After an unnamed Geeky enabler (he lives in a dark east KY holler, travels with 2 dogs, his better half apparently enjoys chocolate, and he smokes them ol black looking cigars) turned me on to a fine B&M shop in my area, I have found the proprietor & his resident pipe guru to be some extremely helpful and likeable Kentucky folk. My visits have developed from strolling through the walk-in humidor sniffing and gathering to picking out the hairiest of stogies and having a sit down in the smoking room in the rear of the establishment with the other varied tobacco-loving customers which I should add, come from all walks of life and varied employment as well as the local unemployed. Now I have been in several different smoke shops as I travel a considerable amount between the BlueGrass and the east coast & back on a weekly basis. Jessup, Maryland has one of the Tobacco Leaf shops in a location I get close to from time to time and have made some harder to find purchases. Good folk there too but in most of these places, I noticed the suits & ties tend to gather and leave the blue collar types over in another section. Since I am part of the latter, I mostly make my selections and retreat to my long-hooded Peterbilt & double clutch it towards Momma's house about a good 9 hour drive away...bellowing smoke off both stacks and out the side window from my lit stogie.
Yes'ty...I was back in the home 20 and figured I'd dust off the old vintage Z car that had been sitting covered for the past year in the garage and speed off over to Schwabington's to have myself a puff session with the gents. Long-haired John behind the counter had been telling me he was gonna hook me up to the pipe side of things when I was ready and when I waltzed in, I saw $$$ signs in his eyes over by the cash register. My hip pocket puckered a tad but I was prepared. John didn't push and pointed to the barrel of pipes for a beginner that is considering adding tamping to his puffing repertoire. I studied 'em and listened to his good advice but I hadda move on down the case looking at all these hand-carved works of art with rather spendy price tags on the box. Funny sounding names...the whole lot of em. About the only thing I identified with was the corncobs on the wall well out of reach. Fine smokers, so I have heard and a probable beginner's preference. But I continued wandering and my eyes fell on a pipe that looked like something I would feel comfortable gripping. About a half-bent curve in it kinda like myself. It was long enough to keep me from scorching my stubby nose or burning the grey whiskers off my lip. It felt good and it looked good to me. It did not have one of those funny sounding names on it however and this brings me to the long way around (I like to take this way around most times when typing) to my reason for posting this.
Has anyone any knowledge of G&D pipes made in France? Not GDB...it is definitely stamped G&D on the briar on one side and on the other side it has the number "2". The stem contains only the word "FRANCE" and that is all the marking on it. Someone said if it is not found on Google, it does not exist. Well...Google knows nothing about this line of pipes. WikiPedia, Bing, DogPile and a hoard of pipe places on the web offer nothing. Makes one wary however I trust the guys at Schwabington's enough that I don't think they would steer me wrong. And like John said, if Schwab's sells it, it ain't junk.
I've had 3 rather enjoyable experiences already with my new-found method of puffing tobacco now as I try to heed what John told me about breaking in the briar. It suits me and Wifey says the 2 aromatic blends John bagged up for me smelled so good she is going to do away with the air fresheners on her shopping list. John told me she won't like the hard stuff he'll hook me up with if'n I decide I want something fuller mentioning it smelled some like what one might scrape up off the barn floor of the horse stalls when put under fire in a pipe bowl.
Sooo...anyone know anything about this line of pipes? I coulda went with the Sauvingisticallyullyses or the Nordaktrkicall brands but who wants to be normal? Not me. I seek out the far-fetched and unusual. I guess that's one way I found the Geeks forum.
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