Details of the May Meeting
The traffic was terrible last month causing Neil and I to arrive uncharacteristically late to Perkins leaving us little time for our usual pre meeting smoke. We did some quick catching up with the group before heading over to dinner. As mentioned numerous times in the past, our alternating locations for dinner has not always been met with favor from all of the members. Today there was a mutiny lead by the rebellious one himself, Dock Perry, to break from our tradition and have dinner at Papa Ginos this time. No one really objected at this point and we all decided to join the mutiny. I apologize to anyone who may have tried to connect with us at Chinatown. All in all everyone seemed happy with dinner, there was plenty of seating for our group and we didn't have to worry about asking for separate checks. Not to mention we had a couple extra dollars in our pocket to boot. So we'll try Papa Gino's for awhile until people get bored with that.

With money coming in from the sale of our two SHPC blends we're finding that our treasury is growing nicely which in turn is got members talking about what we should do with the extra money that would benefit the club. Many ideas were put on the table and a committee has been set up to put together a few ideas for the club to vote on. One suggestion that was made was the suspension of club dues in 2011. The idea considered and debated with an agreement to revisit it again closer to the end of the year.

SHPC 2010 Club Pipe
Production is just about under way for the SHPC 2010 Club Pipe by Kaywoodie and we hope to have them for the July meeting. Currently we have 10 orders in and there is room for 2 more if any member or non member is interested. I will take the first two orders I receive by email by June 5th. The 2010 club pipe will be similar to the one shown here.
I am awaiting final details on payment, etc. from Bill Feuerbach and will forward that information along to those of you who have ordered one.

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Estate Pipes for Sale - at the June Meeting
After working on this for some time, I'm thrilled to finally announce that I'll be presenting a large lot of quality estate pipes courtesy of our friends at Pipesandcigars.com at this month's meeting. If we can't lure vendors to the meetings than this surely is the next best thing! If all goes well, this may become something that we can do a couple of times a year. I will be bringing pipes by Ardor, Dunhill, Ser Jacopo, Bjarne, Tim West, Mike Kabik, Nording, Castello and many others. There are many bargains here and I have no doubt that some of you will find something that's to your liking.

IMPORTANT: PLEASE BRING A CHECK MADE OUT DIRECTLY TO: "THE HABANA PREMIUM SMOKE SHOP" IF YOU'RE PLANNING ON BUYING ANYTHING. I CAN'T ACCEPT CASH AS I WILL BE MAILING THE CHECKS DIRECTLY TO THE SHOP!

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Better Days
A Series on Pipe Smoking's Nostalgic Past
                                                           By Ernie Whitenack

SHPC Member Ernie Whitenack has offered to write a series of articles about the "better days" of pipe smoking as remembered by him. We hope you enjoy these stories and look forward to them in future editions of the SHPC Gazette.

Smoking the War Away
According to the Civilian Defense Corps the glow of a cigarette and pipe could be seen clearly at bomber elevations and far to sea. And so it was, during mock air raids of WWII that "put out that cigarette," commanded by a neighborhood air raid warden, could be heard often.

The factory whistles would blow the coded warning, usually at night, and it was each person's responsibility to darken homes, stop and turn off auto lights (already with the top half of lenses painted black) and find a shelter.

Unless a home had efficient black-out curtains one was forbidden to smoke inside as well as out. The exercises often lasted a couple of hours and ended by the "all clear" whistles or sirens from the factories. The first thing seen was the flame from matches and lighters. Then, cars could be heard starting, street lights would come on (also painted black except for an inch or two at the bulb bottom) and homes were again bright active places.                                                       [Read More...]