My grandfather Gustaf used to smoke a pipe. I remember it from my own childhood, although I don't think he usually smoked a lot in the house. But the photos above, from his photo albums, do confirm his habit. I also had a look in his old cash-books to see if I could find out when he started. In his notes from 1923-25, there are no posts mentioning tobacco of any kind. From January 1926 onward, it seems he started buying cigars now and then. (That was the year when he started working full time as a journalist...) In January and February 1928, both cigars and 'tobacco' are mentioned - but from March that year and onward, it seems he kept to pipe tobacco. However, I see no purchase of a pipe mentioned... Maybe someone gave him one for Christmas in 1927...? (Might even have been his girlfriend - my grandmother - if she preferred the smell of pipe smoke to cigars...)
The upper left photo in the collage is one of my favourites. I've shown it here before, for example for Sepia Saturday 669. It's my grandparents Sally and Gustaf in the spring of 1930 (not yet married, but engaged since the previous autumn) at the newly finished well on the plot where they built their house that spring/summer of 1930. The well was built by their future brother-in-law, Olle (engaged to Sally's sister Hildur), carpenter by trade. (To build the house itself, they hired someone else. - It's not the house in the background, that belonged to someone else.)
Linking to Sepia Saturday 714
