Five Brothers

What is more pleasant than the aroma of pipe smoke? What, you think it must be repugnant as cigarette smoke and especially cigar smoke? No, no--that's because you're probably a young 'un who hasn't smelled pipe smoke at all, because in turn we these days simply don't encounter it anymore. Let's face it: pipe smokers are as scarce as chimneysweeps. And, I suspect, you haven't met the Five Brothers.

Five Brothers was the favorite pipe-tobacco brand of old Uncle Lennert--in fact, his only brand. He was a merchant marine who would be briefly at home only every five or six weeks. I was a kid then, and he would give me money to walk a few blocks to the corner store to buy his beloved tobacco. After all, his fiery mouthpiece was constantly lit, and his stash of the brown leaves had to accumulate before his next departure for overseas. Lennert always would add a nickel for me to buy candy as my reward. I was just old enough to recognize the "5c" sign in the candy rack, but I wasn't certain if that meant the same as "one nickel." It did, of course, but each time I entered the store, I could ask for a pack of the tobacco, but I simply was too shy to ask the clerk-owner if those candies cost a nickel. So back to Uncle Lennert's I would go. He would be pleased, of course, to see his pack of Five Brothers, but would be baffled as to why I didn't want to buy any candy for myself.

It's tough being shy. The non-shy among us always think that the only thing the shy have to do is speak up or act confidently, and the shyness will disappear. It doesn't work that way. Ahh, shyness cost me many a sweet candy bar. I compensated by soaking in the sugary-tang aroma of Five Brothers. I never learned their names. And Uncle Lennert died of throat cancer.

-Old Doc