Mete out piecemeal by the ounce, the overhead is lower than pre-packaged blends, so it’s a good deal for all; and in the case of a tobacco blend that comes in both tins and bulk, buying the same amount in bulk may well, and should be, cheaper (told ya those tins are costly).

          There are some oddities in packaging, like Schermerhorn’s Bestoval, which is sold in fourteen-ounce screw-top plastic jugs.  But the best place for your tobacco is—naturally—your pipe.  Until then, keep your pipe tobacco sealed and dry.

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Dottle:  Remember when the first of the month had no requirements, other than flipping the calendar?  No taxes, no rent, no inventories…I suppose an increased awareness of time is one of the things that make up that state of mind called “maturity”….As predicted in my post “Star Trek/Sci-Fi:…And The Clouds Made of Smoke,” smoking was absent in the recent Star Trek movie, except for the rapidly chilling and dying embers of the franchise itself (barfs).

The Manly Smoke

When I walked through the door of the premium tobacco “industry”, I was made aware under no uncertain terms that I had entered a “man’s, man’s world”.  [James Brown may have had a point…]   But what, exactly, does that mean to the male smoker?  Established alongside the industry itself, the gender roles of the smoking man seem stubbornly imbedded in the very definition of a tobacco purveyor.

 

The cigar smoking man.  He is usually portrayed as a suave and debonair part of society, a James Bond for the real-world if you will.  Hollywood plays a large role in this association, serving up helping after helping of well dressed, dangerous-yet-successful men blowing smoke rings into the interior of their European sports cars as they race around some city I have yet to experience as they do.  These men are silver tongued with their women, usually just as sleek, fast and European as the cars.  These cigar smokers are tan, buff, well accessorized, dressed to the nines and always smoking the finest of top-dollar cigars.  Tough act to follow, no?

The pipe smoking man.  While a wholly different character for the role of smoking man, the shoes of this industry-designed man are no simpler to fill.  Pipe smoking man is sophisticated:  he has travelled the world, has solved major worldly problems with ease, is an accomplished author/PhD/mathematician, and speaks four languages fluently.  The pipe smoking man also averages 65 years on earth, sports at least a hint of silver or white in his hair, and loves his smoking chair.  This stereotype, while less aggressive, is nonetheless unattainable for 99% of tobacco smoking men.   

The real life male tobacco smokers are too varied to label.  They are anywhere from 18 to 88 years old.   Students, factory workers, professionals, artists, and the unknown all find pleasure in a carefully blended pipe tobacco or a hand rolled cigar.  Sometimes it is the pipe smoker with the silver tongue and the cigar smoker with the PhD.  Oftentimes you simply can’t tell, when popping into our lounge, just who is who. 

When it comes down to it, smoking man is simply that.  A man, tobacco in hand, creating a small cloud of enjoyment in his midst.

–Miss T

Want more?  Check out the “other perspective”, the female-smoker stereotype at www.myspace.com/uhletobacco (where you can find this blog’s original author)

The Pipe Bit: Tony Montana: Goodnight to the Good Guy

 

“You never know, that dishwasher may be a beholder.”

–Rick Ross, “Push It”

By Chris Rentner

     Antonio Montana–Tony to all–will be retiring from Uhle’s at the end of this week. In his 29 years of work here, he has done it all–the store, the warehouse, shipping and receiving, tobacco blending, even some bookkeeping. In everything, his diligence came through–we could all depend on Tony Montana.

     A Cuban native, Tony first came to Milwaukee in 1980. He was part of the Mariel Harbor boatlift, though he rarely talks about his younger life–he had, as all of us do to some extent, a reckless youth, and put it behind him. Through a friend of his he came to Milwaukee from Miami, even though “I had other paths open and things, you know. But I just wanted to try something new in the land of opportunity.”

     When Tony first started at Uhle’s, the country was in a recession, as it is now. His outlook, though, never wavered: “You work hard, you earn it. Though I have to say the bankers had better interest rates back then,” he said with a chuckle. And he remains optimistic about the current rough economy: “Just keep at it, keep moving product. You don’t have to break your back, but you got to stay loyal–to your suppliers, and especially your customers.”

     He credits Uhle’s for his sense of thrift. “I never owned a house. What do I need all that room for? I don’t need some fancy staircase or a statue. I learned to be happy with what I got.”

     Like all of us, he wasn’t above temptation. “I think everybody wonders ‘what if.’ If I had stayed in Miami, I don’t know. I don’t know if I would have been happy.” But instead of wanting the world, he made peace with his decisions: “It’s, you know, the people around you that matter. I learned that here. For a while, I thought I couldn’t change, that I wanted too much. But I learned to be happy.”

     He’s not happy, however, about the restrictions on smoking that he has witnessed over his long career. “It reminds me too much of The Beard,” he said, meaning Fidel Castro. “Restrictions everywhere. Telling you what to think, what to feel. For me, smoking is part of the freedom of this country, and it’s really sad to see it turned into something people think is bad.”

     He leaves Uhle’s happy, though. “I have changed for the better. I have made friends and overcame my past. It was being here that caused me to be a success. I made it.” I wanted to ask him if “here” meant this country or Uhle’s, but of course he had been called away to help someone.

     Thanks, Tony. When we see you leave Uhle’s at the end of this week, we know it is the last time we’ll ever see a good guy like you.

The Pipe Bit Little Bit: A Pause and A Preview

By Chris Rentner

              To quote the Cold Dead Hand of Management, I’ll be “charging the company for not working” by being on vacation next week.  And since the following Monday is Memorial Day, my entire web staff will be gone.  So both of my readers can enjoy the next two Mondays without being subjected to musings on pirates, the Saw movies, fried eggs, videogames or, on occasion, pipe tobacco.

                But when my web staff and I “choose to come back to work” on May 26^th, we’ll have a special Pipe Bit tribute to a member of The Help who will be retiring and the end of this month.  He came to this country in 1980 and has faithfully worked at Uhle’s for the last 29 years.  Even if you’re one of the Diaz brothers, you’ll enjoy it.  See you on the 26^th!

The Pipe Bit: After the Dance

By Chris Rentner

            In college—and, to correct the Wikipedia entry for this blog,  I actually went to UW-Whitewater—on some weekends, I would go to a bar called T&T’s.  I would plop down on a stool, slap a fresh pack of Alpine cigarettes (college, remember) on the bar and order some noxious concoction (college).  As I drank, I smoked.  The two were inseparable—the smoke complimented the liquor and beer.  So it is still for a lot of Wisconsinites…but only for a while longer.

            This week the Wisconsin legislature will pass a smoking ban on almost all workplaces, including bars.  And Governor Doyle will sign it.  Since I try to avoid politics in this blog, I will only say this about the ban directly:  today, with no state law, many non-smoking bars (grimaces) seem to be flourishing, as are bars that “allow” smoking.  This situation was not due to legislation but to initiative by business owners.  So a ban isn’t need, or wanted, I daresay, by the people who in large part actually make this country succeed (even in a harsh recession).

            Uhle’s and other smokeshops, and cigar bars, in Wisconsin will not be affected by the ban, due to start, as of this writing, July 5 of 2010.  So I can still come to work for Big Tobacco and light up, as I have at work for almost fifteen years.  I don’t have to go outside for a quick smoke break, or go to lunch at a restaurant that allows smoking.  I can smoke while I work, which is quickly becoming  a kind of honor…in another life, perhaps, I would’ve ended up working for Corporate America, here in downtown Milwaukee, and would  have had to duck into Uhle’s for a quick smoke.  There, this alternate me would commiserate about how hard it was to be a smoker.  And I would’ve been glad there was still a refuge, a safe place, that encouraged freedom.

            As the night wore on at T&T’s, some of my fellow students would try to “dance,” meaning left-right-left-right, more swaying than footwork.  Then we’d go home—often alone, sometimes not—after bar time.

            As the smoking ban looms, and we smokers—honest, moral, taxpaying citizens, among many other attributes—continue to be the object of harsh vitriol, it’s time to pull up a chair and think.  It’s time to figure out what to do after the dance.

The Pipe Bit: The Yellow, The Blue and The Black

By Chris Rentner

            Some things are completely unfair—like Hello Mary Lou Prom Night II using “Soul City” by the Partland Brothers without any type of credit (and the movie used that song three times!)  So it is with the discontinuation of a favorite product.

            Uhle’s was one of the six U.S. businesses to survive 2008, despite the decision to turn down the offered federal bailout money.  But the iron razor of ’08 continues to swing, and has claimed two products that have been friends to pipe smokers for years:  Bee Sweetener and Atmos Fresholator have been discontinued.

            These products provided a minor but appreciated function.  The stem of your pipe could be kept clean and somewhat sanitized by dunking a pipe cleaner in a bottle of either of these products, then swabbing the stem and bit.  They were called “sweeteners” because they not only kept the business end of a pipe clean but left behind a thin layer of sweetness that would go away the next time the pipe was smoked.

            Bee’s liquid was, yes, watery yellow while Atmos offered a blue-green hue in its product.  They each cost only a few bucks, if that, and graced many a smoker’s table through the years.  Any differences between the two were near nil—they had their function and they did it well.  But they were not essential to enjoying a pipe, falling into the wide chasm called “accessories.”

            There were two problems with sweeteners:  they could stain the bowl of a pipe, and—quaintly—the screw-top cap would roll off when the bottle was opened and would, of course, roll to the farthest reaches of the room.

            So Bee and Atmos sweeteners are no more.  As they leave the smoky stage, let’s have a least a round of applause for these products that tried to enhance pipe smoking, took up minimal room in inventory and even turned a profit (until lately).  We can now use alcohol to clean pipe stems, or run then under water (only the stem!) to clean them, yes.  But there were, once, two products dedicated to a single small function, just for pipe smokers.  Thanks, guys, and good night.

            This is The Pipe Bit, a Mark Goodson Bill Todman production.

The Pipe Bit: Cherry Orchard

By Chris Rentner

 

            If I would have turned into a cherry, I would have bounced up the stairs from the Uhle warehouse, rolled carefully through the store to avoid becoming cherry juice, and out onto West Wisconsin Avenue.  I then would have used my stem and leaves to feed the fare box of the bus, and ride home, trying not to roll off my seat, and hope the other passengers wouldn’t notice a cherry in their midst.  I’d have blushed, a shy cherry, though it wouldn’t have been noticeable on my already red complexion.

            In my early days of working for Big Tobacco (Uhle’s), some pipe tobacco blends were still produced by using liquid flavorings in-house.  One of these blends was Wild Cherry.  The blending bin was filled with several dozen pounds of burley and other tobaccos, and mixed together.  Then it was time to add the cherry topping.

            I would pour the cherry-flavored concentrate (a commercial concoction for pipe tobacco, not cherry juice) into a squeeze bottle, and add water.  This was shaken, then added to the heaps of tobacco waiting in the bin.  I would pour about a quarter of the bottle onto the tobacco in the bin, blend, then add another fourth of the bottle until it was empty.  When this process was complete, the batch of Wild Cherry would be ready to package.  Also, most of the warehouse and I would reek of a sweet cherry scent.  When a fellow member of The Help would come down to where I was blending Wild Cherry, they would usually be compelled to make a witty remark along the lines of, “My eyes ain’t watering because I’m sad.”  The aroma was pungent, fruity, pervasive and strong until the blend was packaged.  Which was a good thing—it was Wild Cherry, after all.

            Except that, in those days, being single and morose, I took the bus to and from work.  After mixing up a batch of the cherry blend, I too smelled like Wild Cherry—in fact, I reeked of it.  The ride home was trying, my twenty-something male ego being humbled and other riders subtly shifting away from Cherry Man.  And as Wild Cherry was popular, I made it quite often, and got a new cologne for my efforts at the same time.

            About ten years ago, liquid pipe tobacco flavorings were left to the behemoths of the industry; since then, Wild Cherry is made with a quality Cavendish that already comes blended with cherry topping.  My fears of being turned into a cherry were set to rest.

            A cherry pipe tobacco doesn’t have to be one note.  A sampling of blends from different manufacturers:

            –Very Cherry (Lane Ltd.)—like cherry soda.

            –Three-Cherry Blend (McClelland)—a mix of Queen Anne, Bing and Maraschino cherries.

            –Black Cherry (Altadis)—sweet and a bit less fruity than other blends.

            –Midnight Cherry (Stokkebye)—sweet, calm and subtle.

            –Cherry Bomb (John Mellencamp)—too cloying.

            BLOGGER (at office door of Cold Dead Hand of Management):  …so for the next, uh, post on the, you know, blog, I was thinking maybe something about…cherry…?

            CDHM (stares at blogger for a full minute, then with wide smirk):  Well, that would certainly fit you, Chris.

            BLOGGER (stricken):  well, I…(chuckles uncertainly) it’s just that, it’s….(CDHM slams office door).

            Cherry flavoring is very popular in all kinds of tobacco products.  It’s in Sweet Dreams Jubilee cigarettes, Swisher Sweets cigars, snuff and Candlelight’s small cigars, to name only a few.  I think it’s popular because it goes very well with the savory taste of tobacco, complimenting it with a fruity sweetness.  The taste is usually mild but not intrusive, and cherry is a familiar flavor, a known quantity, a comfort.

            Wild Cherry rolls on.  Me too.

 

The Pipe Bit Little Bit: …And More With Uhle’s Blogs

Treat yourself to a visit to another Uhle’s blog at myspace.com/uhletobacco (link at right). This one, written by another member of The Help, is clear, strong, bracing and smooth. And, unlike this one, completely enjoyable!

The Pipe Bit: Glossary #5: Briar and Beyond

By Chris Rentner

 

            Pipes have almost as much variety as pipe tobaccos.  Briar, the king of pipe materials, is carved and processed into many unique shapes in addition to the standards of Bulldog, Apple, etc.  Some of the more obscure shapes are Oompaul, Skater and Oliphant—the last shape being a pipe that has its bowl jutting off straight from the shank,  instead of the usual bowl that points up.  Yes, it’s a challenge to smoke.  There was even a pipe introduced about ten years ago that was as flat as a tongue depressor—the bowl was just a dimple in the wood, and specially-made discs of flatted tobacco (thoughtfully, from the same manufacturer) fit in this area.

            Beyond briar is the reliable tier of meerschaum, corn cobs, clay and occasionally cherry wood.  But some manufacturers have, over the history of pipe smoking, made their products of truly different materials.

            Kirsten pipes (www.kirstenpipes.com) have stems and shanks made completely out of metal.  This is called the “radiator stem.”  The reason?  Kirsten pipes feature interchangeability of pipe bowls—any of their bowls will fit on any of their radiator stems.  So you can buy just a bowl and screw it onto your existing stem—almost a new pipe without the expense.  As a rule, metal is a no-no in pipes; but Kirsten fans treasure the variety this pipe offers.

            Ah, but you want to try a pipe that’s truly out of the ordinary.  The check out the pipes offered by the Bartlett Pipe Company (www.mountwashingtonvalley.com/pipe).  Bartlett pipes, such as the New Englander and Windjammer, are made of rock maple instead of briar.  And they smoke upside-down—you smoke the pipe with the bowl pointed at the floor.  The system to do this is complicated, but apparently works.  This company, by the way, first offered this peculiar style of pipe in the Freedom Smoking Pipe, but this model seems to no longer be produced.

            Not unique enough?  Wood is old hat and you want something truly different?  Then search for the pipe (yes, all lowercase) on ebay.com.  This brand of pipe lined its bowls with a substance called pyrolytic graphite, used in aerospace applications.  The material created, the company claimed, a lessening of tars and nicotine in this pipe.  For an abundance of information on the pipe, visit http://www.thepipe.info/history/index.html.  Author Billie W. Taylor II, PhD has put together on that site the definitive source for learning about this product.  The company that made this pipe is long gone, though, so ebay and pipe shows are the best ways to find one.

            Whatever material you choose for your pipe, be sure to enjoy it.  Briar is still the reigning champ of pipes but variety is welcome, in pipe smoking as in life.

 

            Uhle’s has its own line of handcrafted pipes, the JS pipe.  Made right here in Milwaukee, they start below fifty bucks are fine examples of traditional briar craftwork.  Check out www.uhles.com for more info on Uhle’s own JS pipe.

The Pipe Bit: Star Trek/Sci-Fi: …And The Clouds Made of Smoke

By Chris Rentner

            The new Star Trek movie will open next month, and if tradition holds, nary a tobacco product will appear.  In fairness, Trek has shown some smoking:  in Next Generation, Data was shown smoking a pipe as Sherlock Holmes, and Riker and Picard were gifted with cigars by Q (which they didn’t seem to appreciate).  On DS9 Worf enjoyed a cigar on the holodeck, and on Voyager there was a brief appearance of a cigarette in an early episode—which a character, I think Tom Paris, promptly condemned.  And may I say Bones from the original series would have been a perfect pipe smoker, as would have Captain Sisko from DS9.

            But tobacco is not a factor, really, in Star Trek.  Nor is the franchise alone in seeing a future without smoking—with a few exceptions, most sci-fi ignores or viciously rips any and all tobacco use.

            Those exceptions are notable.  Dennis Leary’s character in Demolition Man is the leader of a pro-freedom group who, forced underground by the health-crazy surface world, proudly advocates red meat, sex, and smoking.  Westworld participants enjoyed cigars and the unfortunate crew in Alien smoked cigarettes.  In comics, Transmetropolitan’s main character smoked in almost every panel.  And Wolverine and Nick Fury are known to enjoy a cigar.

            All of these later examples feature to some degree a dystopia—a very imperfect, un-Star Trek-like universe.  Hopelessness and strife abound in these alternate realities, totally unlike today’s world (insert rim shot).  This may explain why smoking is “allowed” in these creations.  Smoking also creates, in some cases, a “noir” atmosphere reminiscent of classic films.

            Confining smoking to these dystopias is a disservice, at least.  In the realms of fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien—a pipe smoker—created the immortal, “pipe weed”-loving Hobbits, which sustained them on their long quest to vanquish evil.  Smoking is such a vital part of this epic that even the recent filmed versions of the trilogy kept the pipes intact.  And as a whole, the genre of fantasy seems to give smoking a much fairer shake than science fiction.

            I know that sci-fi has a better imagination, more creativity, than to limit smoking to dystopias or bitter vitriol.  The long history of sci-fi is one of tolerance of differences and a lust for new horizons.  Surely, the creators and innovators of this noble genre can see a new place in their works for smoking, instead of the tired negativisms of the past. 

            There would surely be smoking in Quark’s bar, to relax, to invite friendship, and to give solace to minds forever voyaging.

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Reminder!  The 2009 Men of Uhle’s calendar is still available!  Stop in our store to enter the drawing for a chance to win your copy!  Second prize is two calendars.