who calls a filbert nut a nigger toe anymore?

Jury duty continues in Clayton. Yesterlunch I returned to the tobacco shop in search of information on and a sample of a particular type of tobacco known as Perique. I knew it to be tobacco with a distinctive aroma arising from its particular curing process, which is unlike that used for the Turkish Latakia.

Which is pronounced la(pple) tuh KEY uh, as I learned yesterday from the man who told me that my favorite tobacconist's (on Delmar) had once been a head shop. A friendly man with horribly yellowed teeth but willing to chat smoke as he chained cigarettes.

The fat man who had recommended Chili Macs to me wasn't there today. In his place was another employee smoking a large, well-lacquered pipe that filled this corncob-smoking-ass' heart with envy.

There are three main types of pipe bowls used in tobacco smoking. Briar, made from tough root wood, is the one your stereotypical father/grandfather with thirty to hundreds of dollars to spend on a pipe smokes. Meerschaum, German for "seafoam," is a Turkish clay used to create fragile and cool smoking bowls which can be quite simple and cheaply made or intricately carved and expensive. The corncob pipe, ostensibly invented in Washington, Missouri, smokes coolly and is available at your local drugstore for $5. It's a good smoke, too, if you make sure to take the filter out of the stem before you smoke it. Don't worry about the health risk, because you're not inhaling the smoke. The corncob pipe is uncool, though.

I asked Rich Briar Pipe to describe Perique.

Dirty socks. That's what it smells like.

Oh, that doesn't sound very appetizing. The Yellow Man brought out a large satchel of bulk tobacco, a blend which heavily favored Perique. I smelled it, it smelled bad. What I normally smoke has a pleasing secondhand aroma, a scent warmly reminiscent of Fathers and Grandfathers and Goodness, a scent which I hope helps mitigate the corncob's extreme nerdliness.

Yes, Douglas MacArthur and Mark Twain smoked the cob, and the latter did coin the lovely phrase "Missouri Meerschaum" for my pipe, but I still feel like a dirty drug addict in comparison to the Rich Briar Pipe Smokers. Of course, I am something of an unclean toker, so I guess that's kinda expectable.

A third man on a folding chair sat in the shop, smoking a great big fat brown seegar and asked Briar Pipe,

What is that, that stuff, how do they make it? Is it a special preparation?

To which Rich Briar Pipe replied:

That's from New AH-lins, and they've got some special process that they do. I think they use nigger toenail clippings.

They use coon shit!

replied Seegar as he and the Yellow Man flicked eyes towards me, standing with a polite grin on my face. Following a short exchange about a European tobacco blend that was suggested to me, the name of which is as far from me as the possibility of returning to that particular shop, I left to drown my liberal outrage in a delicious Slinger.

Once my mother told me that her mother had referred to Brazil Nuts as Nigger Toes. That was, she said, just what they called them. She told me that they just didn't know better. I understood.

For those who have been following the continuing story of Superelectric, I here invoke the mighty theme of retaining one's integrity while accommodating a world which one desperately needs. Language and standards may change, but I guess it's always hard to be a girl in an anarchist boys' club.