ESSAY PACKING IT IN

WHEN I WAS a kid and the radio news was filled with WWII, I would sit with my father as he watered the grass through a big brass nozzle. In his undershirt, with his rural “silent type” composure, he would sit, forever, with a Lucky Strike between his lips. The long ash would cling like a bagworm until he flipped the cigarette out into the St. Augustine, leaving a thin trail of smoke like a crashing Japanese fighter plane. Slowly the stream of water would move across the grass to put it out. I learned that cigarettes kept things moving, meant constant action with the hands. Something to watch out for. Danger, wonderful danger. They were something a child shouldn’t touch.. .”No, no, ’til you’re big like Daddy.”

My grandmother’s attic was my escape. Among its jars of dried seeds and old trunks were every Collier’s, Saturday Evening Post and Life magazine printed during the war. Pages filled with soldiers in peril-and when they were not being shot at, it seemed, they were smoking. Me and my pre-adolescent cousins imitated those pictures in our games. We had arms in slings made of sackcloth and bandages on our heads. In our mouths were fake cigarettes or burning grapevine stems. In the movie battles our heroes seemed to fight only to have a rest period where they could smoke: John Wayne, Richard Wid-mark, Robert Ryan, Alan Ladd, Dana Andrews all solved the roughest conflict with a thoughtful puff or two.

Cigarettes packed symbolic punch, too. We knew the Germans and Japs were bad because they held their cigarettes funny or used them for torture. All the good guys smoked. When a guy was going in front of the firing squad his last request wasn’t for a stick of gum or a Snickers; he wanted a last smoke so he could take it like a man.

In a sense, cigarettes eased my transition into adolescence. We lived in a cloistered neighborhood until the early Fifties. Then, we suddenly moved to another part of town, near the Ford plant, and my education in the ways of the world began. In no time I was throwing rocks at cars, jumping off garages and, of course, smoking cigarettes that my friend Mark had stolen from his dad. That’s what it took to be a Nightrider, or, more importantly, to gain access to the shipping crate that the lusty Nightriders called home. We would puff at our “cigs” and discuss manly things like what we would do when we ran away from home and whether the new girl who lived near the Santa Fe tracks had cotton in her bra. Each comment was punctuated with a pull on our smoke. Without being obvious, we watched each other to see if anybody was actually inhaling better than we were. The finer the smoke stream and the longer it was held, the more prestige you gained, even though no word was ever said about it. A “French inhale,” where you allowed the smoke to drift from your lips only to be sucked up your nose, would get full attention of the house… a capability I longed to achieve.

The Fifties, aside from being the dumbest, most bigoted period I remember, were the proving ground for mass media and the spawning waters for “TV Tuna”-those who move like a school of fish in response to commercials. Kent with the Micronite Filter, Philip Morris and its Snap-Open Pack and the mild flavor of unfiltered Camels became our daily messages. Advertising had found the Baby Boom-and I, for one, bought it hook, line and sinker.

If you wanted a fast reaction in junior high school, all you needed was a pack of Pall Mall (pronounced Pel Mel) in the pocket of your see-through nylon shirt. Girls thought you were worldly, mothers hated your guts and children gave you wide-eyed admiration. It separated you from the “squares” and put you into the adult world of beer, swearing and fumbling sex. If you couldn’t handle the pressure of cigarettes, you surely weren’t ready for “heavy petting.”

By the time you were ready to graduate, smoking had become more than a silly fad. You actually needed a smoke in the parking lot before school and again at lunch break. The brand was now a big deal (just like Dad) and you could hold the smoke in a long time and care less who knew it. You noticed it made girls a little easier to approach. “How about a smoke?” or “Here’s a light,” you’d say, and if you got tongue-tied you could collect your thoughts while you went through your own personal ritual of lighting up.



SO HERE I AM. I love smoking. I love cigarettes and the ritual and the whole deal. But I hate the burns in my best Hawaiian shirts and the ashes that seem to collect on everything. I hate the hole a Hollywood director burned in the real, matched-dyed leather armrest of my ’55 Bentley. I hate worrying about leaving something burning when I go out. I did set a plant on fire that was potted in peat moss I mistook for dirt. I think paying a buck and a half for a pack of little leaf fibers coated in some chemical to keep them burning is stupid.

It’s sobering to think about. I’m 42 years old and for 29 of those years I’ve been sucking down smoke in my glorious lungs. Why wouldn’t I just stand over a barbecue grill or hang around burning houses? What have I done to myself? I don’t need to look grown up anymore. I’m almost bald and my beard is getting gray. I got away with smoking for 29 years; now I wonder if I’m trying to look young like those silly children I see smoking in the shopping malls. Ain’t life weird?

November 21 is the Great American Smokeout, a promotion designed to get us to break our bondage to smoking for one day. As a rule, I hate organized plots to rid the world of wrongs. I still remember that movie about a town that tried to quit and everybody went crazy. Nonetheless, I’m going to try to do without cigarettes until the Smokeout is over, just to see. I’m going to think about John Wayne and the prosecutor on Perry Mason. I’m going to remember the yellow fingers of my Aunt Maud and Uncle Doug who aren’t around anymore. Maybe it’s sappy. Maybe I need a crutch like the Smokeout. But who cares?

And maybe it won’t be forever, a final goodbye to all those days when tobacco was king. I might have a cigar or a pipe, which I don’t inhale, once in a while. Or maybe I’ll give them up too. I don’t know. So goodbye, Lucky Strikes. No, I’m not crying. Sometimes smoke gets in your eyes.