Pipe Cleaner

That's me. I restore old pipes for money, or to sell or, sometimes to keep. During tight times that provides me with a play stash that I wouldn't otherwise have. Guess what I usually buy with play stash money? Yep. More pipes. Some tobacco. You guys collect shotguns, James Bond movies, statues of old Indians, I do pipes. But I thought I would give you a quickie glance at how this goes. It's always a relaxer for me and sometimes dirty and sometimes clean and always creative.

Here's a bunch of old pipes, not too damaged or crusted with dirt just the way I received them. The little pictures get big if you click on them.



Next step is the dirt. Carbon and ash are reamed out of the bowl. Old tars and goober and crud are cleaned out of the shank and stem (the long part that goes in your mouth). The outside surface is cleaned with mild ammonia solution or alcohol. The stem (mouthpiece) is disinfected with alcohol. Then the whole business is dried overnight.

After drying the bowls are sanded, if necessary, with very fine 1500 grit paper, then oiled with nut oil, or waxed. Sometimes a light coat of colored stain goes on before the staining or waxing. The waxed finish pipes get an additional coat of hard carnauba buffed in ('burned in' we say) on a buffing wheel.



When it's all said and done you have a set of bright, clean, refurbished pipes ready to smoke your favorite tobacco in. Like the next photo.



Now I'm tired. I'm going to go smoke some Country Doctor in my pipe. Ta!

Magic

Cara -- this post is for you and your drop-dead magic freckles!

I’m old enough not to take computers and cell phones and androids and the other electronic spaghetti for granted. I always thought androids were some kind of alien. Apparently they captured them and they’re all in this little box you can hold in your hand and do things with. If you pay big money. Before the age of computers I got incipient arthritis because we had to do complicated math problems on abacuses (abaci?). At St. Mary’s school. In fact my one little finger is so curved from doing multiplication of fractions on an abacus that I can’t play the pinky-on-the-coffeecup thing anymore. But after the new age dawned I bought a computer and dived right into it. I left the cell phones and androids alone since I think they’re noisy and invasive. I think it’s some kind of magic, still, that I can dial up Copenhagen and have a good look at the Mermaid in the harbor, or watch live traffic crashes in the freeway tunnels in Moscow at night, which gets old pretty quickly. I’ve watched the Queen’s Christmas message once or twice and I Instant Message my daughter in South Carolina a couple times a week. I’m still totally amazed at all this clear, static-free worldwide communication. My kids grew up with computers. In school. I remember long distance calls that faded in and out and heavy bakelite phones that you could kill a large dog with, and Movietone newsreels...

...But last Saturday I treated myself to the topping on the cake. I watched the Royal Wedding of Daniel and Victoria of Sweden, live, on STV television from Stockholm. Clear as a bell, every word immensely audible and it was a nice marriage as those ceremonies go. There were four archbishops including a woman lesbian (of which I heartily approve – if you don’t like it go read something else), and the Archbishop of Stockholm who grinned in between the lines. Daniel had a tear or two and Victoria just stood there and smiled and looked pretty damn good. So God bless ‘em. And thanks for the computer. You all can have the cell phones and all that other noisy expensive junk, but I like my computer-window-on-the-world. Ta!

Pulse

• The Daily Yakomat
• 
  
• Booze-fueled mayhem in Twin Towers neighborhood
• Father, son, knife and bat vs. a neighbor and his belt
• 1 shot, 1 hit with bat in East Side robbery
• Downtown gunman holds up four
• Eye-in-the-sky foils thief
• Relative of twins charged with robbery threatens victim, police say
• Knife and a note no match for bullet-proof glass
• Man accused of trashing optometrist's office
• Teen wanted for allegedly shooting at house
• $2K mistakenly put in Taco Bell customer's bag

Another 166,100 people had a peaceful

And relaxing Saturday evening

In the Big City. Without headlines.

Memorials and the Day

I had a morning meditation today, you know, Jesus and Buddha and one-page-a-day and that kind of thing. But at sunrise I decided, this time, to read Who in the Hell is Tom Jones? Out of a book of poems by Charles Bukowski. It made me laugh out loud and I think that is a fine beginning to any day. I can’t reprint it here because

- it’s copyrighted
- it has a lot of really bad words in it.

If you have been around the block of life a couple times you will instantly understand it, and if you haven’t you will run to your church waving your bible in the air and say prayers for me. Either one is fine. And you can look it up yourself in LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL. If you are not afraid.

Years ago when I worked for the Police Department I used to walk up a trail through the woods behind the Police Academy and come out in a little clearing where there was a cemetery that all the unidentified people were buried in. Potter’s Field. It was a nice place to eat lunch because few people even knew it was there. And I would say Hi to all the spirits of the old guys who fell dead out of boxcars on trains from Toledo. Known only to God, and like that.

My friend and I went there a couple days ago for Memorial Day because we thought it was the right thing to do. All those people had a life or half of one or a really bad one, but it’s my job to give tribute to the fact that they lived here and not to judge. It’s officially called Westmont Cemetery and is surrounded by Monday Prison, the Police Academy and the Sewage Treatment Plant. Which says something about it’s importance. And the Police too probably. But I think the cemetery was there first. I still think it’s a nice place to be buried. And there are woodpeckers and red-winged blackbirds.

I thought about Dad a lot on Memorial Day and I’m glad he made it home from the wars so I could get to know him. He was a fine guy and a fine Dad!

Speaking of Memorial Day, I got a flyer for my high school class’ 48th reunion and a full third if not half of my classmates are dead. One got murdered in 1967 and I don’t know about the rest. Holy Toledo and RIP! Now I am going to scrub my kitchen with steel wool and sulfuric acid to make sure there are no typhoid germs laying around. And I am not going to the party.

I am getting ready to pay the remainder of my money to the IRS, Compunet Labs and a dermatologist. The usual bills are already paid and I will still have some dollahs that them folks don’t know about that I am gong to spend on play. Ta!