To be slightly more polite than guizot, I’ve never heard a clique like the one that Una Persson describes. Where and when did this group exist? Has anyone heard of a clique like that anywhere else? I thought the ones in the movie Mean Girls were odd enough, with groups like the Asian Nerds and the Cool Asians.
Kansas
Patrick F. McManus wrote an essay on this topic. His explanation was that a pipe could be very useful in the avoidance of looking truly stupid. It has been at least 20 years since I read the essay, but it went something like this:
Suppose you have just mistaken your jeep, parked approximately 150 miles from the nearest sign of civilization, for an 8 point buck. (a common mistake, made by even expert hunters, such as your author) And so shot a hole through the engine block.
If you don’t have a pipe, all you can do is stand and stare slack-jawed at the black puddle of 10-40 oil forming under the front of the jeep, and perhaps swear at your own stupidity. Your hunting buddies will interpret this as a sign of weakness, and insist that you walk the 150 miles to civilization and return with suitable transportation. They will most probably confiscate your hip flask, not trusting you to care for it properly.
Now, on the other hand, if you have taken up pipe smoking, you can sit yourself down on a nearby stump, take out your pipe, and begin filling it while looking thoughtful and bemused, and reflect on your current circumstances. Upon seeing this, your hunting buddies will realize that the jeep had obviously succumbed to demonic possession (ala “Christine”) and commend you on your quick action to remedy the dangerous situation. They will offer you a sip from their hip flask to calm your shattered nerves, and commence to wrastling over which of them will have the honor of walking out for help while you await rescue.
Note that the pipe is key to looking thoughtful and bemused. Without the pipe, an expression of thoughtful bemusement is frequently mistaken as a symptom of mental retardation.
Back to the OP: From the above, we can deduce that pipe smoking has gone out of fashion due to the requirement in many states that hunters attend safety education programs, (where great emphasis is placed on distinguishing between jeeps and 8-point bucks) as well as a general decline in the popularity of hunting. Further, as the mentally retarded have become first mentally handicapped, and now intellectually challenged, there is much less stigma in being mistaken for one, thus the requirement for a pipe when attempting to look thoughtful and bemused is not nearly as important as in unenlightened times when being called a “retard” was recognized by the courts as a legitimate defense against assault charges.
Smoking in 1950s pop culture
Cigar smoking = politicians, gangsters
Cigarette smoking = high school punks, servicemen, spies & detectives
Pipe smoking = Professor, businessman, Dad
I find this incredibly amusing, because all during the time my grandparents smoked (late 1950s through mid-1980s) my grandma yelled at my grandpa constantly about how he kept burning holes in his shirt pockets with his pipe – didn’t he know what a slob it made him look?
Playboy would have an occasional article about pipes and tobacco, usually plugging Iwan Ries, a downtown smoke shop that’s still operating. But the original drawings for the Stag Party mascot and the revision for the Playboy rabbit had each smoking a cigarette in a holder.
Sherlock’s Home, a British-style pub/restaurant, was near Chicago’s Water Tower. When it opened (early 70s), as a gimmick they gave away free clay pipes and had a rack over the bar for storing them. So pipes were still popular enough for them to do that.
I just watched the new “Final Cut” of Blade Runner (coolest movie ever, just so you know) and in the bar scene there are about eight people smoking churchwardens. So now, to me, pipe smoking is the hippest thing ever.
I wasn’t trying to be impolite. It was just amazing to me that a club like that could exist at a high school, without, you know, getting beaten up every day.
That’s even more bizarre. High school students in Kansas pretending to be British and pretending to smoke pipes? And where the hell did they get MGs and Austen Healeys?
Sorry I missed the response on the end of this; I was busy over Christmas.
British cars were very popular and common as used cars in the 1980’s here. They were typically between $1000-$2000 for a “runs” beater like an MGB or TR-7. At one time, the want ads would carry maybe a dozen MG’s and Triumphs every day, including such rarities as Triumph Stags, GT6’s, and even things like MG TD/TF series.
Why do high school kids pick up an odd fashion or fad and form a clique like this? Who knows - that subject could be written about for hundreds of pages. Similar things are found in literature as far back as MacKay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. For example:
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Why for at least two years was the fad for most teenage boys at my school to wear high-top shoes with the laces completely undone? And what about stirrup pants on girls?
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“The Beef Jerky Club”, a group of outdoorsy-feeling kids who would sit every day at one table in the cafeteria and eat beef jerky or other meat. In fact, most of the time they would only eat meat for lunch, doing such things as taking lunch meat out of their sandwiches and making a show of throwing away the bread. Or asking the lunch ladies for no bun with their hamburgers (this was long before the Atkins fad, FTR).
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The D&D/Renfest club.
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The Commodore 64/gaming club, which was really just a massive pirating ring that gathered every weekend to copy games with “Mr. Nibble.” And who wore “Ms Pac Man” t-shirts to school. Double shudder.
The faux-Brit kids didn’t get beaten up every day, but they were mercilessly picked on and taunted through most of their high school career. But then, they were also the sorts of kids who were mercilessly picked on before they got into the fad, so really, things weren’t any worse for them. They were better, in fact, because they at least had a group to belong to. A group of odd misfits, dweebs, square pegs, nerds, Poindexters, and just general spazs.
Sort of like the SDMB…
Pipe smoking is still popular among the Amish. I approached an Amish guy at an auction recently, and asked him if he ever put anything other than tobacco in his bowl. It took him a few seconds, but one he got the “joke” he laughed, then went around telling his compatriots.
The idea of a faux-British club doesn’t seem that odd to me- the car owners at my High School had the “Doof Doof” club (cars with stereos that cost as much as the car and almost needed a second alternator just to power the subwoofer), there was the Mini club (for some reason, Minis were the Ultimate Cool car, and they cost a fortune), and then there were remaining 15 of us who had whatever we could afford.
The funny thing is that by my 7th Form year there were maybe 120 of us in the entire year, (out of a total student population of around 1200 or so), and of those 120 maybe 30 of us had cars. Most of us had 1970s and 1980s model Toyota Corollas, Datsun 120Ys, Ford Escorts, and so on, and maintenance was largely a DIY job (I was unusual in that our family had a reliable mechanic who used to work on my car at Mate’s Rates). I would have loved a Triumph or an MG or something like that, but fuel was expensive even back then and there’s no way an insurance company would have insured me in anything that could be considered a “Sports Car”.
Most of us were petrolheads to some degree- it went with owning a car at school, basically. And for some reason at our school, having a car automatically made you one of the “Cool” kids, no matter how big a nerd you might otherwise be (Nerds usually were- or knew- someone with the sweet hook-ups for car stereos, for one). Then again, I’ve never understood the whole “Clique” thing as it seems to be in the US- it’s no wonder so many kids there seem miserable at school.
My father picked up pipe smoking in the Navy during WW II, so he was one of those 1950’s-ear pipe-smoking dads.
He had to learn how to say “a pipe for the mouth” in French because when he was going ashore at Normandy a few weeks after the invasion he saw a group of G.I.'s killed in a freak accident with a landing craft. In his shock he opened his mouth, dropping his pipe in the surf, and requiring the purchase of a new one at when he eventually found a functioning tobacconist in France.