298. John Coatney DVM on Petes, Military Working Dogs and the Theology of Smoking
SYSTEM DAY IS ALMOST HERE! System Day—September 3rd—is almost upon us. For a few years now, Pete Geeks have been celebrating the day of Charles Peterson’s 3rd and final patent for the System pipe. For this year's theme and information on receiving your CPG or a new merit badge, see the end of this post. I met up with Army veteran and veterinarian John Coatney by chance at the Chicago Pipe Show in May, and as we talked about our mutual passion for J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium as well as our love of Peterson pipes, I knew his story would be one everyone would enjoy hearing. A blogger himself, he readily agreed— Vicenza VTF staff, combat medics and military working dog handlers performing trauma care on HERO, a canine simulator. (Courtesy US Army) In June 2007 I was serving in the Army as a Veterinary Corps Officer stationed in Vicenza, Italy. I was on temporary duty in Hungary, and we had a free Saturday to wander around downtown Budapest. While exploring the city, my “battle buddy” and I walked past Gallwitz Szaküzlet, a pipe shop that had its doors open, a common practice in Europe to combat the summer heat. As we walked by, the aroma of pipe tobacco was redolent. I was suddenly back at my grandpa’s cabin in the Kiamichi Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, where he and his buddies would gather to shoot and hunt. All those guys were smokers – growing up in a family of cigarette smokers in the 80’s, I was quite accustomed to being around cigarette smoke. However, there was one guy at the cabin, Joe, who was a pipe smoker. He smoked a huge calabash, and the smoke he produced smelled wonderful. He was also very friendly and was comfortable chatting with this eight-year-old nerdy kid. He was quite different than most of the blue collar guys that frequented the cabin, and we had some great conversations, often very educational for me. One year for my birthday, he gave me a VHS copy of Kenneth Branagh’s version of Henry V and told me to pay special attention to “the speech at the end” (the Saint Crispin’s Day Speech); he even paid me to memorize it and recite it to him. Back in Budapest, immersed in that nostalgic aroma, I mumbled off-hand to my friend, “I think I’d like to smoke a pipe someday.” I was not aware that my friend, a Cajun from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, was deep in her own cloud of nostalgia: her late father had smoked a pipe. She (literally) dragged me into that shop, and I came out with a Szábo, a few ounces of the house aromatic, and everything I needed to get started on my journey. The Gallwitz Szaküzlet pipe shop has one of the great old hanging pipe signs, in this case apparently a Peterson System! I was 26 at the time, and still figuring who I was. Pipe smoking was one of…