Details of the October Meeting
Due to a scheduling conflict at our usual meeting location, we met at the Sportman's Club last month which is always a nice change of pace. It tends to get a little smokier but it was still warm enough to open the door and air things out a bit. If you get board, there's a pool table, tv and dart board to keep your occupied. Ernie and I worked a little of the rust out of our dart throwing arms while a couple others knocked the pool balls around.

Neil was showing off the two new Vauen pipes that he recently purchased. If you're looking for something that's a little less mainstream from what you're used to smoking, you might want to take a look at what Vauen has to offer.

2011 SHPC Club Pipe Update
All orders have been placed and the production of the SHPC 2011 Club Pipe by Mastro Beraldi has begun. We do not know when they will be finished yet but will pass that info along as soon as we have it. If you haven't already made payment, bring it with you to the November meeting. If you are unable to attend the meeting, please be sure to send a check to Rick Frederics asap.   We'd also like to thank Mike again for coordinating and seeing through this rather lengthy process.  

Chapter 3: Misty Murder
Resting under a cloth in bottom of the box was a Webley Mark IV, the famous and powerful top-break, self-extracting revolver of the British military. Brigadier Ashley Moss, Scott's counterpart in British Military Intelligence with whom he once shared an office, presented the pistol to Scott the day he left France for home and separation. The revolver was beautifully engraved thanks to the Sergeant Major, a master gunsmith, in charge of the British armory in France who also fashioned a suppressor for the gun. Scott took the revolver in hand, hefted it, spun the cylinder and placed it back in the box. Perhaps another day, he thought.
Scott grabbed an old, overly-used and blackened pipe, a bulldog, as he left through a rear door and placed it in his mouth; pulled a battered brown fedora low on his head and vaulted the low fence into a neighbor's garden. Late afternoon at this time of spring brought an early dusk with lengthening shadows, helping to make his short trip to the service entrance of the State House un-noticed.
Read Chapter 3 >>

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Early Pipe Poetry

Whene'er I take my pipe and stuff it
And smoke to pass the time away,
My thoughts, as I sit there and puff it,
Dwell on a picture sad and gray:
It teaches me that very like
Am I myself unto my pipe.

Like me, this pipe so fragrant burning
Is made of naught but earth and clay;
To earth I too shall be returning.
It falls and, ere I'd think to say,
It breaks in two before my eyes;
In store for me a like fate lies.

No stain the pipe's hue yet doth darken;
It remains white. Thus do I know
That when to death's call I must harken
My body, too, all pale will grow.
To black beneath the sod 'twil turn,
Likewise the pipe, if oft it burn.

Or when the pipe is fairly glowing,
Behold then, instantaneously,
The smoke off into thin air going,
Till naught but ash is left to see.
Man's fame likewise away will burn
And unto dust his body turn.

How oft it happens when one's smoking:
The stopper's missing from its shelf,
And one goes with one's finger poking
Into the bowl and burns oneself.
If in the pipe such pain doth dwell,
How hot must be the pains of Hell.

Thus o'er my pipe, in contemplation
Of such things, I can constantly
Indulge in fruitful meditation,
And so, puffing contentedly,
On land, on sea, at home, abroad,
I smoke my pipe and worship God.

Johann Sebastian Bach