You just try to detach from the tension of the event. There’s a lot of anxiety; you just kind of try to smoke in another dimension. Once you get it lit, just puff it nice and easy. Otherwise it’ll burn right out. –Paul Board, a competitor in the ninth annual Chicago Pipe Smoking Contest, talking about his strategy
Along three walls of the front room, long tables draped in white hold pipes, cigars, ashtrays, tobacco, and fancy pouches and jars. The value of this stuff, all donated by merchants, falls between $8,000 and $12,000. Every prize is a set of something: cigar and ashtray, pipe and tobacco and pouch, multiple pipes. The biggest pipe is a meerschaum about 13 inches long that has a bowl the size of a baseball. There are also two tall trophies with little statuettes of Indians at the top; one lists this year’s judges, the other past winners.
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In the back room, nine round tables have been set up. Each table is numbered, and each place is set with an ashtray, matches, pipe cleaners, and a water glass. In this room, more than an hour before the contest starts, men are already sitting at places not assigned to them, smoking and gossiping.
“There’s different strategies for different pipes,” explains Charlene Lewis. “It depends on the size, it depends on how hollow it is, how deep it is. You can have the smallest pipe and it’ll burn longer than the big ones.”
The smokers are allowed as much time as they want to pack their pipes, but only one minute to light up. Contest regular Bernie Sahlins prepares to give the cue. “It may help all of you to keep in mind this image of the current mayoral contest,” he says: “Lots of smoke, very little fire.” Then he pauses, and everyone is suddenly silent. “Ladies and gentlemen, light your pipes.”
