Meet the Staff

Many people think it takes a staff of trained professionals to produce a magazine like Pipes and tobaccos. Those people are wrong.

Staff

Dayton Matlick, Chairman
With decades of experience in tobacco publishing, Matlick founded P&T magazine because he likes pipes. “The industry and hobby needed a magazine like this,” he says, “and I needed more pipes.” He immediately became publisher of P&T because he owns the company and can be whatever he wants, but he soon turned the job over to Phil Bowling because he didn’t want to work.

Noel Morris, President/CEO
Primarily responsible for scheduling meetings about what further meetings are necessary before additional meetings can be scheduled, Morris is the company problem solver. “What kinds of problems?” she asks. “Try giving liquor, motorcycles and pellet guns to a college rugby club and you might start to understand the kinds of problems we have.”

Rhonda Combs, Chief Operating Officer
“Does no one here,” says Combs, “understand basic economics? You have to make more than you spend.” Nearly always in a state of weary exasperation, she is often seen roaming the halls pulling out her hair, which she fashions into tiny voodoo dolls of the sales staff. They’re lined up on her window sill. “No, you can’t have a hot tub in the pipe room,” she says to them, brandishing a straight pin. “Go sell a subscription or something for God’s sake.”

Phil Bowling, Publisher
Also publisher of Tobacconist magazine, Bowling occasionally contributes photos and articles to P&T, but his primary contribution is his common sense. “You wouldn’t believe the bone-headed ideas these guys come up with,” he says. “My main job is to say, ‘No, you can’t print that. Are you insane?’”

Chuck Stanion, Editor in Chief
After his incarceration for selling moonshine and counterfeit county fair tickets in the backwater towns of Arkansas, Stanion decided to change careers and become a writer. “I know most of the alphabet,” he says, “and my father knew a guy who owned a dictionary, so writing comes to me naturally.” He was hired by P&T magazine because he smoked more than the other applicants.

Stephen A. Ross, Associate Editor
The only editorial staff member with an education past the fifth grade, Ross is the true intelligence behind P&T, though he’s probably held back by the jealousy of his coworkers. “They’re intimidated because I can spell ‘subterfyooge,’” he sulks. “Wait, lemme see what you just wrote down. No, it’s S U B T E R F U G E, you idiot.”

T.S. Donahue, Copy Editor
Abandoned in infancy and raised by a family of migrating Canadian geese, Donahue still honks occasionally while speaking, but his writing skills are excellent (he prefers quill pens). He says he can fly, and while that claim has not been documented, he does get to work on time without owning a car. We first found him on the side of the interstate with a sign reading “Will document references in MLA or AP style for aquatic grains and grasses.” We pay him in lawn clippings.

Stephanie Banfield, Copy Editor
We know very little about Banfield, and we don’t want to know. Apparently immortal and ageless, she speaks with no one and responds to questions only with a penetrating, soul-wilting stare. She appeared in an empty office one day and started copy editing, and no one here has had the courage to ask if she was ever hired. With an encyclopedic, personal knowledge of the last 1,500 years of human history, Banfield is left to do as she wishes without interference. Frankly, she terrifies us.

Rich Perkins, Sales Manager
Perkins has 185 years of experience selling and marketing anything possible. He began as a snake-oil salesman in the western territories and gained a reputation for illicit land deals when the railroads were built. Later, he became publisher/sales manager for a gardening magazine. “I can sell seeds, or even dirt itself,” he boasts.

Greg Cole, Sales Representative
Cole assists the many clients clamoring to purchase advertising space in P&T. “I have to turn away an awful lot of companies simply because they are not worthy,” he says. “P&T isn’t for everyone and we have to be very selective. But if you know anyone—anyone—who has a couple of bucks—or cows, potatoes or chickens to trade—have them call me. Toll free. Today. Please call.”

Marrilyn Jackson, Sales Coordinator
As liaison to advertisers and tasked with assisting Rich Perkins, Jackson’s most important qualification is that she does not own a firearm. “Rich’s previous assistants would shoot at him all the time,” she says. “I’d shoot him too, but I don’t have a gun.”

Heather Brittingham, Customer Service
Every organization needs someone who can be polite. Unlike the rest of the staff, Brittingham can speak with someone on the phone for more than 30 seconds without spontaneously insulting them. “I like the pipe people,” she says. “For folks whose enthusiasm borders on obsession, they’re great fun. And they’re so much better to talk with than the people who work here.”

Irene Joiner, Human Resources Manager
Joiner has the unenviable job of making sure no one in the office does anything to anyone else in the office that could get the company sued. “I’m exhausted,” she says. “It’s like trying to teach a pack of starving hyenas which hors d’oeuvre fork to use for shrimp.”

Kathryn Kyle, Marketing Manager
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” says Kyle. “I wandered in to ask for directions and they put me to work. At first they said it was temporary but now they won’t let me go. Please, send help.”

Nicky Franker, Graphic Design Associate
Because she has more good judgment than the rest of the staff, Franker not only does design and layout but is responsible for making the print ads look good. No one here would ever call her a witch (as far as she knows), but she does achieve results that can only be attributed to magic. She also has an unusual cackle that makes one duck from imagined flying monkeys.

Antoine Reid, Graphic Design Associate
We make Reid’s job as hard as possible by submitting incomprehensible notes for him to turn into legible articles, which he does without complaint. That’s suspicious, but it’s not yet been determined if he’s in the witness protection program or what. Without his tireless efforts, P&T would look like a photocopied children’s menu for an amateur horseshoe league’s annual ’possum barbecue.

Dan Kurtz, Graphic Design Associate
Kurtz has relinquished the exciting lifestyle of a professional musician to work with us–six or eight times now. He’s a talented guitarist but even so he keeps coming back to avoid starvation. Part electronics himself (he electively had part of his frontal lobe replaced last year with a 12AX7 NOS vintage preamp vacuum tube), Kurtz is able to communicate with the rest of the staff via email, but his personal conversation skills are limited to snarling and pawing at the air as if trying to knock apples out of an invisible tree.