I was thinking back to some pipe smokers I encountered as a youth. While technically some may include them as sailors, I have know both ship captains & pilots (ship not plane) and tug and towboat captains and workers who were pipe smokers. My dad was a towboat captain and didn't smoke a pipe but there were several who I saw smoking pipes while sitting at the controls while pushing barges up the river.
@mangoandy I like to think everyone in the medical profession smokes a pipe but unfortunately due to the health issues and the PC world we are living in most medical facilities and hospitals in my area don't allow tobacco use at all, both in private and at work. I will throw out the detective... Sherlock Holmes, as another profession I picture smoking a pipe
Accountant, engineer and, believe it or not, doctor. I can remember, up until the early 1980s when it wasn't unusual to see a doctor smoking a pipe. I can remember my own doctor, when I was a kind, coming into the examination room smoking a Rhodesian.
For me the idea of a pipe smoking professional is a man (or woman) holding a position which involves deep contemplation rather than physical labor. For that reason a novelist or painter immediately comes to mind. As does a college professor. But I can also visualize the archeologist uncovering tombs in Egypt and laboring over the translation of hieroglyphics on a stone tablet, as well as a paleontologist meticulously brushing away grains of sand from a fossilized dinosaur bone embedded in a mountainside. But another example (and my personal favorite) of a profession that best exemplifies a pipe smoker with his profession is the solitary lighthouse keeper with nothing more to keep him company than his thoughts and a pipe.
@ghostsofpompeii -Ahhh! The romanticized life of a lonely, solitary lighthouse keeper... Reality was different - at least for lighthouses in the United States - with most of the lighthouses were kept by the Keeper and his/her families. There was even on woman lighthouse keeper who stayed on the job well into her 90s.
In addition to that, a lot of the lighthouses were also Lifesaving Stations with surfboats and men to brave the raging surf nearby.
Sadly, all lighthouse were either extinguished or automated by the 1990's because of the advances in technology making them obsolete. However, a number of the lights have been turned into museums or "leased" out to locations and placed into caretaker status. Some have even been sold to those wanting to live in a lighthouse.
PappyJoe, great that you mentioned the men of the Life Saving stations. The work they performed on the Atlantic coast in the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries was nothing short of amazing.
Part of the lore of the U.S. Coast Guard which was formed with the Revenue Cutter Service and Lifesaving Service were merged in 1915. The Lighthouse Service officially became part of the Coast Guard in 1939.
Field Engineers in the computer field, 3 out of 4 of us in my local office smoked a pipe. Of course that was then, when I left there were 3 in our regional office.
Sailor all the way. My grandfather was with the coast guard and he always had a pipe in his mouth. I guess I'm breaking in the Bouncer/ Security/ Surveillance crowd haha.
My dad was a cop for 30 yrs and smoked a pipe for a good chunk of that time. My uncle, a retired mechanic for American Airlines, smoked a pipe a far back as I can remember. I'm an accountant.....not sure if that really conjures up the image of pipe smoker though.
I agree with you 100% pipeman83 but "back in the day", when one could smoke in the office, the cigarette smokers surrounding me formed an indelible image in my mind
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