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Smoke ring / Pipes may be past their prime, but a small 'brotherhood of the briar' still gets together to slow down and enjoy a good puff. 

Don't write the obituary just yet for the Last American Pipe Smoker, not while the crew assembled here in a private room at Johnny Dee's Lounge in Parkville is still around, puffing contentedly, literally tending the embers.

If not the last of a diminished species, they surely rank among the more avid members. . . .

The club of some 35 members goes back only to 1998, a date of no significance otherwise in the pipe world, this speck in the tobacco firmament. Overwhelmingly male and somewhat skewed toward early middle age and beyond, the so-called "brotherhood of the briar" in its quiet way resists the relentless tug of the world. With all due respect to microchips and fiber optics, a bowl of pipe tobacco will burn in its own good time, thank you very much. . . .

Fact is the day has come and gone when the harder thing would be finding a man who did not devote time to the stem and bowl. Flip through popular magazines from the 1950s, even the early 1960s, and note frequent appearances of men with pipes in advertisements and news stories. . .

Norman Sharp, president of both the Pipe Tobacco Council and the Cigar Association of America, says the pipe might seem a step or three behind "in the fast-paced society we live in today."

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