When I teach about the American Fifties, I watch the videos carefully for non-verbal information. Yesterday's showing of the BBC's Arthur Miller and the Crucible, struck me hard. As the great playwright testified, he caressed a pipe, and took long, thoughtful drags on it. Each time he finished, he gave a brilliant answer to the torturous questions.
My father smoked a pipe. I love to look at a man smoking a pipe. I will write a PhD on the cultural significance of the pipe, and its disappearance from North American society. (Hash pipes excluded, or maybe they have disappeared too).
Pipes have no place in a nanosecond world. Cigarettes can't replace them. Pipes take time. Pipes buy time. Compared and contrasted to cigars, pipes win on all points. The smell of cigars drives women away (which is why men used to retreat for brandy and cigars?) The smell of pipe brings only joy to women's hearts.
Men used to baby their pipes, which they bought with loving attention. Even smoking a pipe called for loving attention. You had to tend a pipe the way you do a fire's hearth. Maybe a pipe was a portable fireplace, bringing comfort to the smoker and to those around him.
