Okay, gentlemen, here's today's assignment: You should have read, sometime in your life, 'My Lady Nicotine" by JM barrie, a well written and humorous tribute to Barrie's favorite tobacco, the Arcadia blend. And, through our lives as smokers, we each have sought our own Holy Grail blend, that singular blend for which we obsess, the perfect smoke.

Over 40 years ago, I was fortunate to have been introduced to the now-gone Blue Boar, an OTC of all things, common as dirt, and found in most drugstores and variety stores. The blend was an American Tobacco Company blend of Latakia and bright VAs layered with an outstanding roughly cut mixed Burley base, and then literally a chopped or rough cut (rather than a crimp cut or flake). It had its adherents, and its detractors. The room note was intense and acrid, like an outdoor smoke, and distinct. Once you smelled it, there was nothing else like it on the market. And, a Burley taste, distinctly the nuttiness and warmth of Burley, but Burley w/ Latakia and sweet VAs. I ordered that blend whenever I could, carted it w/ me through the service, through my days in WV, and when I returned to Philadelphia. Now, I was fortunate that my younger brother did work for a few years with Holt's in Philadelphia, so he could always hunt up a few cans for me. My brother eventually left for the USPS, and gradually stores stopped ordering the blend, until it seemed to disappear in the early '80s. Years passed, until I met the Tarlers' who were kind enough to listen to my rantings and finally blend what I remember the blend to be. That blend became Morley's Best, and I smoke a lot of it. A lot of it. But, I was fortunate to be able to find some firm kind enough to allow me to recreate what I loved.

Your task, should you choose, is to share with this body what would be your Arcadia blend, your singular obsession in a tobacco blend. Perhaps, the blend exists,; perhaps it needs to come into existence. But, what composes your Arcadia? Why?

Bob Runwoski aka Morleysson