We have all been there before - no papers or pipe and a shit ton of weed to smoke.   Time to make something to smoke with.  I have seen folks smoking out of fruit or some crappy old soda can.  I see those as failure in all but one way: you can smoke out of it, but how great is it?  And can you get high all afternoon smoking with it? I think not.   However, I have seen incredible brilliance generated from this need for a good smoking device.

The most common “go to” has to be the 2-liter plastic bottle.  With a simple stem and a bowl, you can create a fairly good bong.  A bit of aluminum foil, a small piece of tubing, and a bottle and now you have a bong.  You can even make it a gravity bong by cutting it in half and having the bowl on top.  A tight seal is needed to get suction, so these bongs don’t last as long as a standard bong. 

For me at 16, I wanted to construct something cool.  I had the good fortune of breaking my tennis racket over a missed forehand the week before and I still had the wood racket (Yes, I’m that old!).  I noticed that the handle was hollow.  I cut the head of the racket off and left about 8 inches of the handle, all hollow.  I used a hose from a broken bicycle pump and attached it to the smaller end of the racket handle.  A few holes here and there, a bit of duct tape, and Ralph was born. 

He wasn’t a pretty pipe, but I was the only person with a tennis racket smoking device.  One summer night, Ralph turned out to be the hit of a big party.  The heavy pipe was used the whole night until  around midnight, when Ralph gave his last hit.  I was OK with that, I still had my 2-liter bottle!  Amazingly, that brilliant piece of arts and crafts was talked about for years after and even made it into my High School yearbook.  Ralph, the tennis racket/bicycle hose pipe was more than a functional tool, he was my first named device.  Still to this day, each new piece of paraphernalia gets named!

Now, as I walk through the local head shop/glass store, the glass creations I see are museum worthy.  Each piece more detailed than the next, with price tags pushing three hundred bucks!  How do I explain that when I was a teenager, it was easier to get pot, than papers or a pipe to smoke it in.   By any measure, creating your own smoking device out of need or making a stunning glass creation, they are all part of the incredible brilliance of stoned crafts.