Peterson Collectors

While there weren’t many of us at the Chicago show, the Pete Geeks bonded in a hurry. Chris Tarman met my wife and I the very first night, if memory serves, out in the smoking tent. I knew right away this was a guy I was gonna like. It was apparent from the get-go that we shared a lot of similar interests: prog rock (Yes in particular), backpacking, pipes, tobaccos, Petes, and that camaraderie common to the smallest counter-culture generation of all, the one that followed in the wake of the Boomers and endured the flagrant fatuities of the seventies and eighties. His community of pipe companions (‘collection’ if you must) just knocks me out, further evidence that we’re from the same tribe. Chris in the smoking tent at the Chicago Pipe Show with a few of his favorite Petes So Chris, what’s your super hero origin story? I’m 57, and moved from a small town in Western Colorado to the city of Colorado Springs in August of  2020.  I don’t look like it, but I’m a retired correctional officer with a 25-year career with the Colorado Department of Corrections. I’m currently working part-time at REI, which helps with my various hobbies (trail running, backpacking, camping, etc).  I’ve also played bass guitar since 1980, and have been what I call a “part-time professional musician” for many years (meaning that I get paid to play, but not nearly enough to make a living at it!). What’s the culture of pipe smoking like where you live? The only real tobacco shop remaining in Colorado Springs is about a 10 minute walk from my house.  It’s primarily a cigar store, but they have a good selection of tinned and bulk pipe tobacco and usually quite a few Petersons.  They host a monthly pipe night which usually has a few geezers like me, but also a surprising number of newer and younger pipe smokers. So when did you take up pipe smoking? I started smoking a pipe in 1983, right after I graduated from high school.  My father smoked a pipe, so I’d grown up around them.  My first pipe was a small (tiny, actually) clay that was a reproduction of a very early 17th century clay.  My dad said, “If you can stick with that for a month, I’ll know you’re serious about pipe smoking.”  It was a very hot and short smoke, but I stuck with it and gradually accumulated a small collection of cheap basket pipes and one nice Pioneer calabash. What led you to the Divine Art [of Pipe Smoking]? I attended the University of Wyoming in Laramie, but my family had moved from Casper to a small town in eastern Colorado right after I graduated from high school. I spent the summer of ’84 in that small Colorado town, but would go to Denver or Colorado Springs whenever I could.  One day that summer, in a tobacco shop in Colorado Springs, I happened across The Ultimate Pipe Book by…