Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1911-05-17
CULTVATING THE
CORN FOR COB PIPES
Newark Call.)

Newark Call)
Every inyeterate pipe smoker has
collection of from three to a dozen
pipes that are as dear to him as a little
girls highly cherished family of dolls.
When a visitor calls he is sure to ex-
pound the joys of pipe smoking and
take down from it's rack and point out
with affection his fayorite meerschaum
brier or clay as the best one he ever
saw"
No actuarial statistics regarding the
life of pipes has been compiled. If
pipe fails to turn out satisfactory it's
career is comparatively brief one
But if pipe suits the smokers taste
it becomes a cherished companion and
he is as happy over it as though he had
won a prize in lottery. Getting 4
good pipe is sort of lottery anyway
There are plenty of people who have
old veterans of pipes in their service,
pipes that have burned day after day
for half a dozen years. There is one
man on record who has a meerschaum
that he has smoked steadily A years
The bowl is an unusually large one,
without any carving of any kind is
richly colored and shows clearly the
evidence of its age in the ragged edge,
where it has been gradually burned
away by the thousands of fires that
have smouldered in it. Connoisseurs
among pipe smokers say that it would
take a poet of genius to describe the
remarkable sweetness of this pipes
flavor. 1t is like rich old wine, they
say, so smooth that it's strength is not
noticed
Pipe smoking came into great favor
about the time the Civil War broke
out. Before that time practically the
only pipes in common use were those
of clay, meerschaum or German por-
celain. The soldiers found cigars too
expensive and too hard to carry and
the pipes of that period too fragile for
the accidents of long marches. Wooden
pipes, therefore, came into vogue
among the hundreds of thousands of
soldiers of both armies. Today, per-
haps, 20 wooden pipes are sold to one
of any other material.
Brier pipes are of all prices, from
the cheapest imitation, at 10 or Is
cents, up to the gilt and gold affairs
that sell for $50. Experts say that as
fine a brier pipe as man need want to
smoke can be bought for about s.. The
best briers come from London and
Dublin. Those that are made in this
country, although We have the wood
and the amber, are not equal to the inn
ported product
Two things have done much to dis
courage the meerschaum pipe industry
One of these is that if you let a meer-
schaum fall it is likely to break into
many pieces. The other is the jokes
that the comic papers have made about
it and the men who smoke themselves
black in the face trying to color the
meerschaum.
Many sorts of new woods and other
materials appear and disappear every
year with the changing fashions in
pipes With many people corncob and
the clay still hold their own. The corn
cob is the real American pipe. Whole
acres in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and
Nebraska are devoted to raising corn
for the special purpose of producing
cobs suitable for fashioning into
| pipe bowls. The grain itself is mark
eted, of course, but the cob on which
| it grows is the real harvest. This is
cut carefully into proper lengths,
smoothed and polished, the soft inner
pulp being gouged out by specially
constructed machinery. The corncoD
pipe is exported to every country in
the world where men smoke. 1t IS
especially in favor in Austria and New