Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing

by Patrick F. McManus

  There were a couple of dozen sops in my life, all loved passionately, but Bun always referred to the many as if they were one. That pipe! That stinky old pipe! In regard to the word “stinky,” I must point out that “stink” is a relative term. What is stink to one person is heavenly aroma to another, particularly a pipe smoker or, possibly, a junkyard dog, whose discriminating tastes some think I share.

  What has got me to thinking about pipes today is that I have just read The Ultimate Pipe Book by Richard Carleton Hacker. True, Mr. Hacker does have an unfortunate last name for the author of a book on pipe smoking, but it is his real name, and he is not about to conceal it behind a sissy pseudonym merely to escape an irony. Mr. Hacker is a fine writer and writes of pipes with a devotion that can be appreciated only by a person of great passions, namely a pipe smoker, past or present.

  I don’t know Mr. Hacker, but I imagine him in a smoking jacket, seated in a paneled, book-lined study, puffing contentedly away on an elegant briar or meerschaum as he pens his next scholarly work on, yes, pipes. His thoughts and the aroma of his English tobacco blend as one as he searches through his vast reservoir of knowledge on the culture and history of pipes and pipe tobaccos, seeking that next perfect but elusive sentence. Well, I, too, have a pipe history, and I hereby offer it up to Mr. Hacker to add to his next tome, should he so choose.

  My introduction to smoking occurred at age seven. Crazy Eddie Muldoon and I had pursued our innocent hobby of collecting cigarette butts from along the highway for several months, with no particular use for them in mind. Then one day it occurred to us, like a bolt out of the blue, that we might actually smoke the butts! We had stored them in, appropriately, a cigar box. When we had accumulated a sufficient supply, namely a full cigar box, we went up on the mountain near our homes, found comfortable seats on the edge of a rock cliff, and gazing happily out over the checkerboard landscape below, smoked up almost our entire collection in about an hour, although the amount of elapsed time is rather vague to me now (as it was then, for that matter). I don’t know about Eddie, but as for myself, I never again smoked a cigarette, nor have I had any desire to do so. Perhaps it was because of the odd sensation of having an ice pick driven through my head from one temple to the other. Or perhaps it was fright over the pale, greenish blur that had become Eddie’s face, as he lay on his back moaning something about his imminent death, thereby removing from the realm of idle speculation my last doubt that my own demise was close at hand. I will spare the reader graphic details of our illness, except to mention in a general way that four or five times we were turned inside out and back again. Eddie went home in such a confused state that he forgot to get himself turned right side out and gave his parents a tremendous shock. (There’s nothing more disgusting than an inside-out person.) As for myself, anytime I was jostled during the next week, a little puff of smoke went up.

  I took up pipe smoking, at age twenty-four, mostly for the sake of appearance. Even Bun said the pipe gave me a look of scholarly distinction. It was fortunate that it did, because shortly after taking up the pipe I was hired as an instructor at a university. Looking back, I believe that the chairman of the English Department must have hired me solely on the basis that I smoked a pipe, for that was about my only qualification. The chairman smoked a pipe, too. A distinguished scholar himself, he must have felt that my pipe was evidence of great but as of yet undetectable professorial potential. The pipe carried me all the way through to full professorhood, without anyone ever discovering the truth. Oh sure, there were suspicions, but nothing was ever proved.

  In addition to contributing to success in one’s career, the pipe is a wonderful instrument for the enhancement of fishing. It is an especially useful accessory for fly-fishing, in that its mere presence in the mouth suggests to one’s fellow anglers an easy competence. Even though my own fly casting has been said to resemble an old lady fighting off a bee with a broom handle, I discovered that merely by my hauling out a pipe, lighting up, and puffing out great clouds of smoke, other anglers on the stream were instantly impressed and would begin asking technical questions of me. Oh, not about fly-fishing, but other things, such as did I know who hit the most home runs in the 1952 World Series, stuff like that. I suppose they might even have asked me about fly-fishing, except for my occasionally getting my pipe caught in the line. I once cast one of my favorite briars halfway across the Madison River and received a round of applause from the other anglers, but that is something that shouldn’t be attempted by beginners. Practice at home first.

  Not all of my experiences with pipes were so pleasant. One time my nephew Shaun bought a new motorcycle and offered me a ride. Chuckling as I ignited a fresh pipeful of tobacco, I declined, mostly for the reason that Shaun had a long history of luring me into serious predicaments. When he was about age ten, for example, he persuaded me to take him fishing on a stream not far from his home. It was late in the season and I knew that the stream would have been heavily fished and was not likely to produce a strike, let alone a fish. Mostly to silence his pleading, I drove Shaun up to the stream. Much to my surprise, both he and I caught big fat rainbows on our first few casts.

  “Wow!” I exclaimed. “This is terrific, Shaun! I can’t believe the fishing is so good here this late in the season! It’s amazing this stream hasn’t been fished out by now.”

  “What’s amazing about that?” Shaun said, casting out into a shadowy pool. “The crick’s been closed to fishing all year.”

  Upon hearing this news, the big poacher dragged the little poacher into the car and fled back home, pursued all the way by phantom game wardens. I was so nervous I could barely still the shaking in my hands long enough to light my pipe. Even then I wasn’t entirely successful, because a few seconds later it became apparent I was smoking part of my mustache.

  At the time of the motorcycle ride invitation, Shaun, against all family expectations, had reached age eighteen.

  “Don’t be chicken, Unc,” he challenged me. “Hop on behind. I want to show you how great it runs.”

  “Oh, all right,” I said. Pipe clamped in my teeth, I climbed on. “Just up to the corner and back, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Roarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! We went past the corner at Mach 2. The wind tore at my head. I clamped Shaun around the belly in a vicious bear hug, unable to risk turning loose long enough to reach his throat.

  That is when the wind sucked the fiery dottle out of my pipe bowl and deposited it on the top of my head!

  “How do you like it so far?” Shaun shouted.

  “Stop, you fool,” I shouted back. “My head’s on fire!”

  “Ho ho ho, what a joker! So you think this is fast, do you, Unc? Just wait until I take it out of low gear.”

  The wind presently removed the glowing dottle from my head, but not until it had burned a round, monkish hole down through my hair. The flaming chunk of tobacco couldn’t have been on my head for more than a few seconds. But it seemed longer. Much longer. Time is relative, particularly when your head is on fire.

  That and similar experiences added to Bun’s store of reasons as to why I should give up my pipe. She once even accused me of thinking more of my pipe than of her.

  “You’d rather sit up there in your office puffing away on that sop than talk to me,” she snapped. “It’s true, isn’t it? Well? ell? Why don’t you answer?”

  “I’m thinking,” I said. “No, after carefully weighing the pros and cons, I must say that I do prefer you over my pipe. No contest, really.”

  Even though my affection for Bun had come out ahead of that for my pipe, she was not satisfied. Apparently, she would have preferred that I skip over any thoughtful consideration of the matter and simply issue a snap judgment in her favor. Women have always been a puzzle to me.

  As a consequence of this little marital misunderstanding, I boxed up all my pipes and locked them in a filing cabinet drawer, just to prove to Bun that I loved her more than them. That made her happy. The strange thing was,
I scarcely missed the pipes. Sometimes I would go for minutes on end without even thinking of them. Every time I walked by the filing cabinet, I could hear the little devils calling out to me in their pitiful little pipey voices: “Pat, Pat, let us out! We’ll be good. It’s dark in here.” But I would merely laugh and ignore their pleas. Quite frankly, I was amazed at my own willpower. Never before in my life had I displayed any strength of character whatsoever.

  Then I went off to Georgia on a hunt with my old friend Charlie Elliott, a writer whose sterling prose has adorned the pages of magazines for half a century and more. Charlie, as might be expected of a Southern gentleman of his stature, smoked a pipe.

  “Where’s your pipe?” Charlie demanded.

  “I gave it up,” I said. “I’m working on improving my character.”

  Charlie claimed not to have any character to improve and went on happily smoking his pipe. One evening Charlie and I and some other fellows were sitting around the stove in a little turkey-woods cabin exchanging stories, some of them possibly true. Charlie got out his pipe and lit up, and then a couple of other fellows got out their pipes, and pretty soon the hunting cabin was filled with a fine cloud of smoldering pipe tobacco. It smelled of woods and turkeys and good stories and hunting and fishing and …

  “Stop!” I cried, leaping to my feet. “I’ve got to find a pipe!”

  “All right, calm down,” one of the other hunters said. “We can find a pipe store in the morning.”

  “No! “I shouted. “Now!”

  “Well, shucks,” Charlie drawled. “I reckon we can find a decent corncob at that gas station we passed twenty miles up the road. Let’s go get Pat a pipe. Won’t take but an hour.”

  So we all piled into a car and drove to the gas station. The gas station man said he had sold all his corncobs, but there was a little store over in the next county that carried them. We drove to the store, Charlie and I ignoring cranky sounds emanating from the backseat. The store was closed. I could see a little card of corncob pipes through the window. So close but yet so far. Then Charlie remembered a little all-night shopping center a hundred or so miles into Alabama. He said he was sure I could find a pipe there. Upon hearing this, the other hunters burst into open rebellion, but Charlie fought them off and retained control of the car. He understood the serious need of a man caught in the grip of pipe denial.

  We headed out of Georgia and into Alabama, despite much grousing and muttering from the backseat. At last, we found an all-night store in Alabama that sold pipes, and I bought one, a cheap little corncob apparently whittled into a pipe by an eight-year-old child with an excessive number of thumbs. It was, in short, quite wonderful. While our companions snored in the backseat, Charlie and I puffed contentedly away on our pipes as we cruised back toward Georgia. The sunrise, its golden rays glinting off the windshield, was beautiful. The whole morning was beautiful. Life was beautiful. Of course, it almost always is, when you’re in the company of a good friend and your pipe.

  It has been a long while now since I last smoked a pipe. Even that little Alabama pipe is locked away in a file drawer. Sometimes, late at night, hunched before a computer screen, I hear it calling me in its Alabama drawl. “Pat! Pat! Let me out! Let me out!” I hope Mr. Hacker addresses that problem in his next book.

  Sam Spud and the Case of the Maltese Fly

  (Once again the master sleuth triumphs over the forces of evil and an IQ of 38.)

  Business had been slow at my detective agency—five years and not one client. I was beginning to think it was time to take up another line of work. Suddenly, everything changed.

  It was one of those gray, dismal February mornings when tedium hangs in the air like smog. Or maybe it was smog hanging in the air like tedium. I got up and shut the window. Smog, all right. I didn’t think it could be tedium, because my brassy receptionist, Flossie, and I had been killing a little time together, if you know what I mean. She was a former chorus girl and had legs that wouldn’t quit.

  “Would you quit with the legs!” I snapped at her. “I hate slow tap dancing. ‘Tap . . . . . tap . . . . . tap . . . . . tap.’ Cripes, Flossie, if you weren’t eighty-seven years old, I’d think you were doing it just to annoy me.”

  “Age abuse! Age abuse!” she shouted. “Anyway, it takes you so long to make your play, I could do my whole tap routine between turns. A person who’s spelling-disabled should kill time with something other than Scrabble.”

  While I was trying to think of a clever rejoinder, the door burst open. A panting, highly agitated gentleman stood there glancing about, a crazed look on his face.

  “Something I can do for you, bud?” I asked.

  “Excuse me!” he gasped. “I thought this was a men’s rest room.”

  “It is,” I said. “But the rent’s what I can afford. There’s another one down the hall you can use, if you don’t mind a few rats and the occasional black widow spider.” I forgot to mention the janitor’s pet boa constrictor behind the toilet.

  He rushed out and returned a few minutes later, obviously much relieved. Boa constrictors have their uses, I guess.

  “Say, you’re Sam Spud, aren’t you?” he said. “I hear you’re a dick.”

  “Some folks think so,” I replied. “Actually, I prefer the term ‘private eye.’ What can I do for you?”

  “First of all, my name is P. Elmo Figglesworth.”

  “I’m very sorry,” I said, “but I can’t help you there.”

  “It’s not the name, you fool,” he said pleasantly. “It’s my wife. She’s disappeared!”

  “Aha!” I said.

  “What do you mean, ‘Aha!’?”

  “Nothing. It’s just a common private-eye expression. So, your wife has disappeared. I deduce you want me to find and return her to you. I get fifty bucks a day, and there’s a small deposit for returns.”

  “No, no, I don’t want her returned! If you’ll just shut up for a moment, I’ll explain.”

  Figglesworth then related a sordid tale so long and boring that Flossie and I went out for lunch in the middle of it. When we returned, he was just getting to the summary. As far as I could make out, he suspected his wife had eloped with either the milkman or the postman, possibly both. I deduced the milkman as the probable perp, because of the note Figglesworth had found. It was in his wife’s handwriting and said, “Two quarts of skim milk, a pint of fat-free cottage cheese, and my bags are packed and in the trunk of the car.”

  Fat-free cottage cheese! The woman was vicious. I could see why Figglesworth didn’t want her back. But here was the kicker. His wife and the culprit had also made off with the Maltese fly!

  “The Maltese fly?”

  “Yes,” said Figglesworth. “As you probably know, it was one of the last works of the great flytier Leonardo Maltese. It’s priceless. I’m willing to pay anything for its return.”

  “Did I mention I get a thousand bucks a day and a large deposit for returns?” I said. “Ah, I see you have photographs. Good. Let’s have a look at them. So, this is the milkman. Hmmm. Mustache, mean little eyes, muscular build, obviously a dangerous character and … Pardon me? Aha! It’s not a photo of the milkman. In that case, I deduce that the main object of interest for the milkman was the Maltese fly, with your spouse coming in a distant second and possibly only for heavy lifting.”

  Figglesworth concurred with my deduction. “There is, however, the chance that the milkman has no idea about the worth of the Maltese fly and merely scooped it up with the rest of my fishing tackle. In that case, it’s possible he might actually try to fish with it and release the curse.”

  “The curse?”

  “Yes! It’s terrible. Anyone who actually fishes with the Maltese fly will instantly have all his skin fall off and, also, for the rest of his life will have very poor luck with dry flies.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “I’ll take the case. What’s on my schedule, Flossie?”

  “A dead fly and some dust.”

  “Luckily for y
ou, Figglesworth, I’ve had some recent cancellations and am free to take up your case immediately.”

  Figglesworth gave me a photo of the Maltese fly and departed, absentmindedly forgetting about the return deposit, even as he managed to shake Flossie loose from his leg as he went out the door. I suppose Flossie thought I might use the deposit to pay her back salary, but I happened to know she was already knocking down $300 a month from Social Security.

  The Maltese fly was spectacular in its plumage, no doubt at the expense of more than one endangered species. There would be no trouble recognizing it. I slipped into my detective garb and headed for the door.

  “I see you’re packin’ a rod,” Flossie said. “Looks a little light, if you ask me.”

  “It’s a Loomis,” I said. “A five-weight, two-piece graphite eight-footer. It can handle anything I run into, except possibly a steelhead over twenty pounds.”

  I stopped just outside the door and then stuck my head back in. “You’re just jealous!” I said.

  “What?”

  That’s one of the problems of playing Scrabble with Flossie. Every time I come up with a clever rejoinder, she’s too obtuse to notice. The woman is slow.

  Now my only problem was to find the milkman, one Rupert Holstein, and then separate him from the Maltese fly. As logic dictated, my first stop was the local dairy. A receptionist showed me into the office of the manager, Mr. Jack Hammer, a large and obviously irritable gentleman. “And you are … ?” he said.

  “Spud’s the name,” I replied. “And danger’s my game, excluding anything remotely life threatening. I’m looking for a Holstein.”

  “You’ve come to the right place,” he said. “So what’s your interest in a Holstein?”