Clay pipe!

I know, it’s not a meerschaum pipe, it’s a clay pipe. World of difference. One holds up, the other shatters in the hands of pals who just don’t know their own strength when stoned. Or just don’t know the difference between a table top and a thin air. Whatever. Fragile is the word. Cheap, too.

It’s the weather right now that reminded me of that damn pipe. Couldn’t been thoughts of my dad as I have precious few of those. But to his credit he was a pipe smoker back when it was cool to smoke from briars. I found a humidor and a fist full of old pipes in the attic just about the time I was getting to be a real pain-in-the-ass teenager. Didn’t venture too far with them at first but once I was able to buy honest to goodness pipe tobacco from the mall store I didn’t look back. Took that baggie of fine shredded tobacco goodness and fired up that pipe behind the garage. Didn’t get sick, not the way I did with my mom’s Tarentons. It was smooth, flavorful and aromatic, a far cry from the stinky Pall Malls or Kools that were blown around the kitchen table.

Smoking that briar changed things. I think I "got" my old man right then and there. Sure, I wasn’t going to run out and buy a bongo or start listening to Andy Williams or buy a cardigan (the cardigan kick was later on) but I got a touch of his sense of cool, or what it meant to be cool back in his day.

But that wasn’t the point. It was the weather outside. Right now I am feeling what we call back in Cali a Pineapple Express kind of moment. The weather is balmy, sweet, almost tropical. Practically springtime. A far cry from the sub zero degree weather we were having only but a few days ago, practically freaky. But this weather is soaring along ahead of all the wet weather that they are having on the coast. Record breaking stuff, flooding rivers, inches of rain, feet of snow. Reminds me all too much of the weather I normally experienced as a lad growing up in SoCal. No droughts back then, just big heavy rain every winter. Breech the LA river kind of rain. Stay in and read kind of weather.

Back when I was starting this mota stuff I was still sucking on those briars but felt that a “real” pipe of my own would be better. I had already gone through a glass pipe (shattered in the glove box by a friend of a friend) and a corn cob pipe (purchased for 99 cents at Alpha-Beta) but I wanted something that would go along with my tripped out, stoner sensibility. I have no idea why I ever thought it would hold up but the moment I saw that clay pipe in the pipe shop I knew I had to have it. It was a delight to look at and a wonder to hold. Light, airy, easy as a candy cane to break. I looked at the sizes they had for sale and being the macho kind of boy I was I decided that bigger, longer, was better. What made it even more special was the box in came in. I have no idea why but that box made it feel like it was the best thing since sliced bread.

The maiden voyage of that pipe was it’s last, a very Titanic sort of thing. I gathered together my stoner pals on a Saturday afternoon. The swap meet was always closed on rainy days and that day was wet. None of us even thought to dare to smoke around the house at that stage in the game so we drove across town to Santiago Park and rolled down into the parking lot, thinking shaded and out of sight was not a not bad thing for a car load of dope heads to be seeking out. The thing was, that parking lot was really the bed of Santiago Creek.. The lot was paved and lined with stone abutments which made it seem safe but it was also at that moment at the edge of being at flood stage. We didn’t notice any barricades up so we rolled down and parked and proceeded to get high.

Back in those days we had plenty of Scott’s Green on hand, a nice, big fluffy bag of shake that seemed to always keep on giving. We loaded up bowl after bowl in that clay pipe, looking like a bunch of sissy Catholic school boy Hobbits sucking away on that long and ridiculously narrow stem. The pipe went back and forth and back again. Uncle Max, Alex the lady killer, some barrio boys and me, getting almost too wasted to smoke, and probably way to wasted to drive. But the hour came around that Uncle Max had to be getting back home to get ready for his altar boy duty. We fired up the car and then, through our stoner googled eyes, noticed that the drive was one-way and that the only way out was to cross the stream.

These days I would just say the hell with it, turn around, back up, whatever. No way would I cross a fast rolling body of water. Back then I thought that my V-8 was going to take us through just fine. Well, we powered it up, hit the water around 40 mph, splashed through like a Higgins boat and just barely made it through the water to the other side of the parking lot. I am sure that we were slipping and sliding for a moment but all those boys in the car helped that ride of ours to gain purchase on the cobble stones. Somehow we were able to cruise up the ramp and out of harm’s way. I just like to think of it as stoners luck.

I am sure that when we hit the water we screamed like little girls, especially when we realized how deep that water really was. Somehow in the excitement we all lost track of that pipe. We hit the streets right outside the park and knew that we were not out of the woods yet because the brakes didn’t catch for the first half mile. It was crazy times but we all managed to make it home in one piece. Well, we did, but not the pipe. Later on I found it on the floor of the back seat, broken up into three or four pieces. I knew when I bought it that it was a bad deal but like anything else you jones for I just had to buy it. It lasted all of one smoking session. I think I got pissy at my pals for breaking it but later on laughed about when it came to me that it was a much better thing to have lost that pipe than our lives. 

Now that I am "older and wiser" I know how easy it is for a car to get washed away in a fast moving body of water. Back then I didn’t know jack and thought it was a lark. Boy, were we a bunch of stupid punks or what.

Looking out the window makes me want to be outside, grooving on the warm temps and the breeze. Reading the papers makes me want to go home and be one with the rain and the region. It sounds like I am just being a spoiled mess, aching for that old school pineapple express.

Sigh. I guess I will just have to go down to the dispensary and pick up a gram of Pineapple Express and console myself with that instead. If I can’t have one the other will just have to do!

Salud!