After a truly good meal, an outstanding cigar is still the most satisfying after-dinner activity that doesn’t involve two human beings.
Brad Shaw, Radio Announcer

The quote above by Brad Shaw is one that instantly triggers memories. Having a cigar after your run of the mill dinner is secondary to what comes to mind. When I think about an after-dinner cigar it normally brings the holidays to mind.

I suppose being able to smoke in the confines of my home (within a designated room) I have become spoiled. These days I smoke one cigar per day throughout the week. My daily routine typically has me cooking dinner shortly after getting home from work. This not only has dinner ready for my wife when she comes home from work, it also gives me a little more free time in the evening.

By having dinner between 5:30 and 6:00, I can light up a robusto after dinner and not be concerned with getting to bed at too late an hour. So, as you would have imagined, my daily cigar normally comes after having dinner and spending some time with my wife.

Having an after-dinner cigar in this manner has definitely taken away from the experience in the general sense. When I think of a more meaningful after-dinner experience, the holidays or special occasions come to mind. A prime example of this is Thanksgiving of last year.

With family living nearby, my wife and I generally pull double duty on the holidays. This particular year we had dinner with my Wife’s family followed up by having dessert at my parents house. This year it played into the cigar concept because my father is also a cigar enthusiast.

As my father and I sat around digesting our meals, we puffed away on a couple of cigars. I don’t recall if we were smoking the same brand or even what that brand they may have been. All that mattered was that the cigars were an excellent end to a fun and family-filled day.

Post from: Walt in PA

A good meal and a good cigar is something special

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Maybe it’s like becoming one with the cigar. You lose yourself in it; everything fades away: your worries, your problems, your thoughts. They fade into the smoke, and the cigar and you are at peace.
A Quote by Raul Julia

I must admit, I am not well versed when it comes to cigar quotes, or any quotes for that matter. Since starting this series of articles, I have read dozens upon dozens of quotes on cigars. Some are clever, some are funny, and some are extraordinarily deep.

Among all of those quoted, there is one that stands out in my mind among all others. That person is quoted above, Raul Julia. This man seems to have completely embraced the hobby before his untimely death in 1994. Not only did he embrace the hobby, he seems to have had a respect for it far beyond that of the occasional or social cigar smoker. He is an individual which I would have loved to meet and speak with regarding his view on life and cigars.

In the quote above, Raul Julia points out the reset that your mind seems to go through after enjoying a fine cigar. The one and only thing I can think to compare this to is riding a motorcycle. In both scenarios you clear your mind and focus completely on the task at hand, be it negotiating a curve in the road or picking out the intricacies in a cigar.

There have been very few things on my mind that could not be shaken free during some alone time a cigar. This isn’t to say that a bound bunch of leaves is the cure for your mental ills, but it is a great way to take a break from the stress and come back to it with a clear mind. Often times I find that revisiting the cause of the stress with a clear head gives me the much needed opportunity to see it from a new vantage point.

Post from: Walt in PA

Cigars – Helping you solve one problem at a time

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“They had no good cigars there, my lord; and I left the place in disgust.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson, returning from Venice

Each and every time I read the above quote by Alfred Lord Tennyson, I can’t help but laugh a little. I envision a noble man standing in a caste, white cape gleaming, while a man strides up to him to report his journey. As he stands there, breastplate highly polished, wearing a helmet with a stripe of red rising from the peak like a flaming Mohawk, he reports to his commander that “They had no good cigars there, my lord; and I left the place in disgust“.

While I have never left a place in disgust due to lack of cigars, I feel Lord Tennyson’s pain. On more than one occasion I have gone on family trips and outings, finding myself with some unexpected spare time to enjoy a cigar. More than once I have been stopped in my tracks when I discovered that the closest cigar shop to the town I was staying in was miles and miles away.

Because I have had one too many of those types of experiences, I find myself packing cigars even if I do not expect to smoke one. I also pack a spare or two just in case I am joined on my cigar excursion.

In the occurrence that I know I will be in the vicinity of a cigar shop, or plenty of cigars, I still pack some of my own. During my last two trips to the annual IPCPR Convention, I made sure to have several cigars on hand. You may find that kind of crazy being that I was going to a cigar convention, but at times you just want to smoke something you know you will enjoy without the surprises of convention samples.

Post from: Walt in PA

They had no good cigars there, I left the place in disgust

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Last week I was scanning through my list of RSS Feeds when one of them caught my eye. While I am not an everyday reader of Copyblogger, I do read a couple of articles throughout the week. This time around, I saw an article entitled “One Foolproof Trick to Blast Writer’s Block” written by James Chartrand.

Having had my fair share of trouble coming up with post ideas, I dove right in and began reading. The concept for beating writers block was not only simple, it was genius. It took the simple concept of naturally forming an opinion on things you read and applied it to popular quotes.

I liked the idea so much that I sought out a couple dozen cigar quotes and became eager to get started. Initially I was planning on placing these topics on Stogie Review but wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea. Being that these quotes are going to generate a lot of opinion, I thought it might clash with the more educational and informative style of Stogie Review.

Instead, I thought I would try a few out here on Walt In PA so that I could get a feel for how they went, writing wise, and to test the waters on how they are received. If they go over very well, I may shift them over to Stogie Review to get more eyes and responses on the writing.

In any case, this post is the first in this potentially long series, which has yet to be titled.

A youth with his first cigar makes himself sick; a youth with his first girl makes other people sick.
A Quote from Mary Wilson Little

Ah, to be young again (relatively speaking, after all, I am only twenty-seven) and fawn all over a pretty young girl. To think up ways to impress this individual, and of course inadvertently drive the adults around you crazy.

Having read a few more quotes by Mary Wilson Little after finding the one above, I think the quote was meant to focus more on young love rather than cigars. Being a cigar nut, I obviously begin thinking about the cigar part of the quote and focused less on that of young love.

When we were young, we all found ourselves in a position to do something fun that was frowned upon by our parents. Some took things a little farther than others, but we have all been in the situation where we had a finger waved at us while the person on the other end of that finger was hollering about the results of our actions.

Being young, we feel the urge to rebel against anything deemed as not cool. When it came to being cool, some of us ventured out into the waters of trying cigars. I mean come on, how cool did you feel when you popped that first Swisher Sweet or White Own Grape into your mouth before setting it aflame.

After the cigar was burning and we were about half way in, some of us weren’t feeling so cool anymore. While my first experience with a cigar didn’t leave me tossing my cookies, I wasn’t feeling so great. In fact, I can recall one friend loosing it after showing all of us how cool he was with his cigar.

The first time I had my first real cigar I think I was about eighteen years old. It was some time around New Years Eve and an older friend of mine passed out a few Churchills. I don’t recall what they were or where he picked them up, but the urge to be cool hit me once again.

This time around, I wasn’t feeling ill after smoking most of the cigar but I couldn’t understand what was so appealing about it. By the time I reached the band I tossed it into an ashtray and was happy to be rid of it. My mouth tasted so dirty that all I wanted to do was brush my teeth.

Some years later I embraced the hobby, but I still find it amazing that I have come full circle. From being ill to recommending cigars as a hobby to those interested. With such a poor first impression, I would have never thought to be seeking out and buying cigars years later.

Post from: Walt in PA

Memories of that first cigar

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