Ruh roh!

I have a confession to make.  I have been smoking the same dozen or so pipes since I moved to Atlanta a year and a half ago. And while that alone is all fine and good, and will be the topic of another blog post, it has directly led to a situation that may well end very, very badly.

Before the move down South from Cleveland as I was packing my collection I culled some pipes so that I would have something to smoke upon my arrival.  As it happened, in my new house I didn’t have the wall of shelves that I had in my last house to display my collection, so they stayed packed in boxes while the selected pipes remained in service.  I have not yet had the shelves built to house the collection in optimal conditions, so they remained out of sight and mostly out of mind in their shipping boxes.  That is until recently.

Before the CORPS show in Richmond my bud Jeff Folloder stayed at my house for a few days.  One evening in my workshop Jeff spied my boxes of packed pipes and started to go through them, laying them out on the floor.  As there was a Safferling that I wanted to take with me to Richmond, I kept my eye on what he was doing as I carved, occasionally asking him to put aside a certain pipe.  Finally all of the pipes were laid out, but not the Safferling that I was looking for. In fact, I came to realize that several pipes were not there.  And among that several pipes were many of my favorites, most valuable, and ones with the most sentimental value.  Among them were pipes such as the first pipe that my daughter ever picked out for me and gave to me for my birthday (she was probably three), and, the Eltang all briar ukulele that I will smoke on her wedding day.  As I looked onto the shelf where the boxes had been store, now empty, my stomach sank.

Even though I had much yet to do, putting a final buff on the show tamps, I had to search for the box of pipes.  I went through box after box, all to no avail.  There are many, many boxes in the storage room,  so I may not have looked in all,  but as I was the one who packed the pipes and marked the box, I should have seen it if it was there.  To say that I was a bit panicked would be a grand understatement.  While the dollar value of the pipes in that box is great, well into the thousands, it isn’t about that at all.

So, with having to leave for Richmond the following day I pulled a Scarlet O’Hara and decided to put it out of my mind and worry about it another day.  Believe me, that has been no easy task,  and it has gotten to the point where I am frightened to find out if the pipes are indeed lost.  I did go as far as to look in our spare bedrooms to see if the box was mistakenly place there, but the pipes remain missing.

So now here I am, frightened that many of my most special pipes are gone forever, and too chicken to find out if that is indeed the case. At least with not knowing I can hold onto hope that it will all end well.  But I know that I must answer this question by going through the house and garage box by box,  and I am just now working up the courage to do so.

One way or the other I’ll let you know how this all ends up.