Details of the April Meeting
A little change of pace for the April meeting. Due to a scheduling conflict we needed to meet at an alternate location this month. This turned out to be a nice chance of pace since we had access to pool table and a TV to watch the Sox game. But we're back at the usual location this month.

Neil and I had the opportunity to spend a little extra time at Perkin's this month and it was nice to not have to be limited to just an hour. We enjoyed some good conversation as we smoked our pipe or cigar before heading over to Bertucci's for dinner.

Thanks to all of you who brought in pipes, tobacco and accessories for Adam in Afghanistan. We had a nice collection to send him and hopefully, Eric has packaged that all up and shipped it out to him. Those of you who were unable to or forgot to bring something this month don't worry, we'll send out another care package to Adam in the future.

We also want to thank Derek for contributing the smoking jacket to the raffle which was won by Joel. Congrats!

Good news to all of you who have been wanting to buy some SHPC apparel. We finally got the new SHPC logo digitized and will look into getting more shirts made soon. It looks like we'll be going with a denim shirt again this year. Here is a digital sample of how it will look.

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Better Days
A Series on Pipe Smoking's Nostalgic Past
                                                    Joe Raymaker
Ernie has been feeling a little under the weather the past couple of weeks and was not up to sending this month's installment of "Better Days." But a few months ago I mentioned having a conversation with old timer Joe Raymaker from Washington state who was interested in information about the club. He sounded like someone who had a tale or two of his own about pipe smoking and agreed to send us a few words. Thanks for filling in Joe and Happy Birthday.

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Howdy!
Smoking laws are Draconian, whatever that means. There is a nice tobacco shop in the Silverdale Mall, about ten minutes from me, good selection.
There's now a law that tobacco CANNOT be shipped into Washington state unless it goes to a dealer, and there are "agreements" between the state and various carriers like UPS, that they will not ship tobacco in or out, from or to a private address. UPS told me "if you are sending tobacco, don't tell us; call it something else".
Major tobacco suppliers ignore that, and don't use a "suspicious" return address. But USPS ISN'T going to allow any tobacco nazi to examine a federally controlled package.

Tobacco stories:
When I began my federal career as a negotiator for the Air Force at Boeing, we could still smoke in the office, and all of us did. I used to fire up my pipe and start coughing!
And so did all my neighbors, it tasted awful, like burning rubber. Finally I went to my boss, also a pipe smoker, and told him I was going to ship the whole can back to Half and Half. He took a pinch of the tobacco from the can and dropped it on his desk and several pieces bounced! The two jokers that were my trainers had chopped up a LOT of rubber bands and put them in the can. The Colonel later called me to his office asking how i felt about that. Was I upset? I said that I thought it a great practical joke,
that they wouldn't have done it if they didn't like me and think us all good friends.

In those days my desk was REALLY cluttered, so I had the habit of shaking a match once and tossing it in the waste basket behind me. One morning I tossed it on top of a bunch of un-noticed
carbon paper (yes, I am ancient). There was a helluva SWOOSH and flames shooting a foot or so in the air, and my neighbor stuffed his waste basket on top of mine. On my way home I got a decent ashtray.

That's it from the left coast; use the stories as you wish, and all royalties go to Sarah Palin to support her run for the Presidency! (Good grief, Charlie Browne!!!).

JR, seventy-five on Feb 23rd!