Over the years I’ve been asked the question “Why Pipes?”.
It would seem that we are men and women who subscribe to a bygone age, born out of time, jaded with modern society. We miss the times when someone can ask a question at work and we can pull out a pipe to ponder before answering. When men wore hats and suits, and ties at home when relaxing. In England it would have been before jeans were imported, and people would dress up to go and get a paper.
Of course, our wives wouldn’t have had a career, other than providing a stable, well-maintained and loving home, and raising our children to be fine men and women. They would have put meals on the table and perhaps looked adoringly at us men as we sat, listening to the radio, engulfed in clouds of thick white smoke. Our job, in turn, was to provide financially for the whole family, and to help build that loving atmosphere.
I was born in 1955, so my childhood ran through the 60′s and onward, so I will have missed much of this as I grew up. Nor do I know, in this liberated age, just how well most women would react to the picture I’ve just painted. I’m sure many would feel glad we’ve moved on.
But I do know that a lot of us wish it was this way, even if the reality may have been different.
I like being out of this time. I like the ritual, the paraphernalia, the VAST range of tobaccos and shortish, straight billiards. I wear a wide-brimmed trilby (more like a fedora) and a suit to work. My shoes are polished. I have been referred to as a “throwback”, but also stopped in the street by a charity mugger (chugger) and told as I walked away from him that I was the coolest looking bloke he’d seen all day.
And I hadn’t given him any money.
