Chapter 16: Teasing Pippa

I made a coffee and went downstairs to the office. Things were slow and boring for Pippa. She was using a virtual PC to study when I was out. As only she and I could see the PC’s, it was a good way for her to pass the time. Being a conk now, she had access to everything on the Internet on Earth 23, where I grew up.

One neat feature was we had implants so we could hear our AIs. Whenever there was sound on the PC, we could hear the PC well.

I took Pippa to Lara’s café. I may need to find a better place for tea time or snack time. I could tell that seeing me had upset Lara once again. I had just missed being run over by her train wreck of emotional behavior. In retrospect, she is, to a degree, overly selfish and uncaring of others. Maybe she was mentally on the rag that night. I am happy as it is now.

I ordered a slice of pear pie and coffee. It was made with sliced pears and white raisins. It had little sugar in it, which I liked because of the pear tartness. The raisins made it perfect. Pippa people watched happily. This was a new town for her, so everyone and everything was new. She had ordered a piece of vanilla cake and hot tea.

We went back to the office and started looking at how I could make better ads.

This created a need to know more about the subjects so I first delved into the tobacco industry from back home.

Once satisfied with that advertising background, I researched how to make woodcuts. That data was pretty much historical in nature. Nobody makes woodcuts anymore. Everything is done with machines.

I knew the process of making a woodcut requires two people to make the woodcut. An artist draws the desired result on paper, usually using ink. A formschneider transfers that and then carves the woodblock. Hieronymous Formschneider was the name of the first known woodcut carver. He is attributed with originating the woodcutting process itself.

The ‘formschneider’ carves the reverse image of the design into the surface of a block of wood. He uses hand chisels and gouges to remove material. This leaves the parts to be printed, standing high on the block surface. This part is inked with the rest of that page of the newspaper at printing time.

My newspaper ads here use a simple black-and-white process. The woodcut process could only support simplistic drawings here. That makes multicolor printing too difficult.

Each printing press is made by different press companies. So woodblocks for each press are different in thickness as well as different standards for width and length. They are custom carved by different formschneiders at each newspaper. Many woodblocks are considered artwork.

To make a woodcut, you provided the news printer with the artwork, in this case a cartoon drawing. In the small scale used for a news ad, it could not have a lot of detail. That required more time to carve and made the woodcut more fragile. That means fragile woodcuts must be used fewer times.

One big problem with woodcuts is that they have a limited lifespan. That’s why they were later replaced with metal castings. Even later, the process was replaced with other, more advanced image processes.

I started designing a cartoon figure of the top half of a man with a cartoon speech bubble over him. His mouth is open, implying he is talking. The bubble could only hold so much text.

I put “Taste’s Great! Smoke OR Chew it!” in the bubble.

I had not seen anything like that in this here and now. Cartoon speech bubbles were common back in my home world.

The ad is meant to have the “Flavored Cheroots” label underneath the woodcut. This is done using metal type.

Under Flavored Cheroots went the regular ad text saying why this is so great. I worked out a few different ad blurbs to go underneath the image. I also provided different wording for inside the cartoon bubble.

Pippa left early. She wanted to pick up some food. She wanted to cook for me tonight. I continued working for a while.

Pippa said, “Bill, our meal will be ready in a few minutes.”

I sent, “Yes dear,” in a Smart Alecky reply.”

Pippa had made a stir-fry that looked suspiciously like one my parents’ cook Rosie Conley made often. The ingredients here on 19’ were much better tasting. The chicken and vegetables were all locally produced and fresh. I opened a white wine for the meal.

While rummaging around, I found what I thought was a blank cabinet filler. It was between the cabinets; it was a narrow pullout. I found is you push the face on the thing, and a tall, narrow drawer slides out. In it are several bottles of different liquors.

After dinner, I wanted to take a walk. I was headed to the college garden when I passed a house that had a broom tied around a porch support.

I covertly pointed and sent, “Ox, what is the meaning of that broom over there?”

Ox sent, “That broom indicates this is an ale house. There are three distinct drinking places, Taverns, Inns and Ale Houses. All three serve alcoholic beverages, but they do it differently.”

Ox continues, “An Ale House is so-called that it is usually run by a woman in her own house. Thus, the term, Ale House. She brews the ale herself. The broom signifies she currently has ale available and is open for business. More often than not, they can supply a limited snack menu, too. These places are favorites for college students. Ale is cheap and they can get slightly tipsy drinking ale.”

“Ale is made from barley and sometimes a little oats. It is naturally sweeter and quite unlike beer, except there is a buzz.”

“Beer is pretty much a Northern European thing. It requires hops. Ale does not use hops. That’s what makes ale slightly sweeter tasting; it uses no hops or very little. The ale is cloudy with residuals from the short brewing process. The alcohol content is low, around 2% by volume, almost half of what beer has.”

“The ale house owner makes ale in batches. The owner is usually a widow, and this is how she supports herself and her children if she has any. It’s a cottage industry.”

“Taverns are more about friends quietly talking, smoking, and the sipping of wine. Inns are more about feeding people and providing rooms. Alcohol served there is more of an accessory to the meal.”

I sent, “Thank you, I can take my walk later, I have to see this place in person.”

I went into the ale house. As a public house, I guess you just opened a regular front door and entered.

The front room has six tables. They are two, three, and one four seat tables. The tables and chairs do not all match. Around the edge is more comfortable seating. These have little cheap tables here and there to rest your ale on. Since glass is a luxury, the ale comes in two sizes of crockery.

It was full of college kids; what a surprise. Most of the patrons were male. There were two girls off by themselves. As I sipped my ale, I saw the college boys try to figure out how to talk to the girls. I finished my ale and left. The ale was pretty tasty, but the atmosphere was too full of young male posturing and bullshit talk. Not my thing at all.

I walked to the college’s garden and started around in a counterclockwise stroll. I let my mind freewheel through all the things I was doing and the people around me. Mostly, I thought about improving the business.

I had two more factories I had not visited. One specialized in pipe tobacco, the other in chewing tobacco. Rebecca carried all three of our products to an extent. Cigars and pipes were the backbone of her business. She also had a few offerings from some Connecticut based companies.

I thought back to what I had learned.

I had seen a few people smoking their own cigarettes. They hand roll every cigarette. There are no ready-made cigarettes, let alone convenient packs of cigarettes. Cigarettes are a very low-end, low-cost item. I think tobacco companies think there is no real money in cigarettes. That might be a new market in the future.

Pipes, on the other hand, were quicker to stuff tobacco in. Clay pipes fill much of what is the low end of the smoking business here.

Pipes also provided a market beyond tobacco alone. There is the sale of different styles of pipes made from different types of wood, clay, and even rock. At the very low end is the humble corn cob, which is often a homemade item in the country.

The next step up from corn cob is the common clay pipe. There are many levels of pipe hierarchy, from very cheap to highly expensive.

A clay pipe maker uses a mold and a few tools to make pipes from clean clay. Most pipes are made by hand in minutes. It has to dry for several days before firing. These low end pipes are cheap and available as “house pipes” to patrons at inns and taverns. They are usually white, but some come out pink or gray, depending on the local availability of clay.

Pipes require some kind of pipe tool. Usually, it is a metal or wood box to contain matches and a pouch to hold the tobacco. Pipes are ripe for add-on products. There are even a few large desk lighters that use naphtha as a fuel. These are generally seen displayed grandly on a desk or in a wealthy parlor or sitting room. They are a sign of wealth and prestige.

I made my way home, thinking about going to my pipe tobacco company soon. It’s called Cooper-Howard Tobaccos and is in Petersburg, further out to the west than Henson Cigars.

I shed my clothes and took a quick shower. I sat at the dinette table between the kitchen and the sitting room. I called up a virtual PC to research pipe smoking and pipe tobacco in general. It appears there is a plethora of information on pipes and how to go about smoking them. Much of it appears to be a subjective opinion.

There is a lot of learning that goes with pipe smoking, certain mannerisms, and habits. These are practiced differently among classes. Holding a clay pipe is very different from a briar. The process of lighting them is even different.

What is the best wood for wood pipes? What tobacco is best? For being an almost defunct pastime at home, pipes, and pipe tobaccos are a much more involved subject. There seems to be a love of the practice.

I thought about all the people who use tobacco here on 19’. It was a great majority of people. Men, women, even teen boys and girls. Many used tobacco in one form or another. The most popular are chewing tobacco or the smoking of a corn cob pipe.

This was odd to me. Tobacco in my world had been a very small part of everyday life. You almost could not smoke in public anymore. Buildings all have ‘No Smoking’ signs prominently displayed literally everywhere. There are even laws against it in many places.

Here, tobacco use is very common and almost a public obsession. People chewed, spat, dipped snuff, and lit up almost everywhere. Good cigars and pipes were at the high end of the market. That’s what Rebecca mostly dealt with, the more expensive products.