BUCKET LIST UPDATE – No. 188: Learn how to smoke a pipe

My pipe smoking kit.

I scratched another item off my bucket list this week when I taught myself how to smoke a pipe.

Before I get into the meat of this thing, I should say that I know that smoking tobacco is unhealthy. For that reason, I’ve never been a big smoker. I can count the number of cigarettes that I’ve smoked in my life on one hand, and I can remember smoking maybe two cigars in my life. Until last week, I’m sure that I’d never smoked a tobacco pipe. I’m in no way recommending that anyone use tobacco products.

With that said, there is a certain appeal to smoking a pipe. It looks kind of cool and manly, and it’s something that I’d always wanted to try. The first order of business was to obtain a pipe and some tobacco, which I did cheaply at the local drug store. There I bought an inexpensive Missouri Meerschaum Corn Cob Pipe and 1-1/2 ounce pouch of Prince Albert Pipe Tobacco.

Armed with the basic gear, I turned to the Internet to teach myself what to do next. I consulted the Art of Manliness, YouTube and wikiHow and found a number of articles and instructional videos on how to smoke a pipe. As you might imagine, it’s not rocket science, but there are a few fine points that you’ve got to master if you want to do it right. Pipe smoking is the oldest form of tobacco usage, dating back to prehistoric times, and there’s a certain ritual that you have to follow.

First, you’ve got to pack the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe correctly. This is actually a three-step process, where you gradually add tobacco to the bowl with increasing amounts of pressure. Next, you’ve got to light the tobacco properly. You can use a cigarette lighter, but using a match is recommended. It’s also suggested that you light the tobacco more than once and that you use a tamping tool to properly pack and light your pipe. I couldn’t find one of these tools, but I managed fine without one.

Once I got the process down, I enjoyed a number of pipe smoking sessions on my front porch. Later in the week, my father-in-law, a longtime cigarette smoker, gave me a nicer pipe and two bags of more expensive tobacco from Tinder Box, a tobacco store. A doctor friend of his gave him the pipe and tobacco a while back, and it was interesting to use another style of pipe and different types of tobacco.

With the posting of this article, I plan to give up pipe smoking. It was kind of cool to try, but I don’t want to get hooked on tobacco. Over time, it’s expensive and unhealthy. There are longtime smokers and tobacco users on both sides of my family, so I know that I run the risk of getting addicted if I don’t call it quits now. Plus, my wife can’t stand the idea of me smoking because it’s unhealthy and a bad example for our children. I have to admit too that I felt a little pretentious while smoking the pipe, and I couldn’t help but think that I probably didn’t look as cool as Sherlock Holmes or Gandalf the Grey. I may pick it back up years from now, maybe after I retire.

In the end, I enjoyed scratching another item off my bucket list. How many of you have tried smoking a tobacco pipe? How many of you enjoy doing so today? What type of pipe do you use? What type of tobacco do you like? Let us know in the comments section below.