SMOKE, SMOKE, SMOKE THAT CIGARETTE

Jim McAkllister posted this story on his blog, and therefore may be old news to some of you. It describes my intoduction to smoking and the events that ensued. 02/07/2016

/SMOKE, SMOKE, SMOKE THAT CIGARETTE

My mom taught me to smoke soon after my eighth birthday. She took up this fashionable habit when she began working in Manhattan in 1935. I observed her practice the fine art of holding a weed, inhaling its pungent acrid smoke and then exhaling the spent fumes while she stood in front of a full-length pantry door mirror. Her performance enraptured me. After some time she offered me a drag, perhaps just to see my reaction. It must have been tolerable, as I soon become a willing convert, without her knowledge or approval.

In those days, cigarettes could be purchased loose for a penny apiece. On occasion, while sitting on the apartment’s stoop on hot summer nights, my mother would send me to the candy store across the street to buy one for her. The store’s owner thought nothing of selling them to kids like me. My mom smoked Philip Morris, a brand that never suited my taste. That did not prevent me from lifting a cigarette or two from her pack at times while still in grade school. She never noticed.

Another delinquent friend, Eddie Anderson, joined my smoking club. We hid our cigarettes on the Stevens campus near the tennis courts. Eddie's father caught us smoking one afternoon. He forced his son to put it out and then eat the stub. Eddie became ill, swore he would give up the habit, an oath he kept all his days.

Choosing one brand over another required a lot of trial and error on my part. The choices included Lucky Strikes, Camels, Chesterfield, Philip Morris, Pell Mell, Kool and many other brands, some with a menthol flavor, others with filter tips. At age 15, while still trying to make up my mind, I bought my first pack of tipped cigarettes from a dispensing machine in the lobby of a New York City movie house, the Roxy. Upstairs, alone in the balcony, feeling very grown up, I lit one and inhaled deeply. After a few more drags, my taste buds rebelled. Upon closer examination, it appeared I had lit the cork end. I do not recommend this option.

Lucky Strikes became my preferred smoke, perhaps out of sense of patriotism. During the war years, this brand changed its outside packaging color from green to white. Its advertisement stated that Lucky Strikes green had gone to war. It was just a ploy to try and get women to smoke the brand.

I could tolerate almost any cigarette except Camels. The advertising claim that people would walk a mile for a Camel cigarette did not alter my view. I would have run that far to avoid smoking one of them.

In my late teens, I tried smoking a pipe, hoping it would make me appear suave. The experiment did not go well. While returning home from Palisades Amusement Park, seated in the back of a bus in the heat of summer, I lit up the bowl of my new pipe filled with tobacco that had been saturated with some sweet smelling ingredient meant to make the smoke more pleasant tasting. I had to clench my teeth to keep the pipe in place, a pain in the jaw. As the bus ambled along, its exhaust fumes mingled with the sickly sweet aroma of the tobacco. My head got dizzy and my stomach got queasy. I tossed the pipe out the window and never smoked another one.

Cigars held no appeal for me, although there were plenty on hand in my home as my dad smoked a brand called White Owls. He did not actually smoke them. He chewed them, rolling it from one side of his face to the other. He gave up cigars in later years in favor of cigarettes, but he never seemed to get the knack of holding them properly, as they were too small for his large hands.

My brother lit up a cigar in our kitchen after graduating from college. It made him feel dizzy. Thereafter, he only smoked cigarettes, but do not ask me which brand. I never took notice.

During the war, the U. S. rationed cigarettes. When they arrived in town, people lined up to buy a carton. They may have been a scarce commodity, but my family always managed to have all we could smoke.

By the time I entered military service at age 18, my habit had reached the pack a day level. Almost every member of the armed forces seemed to smoke. Most of my air force friends did. While stationed in Alaska, it became customary for me to toss my lit cigarette butts onto the wooden floor of my Quonset hut with casual indifference. During my first week home after my discharge, while preparing to nap, I flipped my lit cigarette to the floor. Moments passed. What are you doing? Before retrieving it, a small burn appeared in the linoleum flooring. Welcome home, soldier.

My mom’s sister, Margaret and husband, Bill Magner, both smoked excessively. Aunt Margie influenced my mom to start smoking when they began working together in 1935. When Uncle Bill blew his breath through a hankie, it left behind a brown stain, visual evidence of his tarred lungs. This seemed like an impressive trick to me at the time.

My Uncle Mike Heneghan was an avid pipe smoker. He kept a large assortment of them in a wooden rack along with tobacco and stem filters. When we visited, he let me clean them while the family listened to the famous priest, Father Coughlin, on the radio. Neither seeing the gunk therein or the brown stain on Uncle Bill’s handkerchief deterred me from smoking. My consumption rate inched up gradually over the years to two packs a day in 1954 when I decided to stop the habit.

Three events helped bring this about.

My brother had stopped smoking in late 1953. One day he sprinted up the stairs to our top floor apartment two steps at a time, leaving me in the dust, huffing and puffing, moving up one at a time.

A few days later, while imbibing at the Eighth Street Tavern, the owner, an unmarried lawyer named Mike Millot began to rant. His elderly chain-smoking father with whom he lived had accidentally set a couch on fire, almost costing their lives. “His habit is driving me nuts.”

He broadened his tirade to include everyone who smoked. Being the only patron at the time, and the only one smoking, his angry outburst convinced me to surrender. “Okay, I'll give it up."  I crushed out my cigarette, and stopped smoking for the first time in my life, at age twenty seven.

A relapse happened about six months later. While driving cross-country to my new job assignment in California, I checked into a downtown hotel in Dallas and decided to have a beer at the bar next door before going to bed. Everyone in there had a cigarette dangling from their  hands or lips. My will power wilted. “I’ll buy a pack of Lucky Strikes, smoke just one, and then throw the rest away.” One led to another. Four months later, my habit had taken hold completely.

A co-worker, Maurice Tarplee, scolded me mildly, saying, “Joe, why are you smoking again?  I thought you had stopped.” We were out on a nine hole golf course at the time.

“There is no good reason,” I replied, tossing away my lit cigarette and the rest of the pack. This time, at age twenty eight, I quit cold turkey and never smoked thereafter, with two minor relapses.

A few months later, while playing golf with a married couple on that same nine hole course in Arcata, California, the wife tried repeatedly to light her cigarette while we walked down the right side of the fairway, her husband strolling down the left. Match after match blew out. In desperation, she asked me to light the thing. I did, but regretted it. The taste was putrid.

My last puff on a cigarette happened while flying east on a business trip. Airline companies used to provide passengers with a pack of three cigarettes, placed on every food tray. While waiting for the flight attendant to remove my tray, and for the heck of it, I opened the package and lit one up, taking a big drag. Choking and coughing, I plunged it into a bowl of uneaten pudding. It was a sweet and fitting end to this terrible habit formed at my mother’s knee.

▄