Confessions of a Sloppy Smoker

(Sykes Wilford) I have something of a confession to make. I am kind of a pipe smoking disaster. I was visiting a friend recently and as we spent the afternoon hanging out, I watched him diligently clean each pipe he smoked. Every smoke was in a different pipe. He rotated, cleaned, and babied his pipes.

While I greatly admire this, I find myself utterly incapable of that sort of diligent care of, well, anything. My office desks, at work and at home, each have piles of pipes on them, in ashtrays and, occasionally, actually on pipe racks. Some of the pipes contain, gasp, dottle from previous smokes that I haven't yet cleaned out. I regularly run out of pipe cleaners, forgetting to buy more until my pipes are so grungy that cleaners become absolutely imperative. Once every great while, I sit down and clean twenty or thirty pipes at a throw because I've just let them get too nasty. I am a bad pipe smoker. Continued