Uncle Frank's Pipe

 

The other day I received a present in the mail from my sister Susan.

She had forewarned me of its arrival, saying it was an unusual gift.

It arrived about a week after my birthday and I opened it with much anticipation.

As I removed the wrapping, I saw that it was a pipe, an old-fashioned tobacco pipe.

Before I read my sister's card that accompanied the gift, I guessed who it must have belonged to.

Her card confirmed that it belonged to Uncle Frank, after whose house in Chinchilla, Queensland, I had named this house in France.

My sister recently travelled to Chinchilla and took these photos. The house itself is much changed from how I remembered it and is under different ownership since Frank's death in 1982. 

The nameplate, Ellesmere, is now in the Chinchilla museum.

I was thrilled to get this marvellous memento of a man I much admired.

I examined it thoroughly, turning it over in my hands and fingering its curved stem. 

I smelled the bowl. 

Could I detect the lingering odour of pipe-tobacco, after all these years? 

Or was it my imagination? 

After all, it would have been 40 years since Frank took his last smoke of this pipe.

I had no idea how my sister had come into possession of Frank's pipe, but seeing it triggered many memories.

Like that of Frank sitting at a table on the verandah of Aunty Viv's place in Eumundi, Queensland. 

A land surveyor by profession, he'd be pouring over one of his detailed maps, pipe in mouth.

I can see him tapping the dregs of the bowl into an ashtray.

And then he'd reload his pipe with long, gnarly fingers, extracting a quantity of tobacco from a pouch and pushing it down into the bowl with his forefinger.

There'd be the whoosh of a lighting match, which he held over the bowl. Then he'd draw on the mouthpiece, with long puffs, and extinguish the match with a flick of the wrist.

Absorbed in his work, a look of calm concentration would came over Frank's face. His eyes squinted slightly with the up-drifting smoke. 

The odour of aromatic tobacco would make its way into my nostrils. 

Oh how I loved that smell!

Frank's pipe was a calabash style, not dissimilar to the one smoked by Sherlock Holmes.

I am absolutely thrilled now to own this rare treasure, it evokes such wonderful memories. 

It takes me back to my boyhood and brings the image of Uncle Frank before my mind's eye. 

I found an attractive, cross-sliced piece of timber, framed by segmented bark. I sanded, oiled and polished it to form a mounting for the pipe.

It is positioned beside the fireplace. A fitting location.

Frank's old pipe now takes pride of place in Ellesmere. I feel like it has returned home.