This posting is inspired by a response to my previous posting where I mentioned a man smoking in an office work environment back in 1974.
I have never been a smoker, of cigarettes or anything else. As a youth I tried cigarettes and did not like them. Later I smoked marijuana occasionally but although I found it enjoyable I never felt an addictive need for it. I now live in an increasingly smoke-free world, where smokers are treated like pariahs and virtually ostracized from civilized society. You see them in the street, walking the dog, or in small groups outside their work places, standing there sucking on their pathetic vice in a mixture of defiance and sordid pleasure. Even beaches and parks are now considered off limits to smokers. I expect soon one is likely to encounter a no smoking sign at the North Pole or in the middle of the Sahara Desert. I really feel sorry for some smokers.
I remember when smoking was first banned from bars & restaurants some years ago here in California. I saw the TV news interviewing some old guy outside a bar. There he was with his dog. Poor fellow, all he had was his dog and his friends at the bar, a place to escape his lonely life, have a beer and a smoke. And now he was being told that smoking was no longer socially acceptable.
It was not always that way. When I was a child it was a smokers world, and no place was more smoke friendly than my own home. My Dad was a chain smoker. He picked up the habit during World War II when the British Army sold cigarettes cheaply to soldiers to keep up their spirits in the face of either boredom or traumatic wartime experiences. My Dad smoked at least a 20 pack of cigarettes every day all his life. My father was well aware of the health risks. Even before I was born he had been hospitalized for months with pleurisy. My mother told me that Dad tried to quit cigarettes on one occasion. It was a desperate attempt to cut expenses rather than an attempt to improve my father’s health. My parents were always broke. It lasted about one week. According to my mother, my father became so difficult to be with that she went to the off license and returned with a pack of 20 Players No.6 and threw them at him. The subject of quitting never came up again. My father smoked the cheapest cigarettes he could buy. Players issued an even cheaper brand called Players No.10, presumably with even cruder tobacco ingredients than Players No.6. My father would always say they were good enough for him. He would receive gifts at Christmas from work colleagues such as cigars or exotic imported cigarettes like Sobranie Russian or God forbid, American menthol cigarettes, which he considered effeminate. He would scoff at such luxuries and return to his cheap smokes with relish.
Smoke was everywhere in those days. It’s a miracle we were not all asthmatics. When my father was at home he filled the living room with cigarette smoke. On cold winter days and evenings when the doors and windows were shut tight to keep out the cold and damp, the family huddled together in front of the fireplace and the TV, my Dad would blow a constant supply of smoke into the room. No one would ever object. It was just the way life was. When I was very young I remember not being able to sleep. I would call my Dad for a glass of water. He would sit on the end of the bed to help me to sleep. He would smoke and I would be comforted by the red glow of the cigarette in the dark and then fall asleep with the smoke filled air in my nostrils.
On my way to school we always rode on the upper deck of the bus. The lower deck was filled with women and their shopping bags and smoking was not allowed. Kids and men who smoked always rode upstairs. First we spent twenty minutes at the bus stop, breathing in the leaded petrol fumes of the cars idling at the traffic light in the damp air, mix in the rampant bus stop smoking of men and women on their way to work, then get on the upper deck to breath all the second hand smoke we could get in the closed quarters of the bus. It was the same on the trains, and the London Underground. Smoking was everywhere. At school the teachers all smoked. If you knocked on the door of the staff room at lunch time to talk to a teacher the door would open and a thick cloud of cigarette smoke would billow out of the room. People smoked in all sorts of public places, railway stations, restaurants, parks, and even while shopping in the supermarket. Smoking at work was also the norm, in offices, factories and shops.
My two older sisters started to smoke when they went off to college. Both of them would later quit. For the eldest sister it was a serious struggle. This was long before such cures as the patch were available. She attended how-to-quit-smoking classes for several weeks. The attendees made lists of all the things that triggered their smoking, and then made lists of all the alternative things they could do instead of light up a cigarette. After going through the entire list of alternatives my sister was reduced to curling up in bed in the fetal position and crying her eyes out for an hour. My younger brother also started to smoke in college and still smokes to this day. For him it is not only a habit but also a militant gesture. The quintessential artist, he rolls his own smokes with Old Holborn tobacco, and smokes them unfiltered. His teeth are dark brown and he seems not to care at all. One has to admire his independent stance. After all, it is his body. For my other sister smoking was all about style and the way it made you look. She smoked the kind of slender menthol cigarettes my father hated. She did not really inhale the smoke, but just posed with the burning stick in her mouth and her nose in the air. But she got more boyfriends than her older sister.
I once saw a man in a supermarket smoking at the checkout. The checkout clerk told him smoking was not allowed in the supermarket. The man was perhaps 60 years old, overweight, watery eyed and wearing a scruffy Hawaian shirt and Bermuda shorts. He wore a button that said, “Keep your laws off my body”. Some folks just have a style all their own.
Smoking was just not my thing. When I was about ten years old I smoked my first cigarette with my pals, behind a bus stop shelter. I thought it tasted awful and felt bad in my throat. I suppose I was a bit of a sissy to my friends. Many of them became addicted at a very young age and went on to smoke for decades. Oddly enough I always liked the smell from pipe smoking. I especially liked to go into an old style tobacco shop and smell the variety of rich tobacco leaves. Such places were once common but are now far and few between.
For some people, quitting is not a problem. Two of my best friends, a couple from Ireland, came to visit me in California several years ago. They had always been heavy smokers of unfiltered roll-their-own cigarettes. They arrived as non-smokers. I was impressed. They confessed they had felt embarrassed about coming to visit us in California for the first time as evil, corrupt, unhealthy smokers. They had both quit cold turkey on New Years Eve after smoking for twenty five years. They told me they drank and smoked as much as possible until midnight and then simply stopped. I asked them if it had been difficult. They both replied that it had been no big deal. They both knew they had been risking their health for years and were determined to make the change and the visit was an excuse to start.
Smoking can trigger nostalgia for a world that is now gone. Classic Hollywood movies featured legendary stars like Humphrey Bogart puffing away in smoke filled night clubs. Twenty years ago we came home from bars and restaurants with our clothes smelling of smoke. Now there are fewer and fewer places where you are likely to encounter smokers.
Perhaps its because I was never addicted that my attitude towards smoking is not exactly hostile. I would probably not enjoy being around heavy smokers any more, but I tend not to get too upset if someone smokes near me, as long as it is not in my house or car.
My father did not die as a result of smoking, at least as far as we know. He had a nasty disease for which there was no cure. The doctor told him if he wanted to keep on smoking it was OK with him because there was no point taking away the man’s pleasure when he was dying.
I do not intend to become a smoker at the age of 55. However if I should become a grandparent I hope someone remembers to give me a nice fat cigar, so I can puff on it and look cool for 10 minutes. No hurry on this request by the way.
Smoking has been around for a long time. There seems to be no question it is bad for your health. But I sometimes wonder if like everything else it’s a case of “Everything in moderation”. Perhaps the occasional smoke is really OK. It certainly would be ironic if one day someone were to discover health benefits from smoking tobacco.
