A Pipe Dream For Days of Old

This Sunday brings us Father's Day, a day that inevitably conjures up dad in his armchair, reading the paper, Sparky chewing his slippers — or dad in his apron, grilling the steaks, Sparky chewing his calf. This is the day we see dad not as he is, but as he was, in an ad for Schlitz Beer, circa 1959. The only thing missing?

A pipe.

Dads used to smoke pipes, I swear they did. Mine didn't, but my uncles sure did, and so did everyone else's a generation or so ago. Then — something happened.

While cigars and cigarettes burned brightly on, it's as if pipes fell off the end table and nobody ever bothered looking for them under the Life magazines.

This is odd, as most of the women I know not only find pipe smoke less objectionable than cigar or cigarette smoke, some of them actually, almost, kind of like it. And that's because, often enough, it brings back … dad.

"I bought my dad cherry-flavored tobacco for his pipe when I was in third or fourth grade," a sentimental Amy Power said. "It was a Father's Day gift. I loved that smell."

Chuck Stanion's wife likes those so-called aromatic tobaccos, too — apple or even chocolate scented — although Chuck prefers straight Virginia tobacco, aged 10 years. Then again, you'd expect him to be picky, as he's the editor of Pipes & Tobacco Magazine.

"We figure there are about 1 million pipe smokers in America," Mr. Stanion said. While that's a substantial number, he, too, wonders what happened to the rest of them.

"After the 1964 Surgeon General's report came out, there was a big influx of pipe smokers because the report said that pipe smokers actually lived longer than the nonsmokers," Mr. Stanion said.

"Now those numbers have changed," he added. But he still thinks there was some truth in them.

So does the owner of the Habana Premium Cigar Shop in Albany, Scott Bendett.

"If you saw some of the fossils who come in here for their pipes … ," he said. "If this is so horrible for you, how come this guy is 99 years old?"

Mr. Bendett believes pipes fell out of favor simply because of the time they take. "When your husband comes home, does he sit on the couch and wait for dinner?" he asked. "That's what my dad did. He didn't do dishes. He didn't do anything. He had time to sit around and smoke a pipe."

The 45 minutes it takes to do just that means that office workers can't duck out for a pipe break, either. And even though it takes just as long to smoke a stogie, men manage to find the time for that because they smoke while doing other things. Like bragging.

"You may feel collegial if you and another guy light pipes together," longtime pipe smoker Robert Laird said. "But you don't get that us-men-are-on-top-of-the-world feeling that lighting cigars with the guys gives you."

At Keens Steakhouse on 36th Street, you can find about 90,000 pipes, some hanging from the ceiling, that have been there since the 1940s, or earlier. Until the 1970s, Keens served as a "pipe club," where members stored their fragile clay pipes and checked them out from time to time for a smoke.

Keens's general manager, Bonnie Jenkins, has to reach back decades herself just to conjure up the memory of a family member smoking. "I think I remember my grandfather having a bunch of pipes and — " her voice lit up, "I even remember my dad having one!"

That's the picture many folks will be conjuring up on Sunday: Dad, his hair still thick, pulling on a pipe. The smoke curls up, seeping its way into memory, along with the smell of the steaks, the slippers and, God love him, Sparky.

Here's to any wisps that remain.