It’s impossible to imagine Grandpa without his pipe either in his hand or in his mouth. Even when he wasn’t smoking, he always smelled a bit like pipe smoke. In my memory I can hear him tapping the ashes out of his pipe into the ashtray and then coughing just once, a sort of two syllable cough with the emphasis on the first syllable. Sometimes he also smoked short cigars and then, when they became too short to put between his lips, he stuck them into his pipe to finish them.

Grandpa’s pipe rack with his small collection of pipes, his astray, lighter and tool for scraping out the bowl of his pipe stood on the little table next to his chair in the living room. He had a fascinating special lighter that had the flame in the middle, allowing him to draw the fire through the lighter into the tobacco.

The carpet around Grandpa’s chair was covered with little black spots where hot ash from his pipe had burned themselves into the rug. Once, he even set his chair on fire. Hot ashes fell unnoticed between the cushions and set them ablaze. He jumped up and the flames flared up. “Rose, Rose,” he shouted. Grandma was in the kitchen and came running. “Why haven’t you brought some water to douse the fire?” he snapped. “Well, you didn’t tell me to,” she answered, running back into the kitchen to get a pan of water. The fire was quickly extinguished but not quickly forgotten. Grandma told everyone about it.