What was your first smoke?

...wish I could remember, lol...

SWR out of a MM back in the 70's.

That's a lovely Grabow, Joe. Very nice!

Great Pipe by the way.

My first smoke was a Muriel Coronella cigar at the age of 16, my Birthday to be exact. I was given permission by my parents as long as I never smoked cigarettes, and that I did.....never smoked cigarettes in my entire life. Maybe that’s why I don’t enjoy a few of the old codger tobacco’s like Prince Albert!!

At 16 1/2 I started smoking a pipe. My very first pipe and leather pouch, which I still carry and use for those in between doctors visits. The pipe is a Yello-Bole Pug. Below are pictures of what it looked like from the factory ( after 48 plus years of smoking pleasure )  and the second pictures is what it looks like today after a complete restoration and color change I did last year. Besides being sanded and a retort I dyed the pipe black and finished with 2 coats of clear epoxy resin. Also below is the same leather pouch, protected with a paste twice a year and still in excellent shape. I still own 3 of my 4 original piipes👌👍👍

My first cigarette was a Camel Turkish royals, which probably guided the course for me to smoke orientals and English blends in the future in my pipe. TR's have quite a complex flavour, for a little cigarette.

My first pipe was a Dr Grabow Straight Duke and my first pipe tobacco was Prince Albert. That was closely followed by Dunhill's Nightcap.

The guy who owned the local Tinder Box mixed two of their blends together--Lamplighter and Honey Cavendish. He called it Lamp and Honey. He smoked it constantly in the store and it smelled delicious. It was my introduction to pipe tobacco. Glad I survived....

I'm going to be in Vietnam later next year (late in '19).  If you would like to take any photos for you while I am there, let me know.

Thats a really cool story.

Murray's era Dunhill nightcap in a mr brog pear wood pipe.

I was (easily) convinced of that "buy once, cry once" also applied to pipes, so I picked up a bent apple Peterson and the tobacco was probably Wilshire (Lane 1Q, something, something, I come to understand). Considered it a very nice change from the cigars I had been smoking. Sad thing, it's the only pipe I've ever lost. Ah well, life and time move on...

My early pipe years were fortunate enough to be shared with other friends and and a friendly Tinder Box employee who tutored us in the basics. As nice as internet shopping is, you don't get that same sort of connection by logging in like you do walking through the doors of a good B&M.

...at age 9 my first pipe was a Dr. Grabow and a pouch of SWR...1960 cost:$1.10 for both

Technically, it was Edgeworth Ready Rubbed from my father's pipe (when he left the room) when I was four or five. However, the first tobacco that I bought when I took up the pipe was Dunhill Early Morning Pipe. It's still one of my favorites.

Just because no one's had a story this bad yet, I'll tell mine:

I was probably about 12, right in that sweet spot where I was reading Twain, Stevenson, Tolkien etc and feeling worldly as hell lol... Something about pipe smoking in these books attracted me, I wanted to try it. Couldn't buy a pipe, had no relatives that smoked one. This was rural IL, one thing we had plenty of laying around was corncobs.

I took an old cob and cut it down to size, drilled a stem hole near the bottom with my trusty pocketknife and stuck in a hollow reed.

Now, for tobacco (this just gets better), I stole a couple of my mom's cigarettes - Virginia Slim's finest. Tore those open, packed me a bowl while sitting up in a big old maple with a friend. Man, I felt badass. I'll be damned... It worked!

Do I even have to mention how terrible it was? Nasty cigarette tobacco smoke, mixed with damp cob (look, I just picked one off the ground in a field, I wasn't exactly a craftsman) and smoldering reed. Mmmmmm. :-)

And yet... Sitting up there in that early-fall world, finding a puffing rhythm, watching the smoke rise and curl... I could sense an enjoyably experience just beyond reach.

That friend and I bought Dr. Grabows and drug store black Cavendish as soon as he turned 18 (he was older). He gravitated to burley blends, me to English.

God, that was 30 years ago. How'd that happen?!

First cig: Camel Plain, nicked from my Dad.
First pipe: A beechwood clipboard pipe from a corner store. I still have it and still smoke it.
First baccy: Can't remember, but something Cherry