My father smoked a pipe. Very "Father knows best", I know. Most of my childhood, I can't picture my father without a pipe.
He had a fair collection of pipes, all over the house. There were pipe stands everywhere, and everything was soaked in 
that dense smell of stale pipe tobacco.
He used to smoke a tobacco called Borkum Riff (pipe tobacco soaked in bourbon), which you could buy off the shelf at any corner store... or ocassionally he'd make his way to downtown Chicago to a renowned tobacco store in the loop called Iwan Riess, and buy a can of custom blend.
I loved the smell of fresh pipe tobacco... and used to go into Iwan Riess with him into the humidor absorbing the aromas.
Dad was one of those people, back in the day, who wore a three-piece suit. Jacket, slacks and vest. He used to buy suits that came with two-pair of slacks... which allowed him to get a little additional wear.
Dad also used to carry his pipe in his suit coat pocket... he'd buy that three-piece suit (with two-pair of slacks) and immediately burn a hole in the jacket pocket from warm embers. We didn't have a chair/seat in the house that didn't have a burn mark on it. In fact up until a year ago.. mom still owned a chair whose cushion had a serious burn mark on one side... we'd flipped it over to hide it... and dad's been gone for almost twenty-odd-years. (Twenty very odd years).
I sometimes think that he drank bourbon because of the Borkum Riff ads. I've found myself thinking about dad a lot, lately. I may have to dig out one of my old pipes and go to QVC and see if they still carry any.
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