Boy, this guy really loves cigars, I thought, while listening to Gary Phelps in his shop, Import Gourmet & Spirits. We were standing in front of a six-foot square humidor, which is one of those things you see in cigar shops that is sort of like a walk-in refrigerator for cigars. Gary, who grew up in Sanford, developed a taste for cigars, as well as beer and fine wine, at school in Wilmington and working in Raleigh.
``When I moved back to Sanford there was just no where to buy any of the things I'd gotten used to,'' he told me. ``I was so bent for a good cigar when I moved back that I talked my very nice wife into letting me build a ten foot by ten foot humidor in the basement of our house. I converted an old bomb shelter that the people who had owned our house before us had had.''
Yes, that's right, this guy came home to his wife one night and said something like: Honey, can I turn the bomb shelter into a special room where I can store a few thousand cigars? The Cold War's over, so we aren't gonna need it. Besides, if there's a nuclear war, mankind is gonna need a good cigar.
``It had all the things I needed, electricity and water already in,'' he told me. ``So I just converted it to handle cigars. I cedared the roof, cedared the walls, cedared the back of the doors, cedared everything.''
A humidor doesn't refrigerate cigars, but it is a controlled environment where the humidity is kept between 70 and 80 percent and the temperature below 70 degrees.
``Cedar, of course, when it's unfinished will absorb moisture, and then release it slowly over time,'' Gary said, explaining the walls. ``It's a natural mold inhibitor, it won't let mold grow on it. It's a natural insecticide, bugs don't like it. So it serves quite a few purposes. And the biggest reason you use cedar is cigars don't age unless they're in contact with or around cedar.''
On television the other night, I saw a story about a guy in Connecticut who very carefully grows the tobacco leaves used to wrap good cigars. After they're harvested, the leaves are sent to the Dominican Republic to be cured for a year. Then they go back to Connecticut and then to Jamaica for two years for aging before they ever get wrapped around a cigar.
``It's like a fine wine,'' Gary told me. ``Any of the great things in life, like wine and whiskey, get better with age. But just like whiskey and wine, if they're not kept in the right environment, not only will they not age well, they won't last long at all.''
Since buying good cigars meant driving to Charlotte or Fayetteville, he said, the humidor in his basement allowed him to make fewer trips while really stocking up.
``Since we were short money when I built the store, my seed was cigars I had at the house,'' he said. ``I brought my personal collection from the house up here to the store and started selling them off.''
Gary's shop sits on Carthage Street, a few doors down from the Temple Theatre, where theater patrons regularly drop down during intermission to drink coffee, eat those fancy little cookies and crackers that you'd expect to see at a gourmet shop, and buy imported and specialty beer and wine. Import Gourmet & Spirits stocks 170 types of cigars, 127 types of beer and 41 types of coffee.
When you step in the door, there's a cooler on the left, where a lot of beer is kept cold. Behind that is a table with a percolator on it, where an ample supply of coffee is kept hot. Farther along are shelves and containers with beer, tobacco, coffee, cookies, crackers, wines, tea, spices, chocolate, gift baskets and, at the rear, the second largest cigar humidor in Sanford. The largest is the one in Gary's basement.
Gary is a slightly heavyset man with dark hair and a dark, well-trimmed beard who presides over his shop with the air of a medieval tavern keeper, or maybe of a merchant of the early Renaissance. He is understated in the way that people who know more than they let on tend to be. In short, he is a solid, middle class burger.
Before he opened his shop, he and his friend Tom Haeck got together every Monday evening at Tom's apartment to smoke cigars and watch football. I guess Gary's wife Laura decided that storing cigars in the basement was one thing, but smoking up the house with them was entirely another.
After the shop opened, they moved their smokers to the shop. Sometimes they are joined by a couple of dozen of their friends.
``Sometimes it gets real big and I don't like that,'' Gary said. ``I like it when it's a little bit more comfortable.''
About eight people were seated around a table in the front of the shop -- including Tom, Jeff Owle, Ingrid Eisinger, and a local attorney and his wife -- when I came in.
``Good conversation,'' Ingrid said of why they all come, adding that she doesn't smoke cigars.
``She actually sort of joined the group because she heard about our beer and she came in and we were just sitting here and she happened to come in on Tuesday night, we were sitting down smoking cigars she wanted some place to hang out that wasn't a pick up bar,'' Gary explained.
``That's right,'' Ingrid said, laughing gently.
``We have had a lot of women that have come in here and smoked cigars,'' Tom said.
I tried to settle back as unobtrusively as possible for the only stranger in the room. They all asked who I was exactly, and I explained that I publish The Sanford Star.
``It's a sort of a monthly newspaper,'' Gary said.
``Oh, that alternative paper?'' Ingrid said.
``Oh, I hate being called that,'' I said.
``But it's a compliment,'' Ingrid said.
``It's this one right here,'' I said, handing her one.
``Yep, the one in the bookstore,'' she said.
``But, unfortunately it's not published A Often As We Would LIKE IT TO BE PUBLISHED,'' the slightly red-faced attorney said, steadily raising his voice.
I hinted that more advertising support might lead to more frequent publication.
``Throwing it back in my face are you?'' he said.
This discussion ended when the attorney's wife told him that, no, he could not buy an ad and that his name couldn't be in this story either.
While the women talked about movies and their jobs, Gary and Jeff talked about pipes.
``I came in here because my little sister told me about the place, Jeff said, while examining a new pipe. ``I came in here, met him, started smoking cigars, smoked some pipes, and now he's got me hooked.''
``I might be able to get the guy to cough up a meerschaum blank,'' Gary told Jeff. ``No, it's not meerschaum, it would be a briar block.''
``Oh, yeh, a briar block, yeh,'' Jeff.
``It's the blank they make the pipes out of,'' Gary explained. ``Most all pipes any more, they're not hand carved, they're machine turned. The block is the blank. They cut the rough shapes. That way it would be square and you could carve it to any shape you wanted to.''
``That would be cool actually,'' Jeff said.
While they were talking, the attorney told me he had gotten married since the last time we met. ``I married this gorgeous woman.''
Since I had agreed not to use his name in the story, I tired ignoring the attorney, but he refused to be ignored.
``Frankly, we were expecting another paper SINCE LAST OCTOBER,'' he said, raising his voice while his wife kept putting her hand over his mouth. ``I MEAN, THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS WRITING THAT GOOD HAS TO BE HEARD FROM MORE THAN JUST ONCE EVERY SIX MONTHS.''
``And you've had all 127 varieties of beer this evening?'' I suggested.
``Not this evening, but in the course of the past week, yes,'' he said, admitting he might be a little ``saturated.''
Not long after that, my friend's wife decided that he had been enough fun for one evening. I decided that was probably wise.
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Michael D. Esposito is a local artist and editor of The Sanford Star, This is a partial exert from the September issue.
We will print the full article when it becomes available.
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