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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Connoisseur Lights The Way With Pipe Ritual

Forget the surgeon general’s warnings. Forget suing Big Tobacco. Forget Joe Camel.

If anti-nicotine fanatics really want to dump cold water on the rampant rise in young smokers, here’s a sure-fire way to do it.

Hand every high school kid a pipe and tobacco. Make them spend an hour a day fuming like chimneys.

After a week, the scorched survivors will never light up again. That’s because few things are as wretchedly complicated, dangerous and damaging to a psyche as pipe smoking.

I reaffirmed this conviction by firing up a bowl in honor of last week’s Great American Smokeout.

Nothing makes me want to do something more than when a bunch of self-righteous busybodies tell me I can’t. Even if I didn’t want to do it in the first place.

And who better to defy the Smokeout hysteria with than Spokane’s undisputed Pipe Potentate?

In 40 years’ devotion to the smoking arts, Frank Windishar amassed a collection of more than 800 pipes. The biggest collection in town, says the retired high school teacher.

Had this intense man picked up a bat, he would have made the Hall of Fame. Had he selected a violin, he would be playing in the New York Philharmonic.

But the wood implement to which Frank gave himself was the lowly carved briar root.

It happened years ago, after he quit his job as a college student dispensing Chesterfield cigarettes on the Gonzaga campus. “Oh, gawd, they were awful,” he says of the harsh smokes. Today, Frank is a fixture at Tobacco World, the cigar and pipe shop in the Flour Mill north of downtown.

He smokes his collection in daily rotation, incinerating a full pound of tobacco a month. It takes 2-1/2 years to work his way from one end of his treasures to the other.

The pipes come in myriad shapes, with names like bulldog, Oompaul, lumberjack, pot, stack, yachtsman, billiard … Frank can keep a single bowl of tobacco smoldering three hours. This is the guy you want tending the fire.

He studies the performances of each pipe the way big league pitchers analyze the habits of hitters. The information is stored in a card file he keeps in the pipe-lined, cluttered den of his North Side home.

“This is the one great thing about a pipe - the ritual,” says the small, silver-haired man who tried to guide me through a step-by-step instructional on proper loading and lighting.

My pipe, alas, died five times. I inhaled bitter tobacco flecks and spilled some on my pants. The worst was sucking a backwash of foul-tasting drool that collected deep within the bowels of my pipe.

Mastering this infernal instrument requires patience and mechanical aptitude few possess. Usually only hermits, lighthouse keepers and tenured college professors have the free time to pursue this habit.

Most who try fail miserably, which is why the pipe is such a fine smoking deterrent.

In a sad attempt to appear thoughtful, I took up the pipe for a few weeks back in college. I quit after scalding my throat, burning holes in my best shirts and walking around with sticky soot on my fingers.

Smoking a pipe is like working on your car, except it requires more tools.

To Frank, however, the pipe is both a pal and a prop.

During Spokane’s Expo ‘74, for example, Frank was transportation manager for the world’s fair. The job put him in regular contact with airline and railway big shots.

“Here I am, Joe Schmoe, sitting with all these important people,” says Frank, blowing a fragrant plume. “But when I’d take a pipe out and go through the lighting ritual, everybody would stop and watch like I was somebody.”

People gawked at my pipe smoking, too, Frank. Then they’d point and laugh.

This is one vice to be feared by amateurs.

, DataTimes