Memory Lane
Do you remember buying your first pipe? For me it was around 1956. I remember going in
this small neighbourhood smoke shop, nothing much, but for me an adventure. I still have
that first pipe, and I can still picture the card display it came off of. It is/was a
Sterncrest billiard with a sterling silver band. I thought that I just bought a piece of
heaven. I just turned 17 and was wondering how it would come off when I got home and lit
it up. I had been smoking cigarettes since I was 16 but no one in the family smoked a pipe
except my grandfather and uncle but they weren't living with us. Well, I need not have
worried. You see, I was fortunate to have parents that would rather have me smoke in front
of them than behind their back. Something today's parents should think about!!! At any
rate they did not make to much of it. Funny how ones taste changes over the years, back
then there was a tobacco called Old Briar, I don't recall who made it but there was a TV
detective show called Martin Kane, Private Eye. The neat thing about it was the
commercial, which featured this pipe tobacco among others was brought in right along with
the script of the show, seems the smoke shop owner was a retired cop and Kane would walk
in to buy his tobacco, thus the commercial.At any rate, to my taste at the time, such
pleasure, such aroma, such joy. Today, with all the tobacco's available one's taste really
becomes jaded I think. After I finished high school, I was a senior at 17, I got
employment in the main library downtown. This was something, because then I had better
access to one of the truly high class pipe shops at the time. The tobaccos they stocked!
The pipes they stocked! If I thought that I had bought a piece of heaven before, now I
thought I had fallen into heaven! Now my taste changed, I fell in love with the ENGLISH
BLENDS! You know, that pipe shop is still in business and they still sell the same blend,
but sadly it in my judgement is not really the same. The aroma, the taste, the body, just
isn't there any more.
What got me into trying a pipe in the first place? I remember when I was a kid and
visited my grandfather, the smell of his pipe was something that was almost indescribable.
It almost seemed to literally call out, to silently speak of something that is extremely
difficult to put into words. Yet all pipe smokers know what it is, that almost if not is a
mystical thing, a joining if you will between the pipe, the tobacco, and the smoker. Years
later, before my grandfather died, he gave me one of his pipes. I still have it, smoke it
occasionally, and so in a sense still communicate with him. May we all, if the situation
is such, do the same for someone who will become one of us!
All my best, Curt
Origin of the Lakota Peace Pipe
Long, long ago, two young and handsome Lakota were chosen by their band to find out where
the buffalo were. While the men were riding in the buffalo country, they saw someone in
the distance walking toward them.
As always they were on the watch for any enemy. So they hid in some bushes and waited. At
last the figure came up the slope. To their surprise, the figure walking toward them was a
woman.
When she came closer, she stopped and looked at them. They knew that she could see them,
even in their hiding place. On her left arm she carried what looked like a stick in a
bundle of sagebrush. Her face was beautiful. One of the men said, "She is more
beautiful than anyone I have ever seen. I want her for my wife."
But the other man replied, "How dare you have such a thought? She is wondrously
beautiful and holy--far above ordinary people."
Though still at a distance, the woman heard them talking. She laid down her bundle and
spoke to them. "Come. What is it you wish?"
The man who had spoken first went up to her and laid his hands on her as if to claim her.
At once, from somewhere above, there came a whirlwind. Then there came a mist, which hid
the man and the woman. When the mist cleared, the other man saw the woman with the bundle
again on her arm. But his friend was a pile of bones at her feet.
The man stood silent in wonder and awe. Then the beautiful woman spoke to him. "I am
on a journey to your people. Among them is a good man whose name is Bull Walking Upright.
I am coming to see him especially.
"Go on ahead of me and tell your people that I am on my way. Ask them to move camp
and to pitch their tents in a circle. Ask them to leave an opening in the circle, facing
the north. In the centre of the circle, make a large tepee, also facing the north. There I
will meet Bull Walking Upright and his people."
The man saw to it that all her directions were followed. When she reached the camp, she
removed the sagebrush from the gift she was carrying. The gift was a small pipe made of
red stone. On it was carved the tiny outline of a buffalo calf.
The pipe she gave to Bull Walking Upright, and then she taught him the prayers he should
pray to the Strong One Above. "When you pray to the Strong One Above, you must use
this pipe in the ceremony. When you are hungry, unwrap the pipe and lay it bare in the
air. Then the buffalo will come where the men can easily hunt and kill them. So the
children, the men, and the women will have food and be happy."
The beautiful woman also told him how the people should behave in order to live peacefully
together. She taught them the prayers they should say when praying to their Mother Earth.
She told him how they should decorate themselves for ceremonies.
"The earth," she said, "is your mother. So, for special ceremonies, you
will decorate yourselves as your mother does--in black and red, in brown and white. These
are the colours of the buffalo also.
"Above all else, remember that this is a peace pipe that I have given you. You will
smoke it before all ceremonies. You will smoke it before making treaties. It will bring
peaceful thoughts into your minds. If you will use it when you pray to the Strong One
above and to Mother Earth you will be sure to receive the blessings that you ask."
When the woman had completed her message, she turned and slowly walked away. All the
people watched her in awe. Outside the opening of the circle, she stopped for an instant
and then lay down on the ground. She rose again in the form of a black buffalo cow. Again
she lay down and then arose in the form of a red buffalo cow. A third time she lay down,
and arose as a brown buffalo cow. The fourth and last time she had the form of a
spotlessly white buffalo cow. Then she walked toward the north into the distance and
finally disappeared over a far-off hill.
Bull Walking Upright kept the peace pipe carefully wrapped most of the time. Every little
while he called all his people together, untied the bundle, and repeated the lessons he
had been taught by the beautiful woman. And he used it in prayers and other ceremonies
until he was more than one hundred years old.
When he became feeble, he held a great feast. There he gave the pipe and the lessons to
Sunrise, a worthy man. In a similar way the pipe was passed down from generation to
generation. "As long as the pipe is used," the beautiful woman had said,
"Your people will live and will be happy. As soon as it is forgotten, the people will
perish."
By kind permission of Glen Welker. http://www.indians.org/welker/
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