A smoking story!

New to my blog?  To better understand why this story was written. please read “A Child of the Greatest Generation” in the August 09 Blog Archive.

 

Bland's Drug Store - 2009

Sixty years earlier it was an after school high school hangout where I took my first puff.  Blands Soda Fountain and booths, like many other things of that era, are now a fading memory.

more reflections

Stories I never told my mother - Part I

     Like most parents of their generation, mine smoked, father-cigars, mother-cigarettes.  From an early age I wanted to know when I could smoke too.   Mother said “Smoking isn’t good for little kids.”  She never did explain why it was good for big people.

     “Mother, when can I smoke like you?” I continued to ask.  “When you’re grown up,” was her answer.  She never explained to me when I would be grown up!

I concluded I’d have to decide for myself when I was not only grown up, but when I was no longer a little kid.  With some help from high school mates I reached that decision!

Across the street from my father’s clothing store was Bland’s Pharmacy. Bland’s had a soda fountain and some booths where, after school, high school kids hung out.  Back then students hung out to have a soda, smoke – just cigarettes, and talk.

I had looked forward to being in high school and going to Bland’s after school to have a soda and talk.  Soon after beginning my freshman year, while at Bland’s, one of my new friends offered me a Lucky Strike. I was too embarrassed not to take it – and smoke it.  Although I wasn’t quite 14 years old, as I walked home that day I decided smoking that cigarette meant that I wasn’t a kid anymore, I was a grown up.  But I didn’t dare tell Mother what I thought, or had done.

A few days later, I walked into a downtown smoke shop and purchased a stubby pipe and some Prince Albert in a can.  (Ed note:  Surely you remember the old phone prank about Prince Albert in a can.  If not, email me.)   I thought I could keep a little pipe hidden with less chance of Mother finding it.  In the morning, I’d pack the pipe with tobacco and slip it in my jacket.  Carrying a pack of cigarettes would be too tough to conceal.

Every afternoon, I would walk home, discreetly puffing on my little pipe, and feeling very grown up.  That summer, when I packed my duffel bag for my last year at sleep away camp, the first two items packed on the very bottom were my pipe and two tins of Prince Albert. Mother had laid out all of my clothes, but she felt I was old enough to pack my own bag.  I guess I was growing up.

Before returning home from camp, I was invited to stay a few days at a bunkmate’s home in Washington, DC.  With my parents approval, I accepted.  My friend suggested I not bring my pipe along because his parents wouldn’t approve, so I again packed it and the remaining, half full tin of Prince Albert in the bottom of my duffel bag.  I figured even with a few days detour I would arrive home before the duffle bag.  Wrong!!!

When I returned home my mother took me upstairs to her bedroom.  There on the floor was my empty duffel bag and on the mantle, above the fire place sat my stubby pipe and the remaining can of Prince Albert.  She merely pointed to the mantle and said, “You get these back when you’re 16.”          

On my sixteenth birthday, I again stopped at the smoke shop, purchased a new but full sized pipe, the little one was too childish, some really good tobacco and a tobacco pouch.  I walked home and into the kitchen, puffing away. Mother didn’t say a word, she just smiled.

I guess at sixteen you’re not a kid anymore. I was grown up.  Now I could not only smoke, but drive, too.