PCA Magazine Winter 2020

58 PCA The Magazine | WINTER 2020 PREMIUMCIGARS.ORG BY WI LL I AM C . NELSON The Pipe | H Three Cheers for Corn Cob Pipes HOW DID IT COME TO THIS? I stand in awe of all the collected pipe stuff amassed in my cave. Not so much the pipe collection itself—at least not in terms of sheer numbers. I’ve got a couple of S. Bangs and a couple of BBBs and two precious Dunhill billiards that smoke like a dream, and an old Charatan Supreme that merits praise, and assorted other treasures. My sole Viggo Nielsen contends for top spot in any beauty contest. The collection in regular rotation amounts to 24 pipes on a two-tier rack; and there are maybe a dozen other worthies tucked away in desk drawers here and there in the house, and in my car ... and in various jacket pockets. You know how it is. But I am confident that having kept my total pipe count under 40 keeps me within the confines of the sane, for I have seen the astounding pipe stockpiles of some of you dyed-in-the-wool nuts out there. Rather, it is more my tobacco stash that has grown out of all bounds of the reasonable, and prompts friends to ask me what the heck I am doing. By the time you read this page I will have turned 61 years old, so I’ll surely never live long enough to smoke all of the wondrous blends stashed away in my cabinets. And I keep buying! How to account for it? Who or what takes the blame for starting me down this road to happy obsessive compulsion? Well, I can tell you to a certainty what did it. I am holding it in my left hand right now, and typing with my right. A particular corn cob pipe is the culprit, a pipe I bought in 1977 in a tourist gift shop in the Painted Desert of Arizona. It’s hard to — Singing the praises of an American icon in the pipe world