I remember watching my dad and my uncles roll their own cigarettes. It had all the elements of a sacred, righteous ritual. Cigarette papers came in a thin little pack, peeling off like cards off the top of the deck while tobacco came in a cotton fabric pouch with a draw string at the top. I could take a page to describe the process; simultaneously manipulating the paper and the pouch, applying the tobacco much like planting seeds in a furrow, then the lick and the stick.
My mother relentlessly disallowed staring at people. Still I couldn’t help myself and cigarette rolling would equate to spectator sport with modern day Olympic gymnastics. With some foreshadowing I could have scored them on a scale of ten. One would, at least I did, watch the thing unfold intently. If anything unexpected or poorly done were to occur, I noticed. My dad was good, better than most but then he was ambidextrous.
The part I was most attentive to was the pouch transfer. Once the paper had been positioned and the tobacco loaded, you would lift the open pouch to your face, take the pull string in your teeth and close the pouch with a sure and steady pull. At the same time you must kept the half rolled cigarette balanced with two fingers and thumb of the other hand. The closed pouch would slip into a pocket somewhere and the free hand would be available then to complete the ritual. To me, the pouch transfer was crucial to the overall performance, much like getting height in an aerial summersault or sticking a landing in gymnastics.
I fixated on people smoking. For some reason I looked down on cigarettes as low class. It might be done very well but there was nothing elite about it. But pipes were different. My Grandpa Roy smoked pipe and his ritual seemed equally sacred and righteous. It took a long time for his pipe to be made ready and it carried as much imagery as lick and stick. He would tap the bowl agains his palm, removing ash left from the last smoke, then with more force agains the heel of his shoe. It would be time to unfold the smallest blade of his pocket knife and begin scraping ash away from the inside of the briar wood bowl. The science of briar wood pipes is interesting even if the ultimate result disappears in the wind.
He could scrape the inside of his pipe until you might think he was trying to whittle it away but the wood is so tight grained, so hard; very slowly, he got all of the burned in tobacco ash out, making the reloaded smoke burn cool to the taste. Then the knife went back in his pocket and the tobacco can came out, a small, flask like tin with a hinged lid. Holding the pipe in his funnel shaped hand he tapped tobacco down into the bowl. Any stray shreds of tobacco were handily ushered into the bowl and tamped down by his thumb on the same hand. He thumb-tamped and rotated the bowl with long practiced skill.
Lighting up was predictably slow with long, deep draws. When he pulled, the flame of his match was drawn down into the bowl, only to flare up when he exhaled. Once lit, he shook the match so slowly it was more like waving a flag. That old man, pipe clenched in his teeth, waved a burning match around with his right as if it were High Mass in some exotic Pagan religion. He could draw on that instrument for a full minute with no sign of effort, no sign of smoke. Then with a wisp of blue smoke at the bowl, more of that same blue smoke found its way out between his lips and washed up over his face. An “Amen” would have seemed appropriate.
When I was ten, maybe eleven; a friend and I went on a week long, maybe ten days of smoking cigarettes we had stolen from our dads. Jerry questioned how long we could keep stealing cigarettes without being caught and we had to rethink the adventure. It was a no-brainer for me. No matter how grown up it might make me feel, it made every part of my body revolt. He went on to smoke the rest of his life; cancer got him several years ago, don’t know the details but it doesn’t change anything. My last smoke was in 1950 and I expect that data point will not change. But I still watch people suck on those long, white, filtered, pre rolled in a flip-top box cigarettes and make smoke come out their nose. It is remarkable but so are dogs that eat their own poop.
My mother relentlessly disallowed staring at people. Still I couldn’t help myself and cigarette rolling would equate to spectator sport with modern day Olympic gymnastics. With some foreshadowing I could have scored them on a scale of ten. One would, at least I did, watch the thing unfold intently. If anything unexpected or poorly done were to occur, I noticed. My dad was good, better than most but then he was ambidextrous.
The part I was most attentive to was the pouch transfer. Once the paper had been positioned and the tobacco loaded, you would lift the open pouch to your face, take the pull string in your teeth and close the pouch with a sure and steady pull. At the same time you must kept the half rolled cigarette balanced with two fingers and thumb of the other hand. The closed pouch would slip into a pocket somewhere and the free hand would be available then to complete the ritual. To me, the pouch transfer was crucial to the overall performance, much like getting height in an aerial summersault or sticking a landing in gymnastics.
I fixated on people smoking. For some reason I looked down on cigarettes as low class. It might be done very well but there was nothing elite about it. But pipes were different. My Grandpa Roy smoked pipe and his ritual seemed equally sacred and righteous. It took a long time for his pipe to be made ready and it carried as much imagery as lick and stick. He would tap the bowl agains his palm, removing ash left from the last smoke, then with more force agains the heel of his shoe. It would be time to unfold the smallest blade of his pocket knife and begin scraping ash away from the inside of the briar wood bowl. The science of briar wood pipes is interesting even if the ultimate result disappears in the wind.
He could scrape the inside of his pipe until you might think he was trying to whittle it away but the wood is so tight grained, so hard; very slowly, he got all of the burned in tobacco ash out, making the reloaded smoke burn cool to the taste. Then the knife went back in his pocket and the tobacco can came out, a small, flask like tin with a hinged lid. Holding the pipe in his funnel shaped hand he tapped tobacco down into the bowl. Any stray shreds of tobacco were handily ushered into the bowl and tamped down by his thumb on the same hand. He thumb-tamped and rotated the bowl with long practiced skill.
Lighting up was predictably slow with long, deep draws. When he pulled, the flame of his match was drawn down into the bowl, only to flare up when he exhaled. Once lit, he shook the match so slowly it was more like waving a flag. That old man, pipe clenched in his teeth, waved a burning match around with his right as if it were High Mass in some exotic Pagan religion. He could draw on that instrument for a full minute with no sign of effort, no sign of smoke. Then with a wisp of blue smoke at the bowl, more of that same blue smoke found its way out between his lips and washed up over his face. An “Amen” would have seemed appropriate.
When I was ten, maybe eleven; a friend and I went on a week long, maybe ten days of smoking cigarettes we had stolen from our dads. Jerry questioned how long we could keep stealing cigarettes without being caught and we had to rethink the adventure. It was a no-brainer for me. No matter how grown up it might make me feel, it made every part of my body revolt. He went on to smoke the rest of his life; cancer got him several years ago, don’t know the details but it doesn’t change anything. My last smoke was in 1950 and I expect that data point will not change. But I still watch people suck on those long, white, filtered, pre rolled in a flip-top box cigarettes and make smoke come out their nose. It is remarkable but so are dogs that eat their own poop.
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