Pinging Muddler
Posted on: Thu, 09/04/2008 - 21:35
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Pinging Muddler
In the Holy Grail thread you asked after "The National Joy Smoke" slogan. I've done some research looking at old Prince Albert ads on-line. I can't say definitively but I'm almost certain that the slogan is nearly as old as the blend (first marketed in 1903). The oldest ad I saw with "The National Joy Smoke" mentioned was from 1911 and the slogan consistently appeared up into the late 50's and mid 60's. Ads from the 40's and 50's are particularly entertaining. Guys in flannel suits and Fedoras whose wives are perfectly made up, not a hair out of place and wearing perfectly starched aprons. She's normally thinking something like, "His old pipe tobacco was so putrid I was ready to move back in with my mother but since he started smoking PA, The National Joy Smoke, I just can't get enough of that delicious aroma." Not sure if you've had occassion to smoke PA but there's a very good reason for its longevity. Quite simply it rocks. It's fairly simple and there's not much to it but for some reason it just grabs a hold of you and it's just undescribably delicious. Much like you described Morley's Best. Always great, consistent and a great companion. IMHO, PA along with Edgeworth RR, Carter Hall, Granger, SWR and Half and Half are THE quintessential American Codger Burlies.
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"Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets and watched the smoke that rises from the pipes of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?" T.S. Eliot
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to a place I have not remembered for a long time: I'm 8 or 10 years old & sitting in my gandfathers house, reading copies of Wide World magazine. It's a Brit magazine. The issues are all post war. The stories are of derring do: lion & leopard hunts in India & Africa, rescues from downed (propellor) aircraft in remore Canada, caught in a storm in the mid-Atlantic... The pictures are of men with pipes & hats. Some wear braces. There are a lot of guns to be seen. Germans were bad guys & nobody knew anything about Muslims, apart from the fact that there had been a war in Afghanistan at the turn of the century. Men were men. I guess the images those magazines evoked, wandering through my grandfather's house with him sitting on the porch (we call it a stoep) in a wicker chair, smoking his pipe, were strongly formative. Yes, National Joy Smoke: those were days of respectability. I wish I could find some of those old ads to decorate my den with - paste them up next to the antelope horns & fishing pictures. It would look just like Wide World.