Peterson hard shell case

“How you get there is where you’ll arrive,” writes poet Phillip Booth. The trouble is, I don’t really like going anywhere. I have more of the Hobbit about me than just a paunchy middle and love of pipes and tobacco. Like the Shire folk, I just don’t venture away from home if I can possibly help it.  Tragically, there are times I have to leave the comfort of the Hobbit hole and when I do I always fret about how to take my pipes and tobacco. Which pipes? Which tobaccos? How many of each? There are other points to consider as well, like how many pounds of books I can reasonably carry. Clothing is obviously the last thing to consider—honestly, who needs a fresh shirt or change of underwear if there's room to pack an extra pipe or book. No one will smell the difference if the tobacco smoke around me is thick enough, anyway. Bilbo Baggins (by Pauline Baynes) Back in the 1970s and ’80s when one in four or five older men were still pipe smokers, they all carried a pouch somewhere on their persons, either a drug-store cellophane pack of Sail or some other OTC or, for the more serious, a leather roll up. Their pipe, as often as not, was clenched between their teeth. So like many another young piper, I thought I needed one. But aside from sticking a slice of apple in among the tobacco (to keep the tobacco fresh, we were told), I never got much use out of it because I was just born too late. I didn’t smoke all day, every day like the older guys and I inevitably forgot about the pouch until the next time I needed it, when I found a slice of desiccated apple and some crumbly dust inside. Fast forward to today, and even in these pandemic times I find myself going away from home for three or four days at a stretch much more often than I’d imagine possible—and not to a pipe show. (For the pipe show, I pull out my old Smokin’ Holster pipe bag because one likes to look one’s best at the show.) Anyway, I’ve struggled for years to figure out how to get there and back again without the disaster of running out of tobacco or facing the dismal prospect of smoking the same pipe every night. For several years I’ve used a wide black Peterson pipe box I picked up somewhere along the way. It’s a little big and won’t survive the crushing that so delights those in the travel industry, but at least it’s not one of those soft leather roll-ups that you know without thinking will snap a pipe when your knapsack or piece of luggage grazes the asphalt. Enter Ted Swearingen, Our Hero in this morning’s blog post, stage right. The "P" Zipper Pull Mark: Ted, the hard shell case and the new leather tobacco jar are both quite different from anything I’ve ever seen in…