I learned my 17-year-old grandson started smoking. I was so proud. I wanted to share a very small part of my life’s experience with him.
I guess I was about nine years old the first time I smoked. I took my Dad’s rare antique meerschaum pipe and stuffed it with cedar bark. The taste and odor (aroma in tobacco parlance) were both less than pleasing. It ruined the pipe, but thankfully, he rarely smoked a pipe. His choice was Roi-Tan cigars and Tinsley tobacco. He would smoke Churchills in public, but really enjoyed the Roi-Tan on our hunting trips. The Tinsley – that was in a class all its own. It had a particularly vile smell and worse taste. The only way to describe Roi-Tans and Tinsley would be to say one smelled like shit and the other tasted like shit.
My Dad would offer me a smoke or chew when we would go on one of our hunting trips. Both made me a little sick, but true revulsion came from chewing Tinsley. To this good day I can’t stand it but can chew Beechnut if I have to. On our trips, my Dad would drive, and I would sit in the back seat. All windows were down because there was no air conditioning. He would spit, and it would blow back in on me. This family tradition I passed on to my own son, George, a smoker just like his Dad.
My Mom loved her smokes. She would sit at the kitchen table with her friends and visit, drinking coffee and smoking. Mama liked L&Ms. Ann Smoked Camels and Connie smoked Viceroys. Connie is the only one left and she’s 93. Any rumors about Viceroys are false. You may be curious as to why I would remember these facts. At the ripe old age of twelve, I was trying to decide on “my” brand. I finally settled on my older sister’s brand, Winstons.
Pearl, our housekeeper, smoked Herbert-Tareton. I didn’t really like them, so Pearl would go across the street to the little convenience store and buy me some Winstons. I had my own brand. By thirteen I was a real smoker. I cannot leave untold a particularly humiliating event. I was in the downstairs bathroom having a smoke and my mother banged on the door. I quickly extinguished the cigarette by dropping it beneath my legs unfortunately, the hot ember adhered to my little precious. My mother heard the agony and forced the door open. Her first words were “you were smoking, weren’t you?” Seeing my obvious predicament, she immediately took action and went to the refrigerator and got a stick of oleo and applied the cool soothing balm to the wound, at that exact time, my dad walked n and said “Sue, what in hell are you doing.” Now most people would have never picked up another cigarette after such an event, but not a young man so secure in his self-image as myself. Not yet in puberty and 5’2” tall, I wore my Levi’s low, had white buck penny loafers (like Pat Boone) and my smokes rolled up in the sleeve of my t-shirt. I combed my ducktails with a smoke dangling out of my mouth. Don’t you know I was impressive?
When my pals and I went to the movie, we would sit in the balcony. Smoking was allowed there (for adults). The theater was not in the best shape where we sat, way up in the top in the back, someone had picked a hole in the wall. Mr. Zarate, the Manager, would try to catch us smoking, but we kept a lookout. As soon as we saw him coming, we would put our smokes in the hole and pour a drink on them to put them out. One afternoon it didn’t work, and smoke started pouring from the hole. The fire department was called, and we were banned from the picture show for six months. The damage wasn’t too serious, but I had to pay it out of my summer earnings sacking groceries at Stanley’s Superette. It took almost everything I earned that summer – $475.
By the time I was a junior in high school, I was smoking half a pack a day. I got off Winston and started on Marlboro Reds. They were more manly. I wouldn’t smoke Viceroy like my friend Jay (now a quadruple by-pass recipient) because they had fiberglass in the filter and it was a well-known fact they would make your balls float. Every time I smoked a Viceroy I was checking. The theory ranked right up there with going blind, another of my pubescent fears.
Aside from the cost of the smokes, there were other related expenses. My Grandmother gave me a ‘57 Chevy, the pride of my life. I was putting two four-barrel carburetors on the stock 283 cubic inch powerhouse and spilled gasoline out of the fuel pump. She had warned me about working in the garage, but I assured her it would be okay. The garage was actually a garage apartment. With gasoline on the floor, when I lit my smoke, I caught the son-of-a-bitch on fire. I suffered second-degree burns from the waist up (very painful) but worse than that, I burned up my beloved ’57 along with the apartments.
When I do the cost accounting, these sums will be included as a direct expense.
You have to hand it to the manufacturers, and I will touch on this later, but finally convinced cigarettes were harmful, I switched to Marlboro Lights. They had less tar and nicotine unless you smoked twice as many, which I did. This same formula applied when I switched to Ultra Lights.
Over the many years I have smoked, I estimate that I have lost a minimum 50 shirts a year, 50 pair of pants a year, and several jackets. This wasn’t a big item until college when things got more expensive and I no longer wore Levi’s regularly. When I finished law school it was suits and Pima-cotton shirts. I have burned untold car seats, carpets, mattresses (with me on them), and other sundry items, but the icing on the cake was a $25,000 Persian rug that now has a 2 ½” “sear”. I put a cigarette on the edge of an 18th century desk that now sports my brand, as does an antique credenza. Oh, I almost forgot the pro football player that broke my nose when I blew smoke in his face. In my accounting the related medical will be included as incidental but related expenses. I have also wrecked 2 automobiles when I dropped a lit cigarette between my legs. The cost of repair was around $5,000.00.
I have had a number of upper respiratory illnesses due to smoking, of which I can only estimate the medical cost, but well in excess of $150,000.00. The really enjoyable aspect of cigarettes is the “calming” effect they have when a fellow is on edge. In fact, for the last 35 years I have started the morning with a smoke and pot a coffee. Nothing like the jolt of a pack of nicotine and caffeine to calm you for the day’s activities. It only works if you don’t dilute it with breakfast. My usual routine: is up at six and have my morning cough, lasting up to two minutes. I slip on my house shoes and robe and go for the paper. Finish up my cough needs and pour a cup of pre-perked coffee. I put the coffee and paper on the kitchen table and go to the bathroom. I light a smoke before or after I am seated, depending on the urgency. I must have a smoke because it is required for a proper bowel movement. After three to four minutes of having my smoke and enjoying deep contemplation, I extinguish the smoke by dropping it in the bowl sometimes it doesn’t hit the water and lands on the toilet paper-guess what? I have a good cough, re-wipe and flush. The cigarette butt invariably refuses to expire and floats like a lonely vessel in the bowl. I re-flush and go to my paper.
In sum, I figure I have caused $80,000 in fire damage (in 1960 dollars); burned and caused damage to not less than $50,000 worth of furniture, carpets, bed-spreads, car seats, wood floors, automobile carpets; damaged and ruined not less than 50 suits, 1500 shirts and pants, 4 or 5 nice hats and 1 nice leather coat. I have smoked since I was 12 years old and it is safe to say that I have averaged 2 packs a day over my lifetime – 49 years of smoke filled bliss. That is 40 cigarettes a day, 14,600 cigarettes a year, and 715,400 cigarettes in my lifetime. Bearing in mind that while I was in the Army, smokes were 9 cents a pack, I would say the average cost over the 49 years would be about 12.5 cents per smoke. This figure does not include the 1000’s of packs I have lost or left sitting on a table or the thousands of lighters I have lost. I will add a 15% surcharge to the volume to cover these costs. Total = $345,413.00, plus or minus, including medical. Best I can figure, had I not enjoyed my smokes so much and saved this money or put it in the right stocks, say Microsoft, I would have over $80-$100 million, just in a CD, three to four million.
In 2005 Governor of Texas now wanted to put a $1.00 per pack tax on cigarettes. I am all for it. From my point of view, I wish Rick Perry had been successful. He would have solved the State’s financial crises at a $1.00 per pack and since I now go through four packs a day (I still lose at least one pack a day), I would contribute an additional $1,460 per year to the State’s revenue. If all Texas adults smoked, (12,000,000+), it would mean 16.8 billion a year in revenue for the State. Just think about it! No more ad valorum taxes, sales taxes, gasoline tax. That’s as much as the State got out of the tobacco settlement. In fact, if we required by law everyone over 15 smoke Ultra-Lights, that figure would go up exponentially. The tobacco industry would reap incredible revenues and Nabisco would be able to put even more artificially flavored pre-packaged food on the grocery shelves.
I can’t believe shortsighted people are doing all they can to ban smoking, all in the name of health! While cigarettes may cause some minimal impairment, like emphysema, cancer, heart disease, acute respiratory disease, and may cost you, as an individual, a few extra bucks in damages, medical and cost of the smokes, the value to the State’s fiscal health far outweighs your own selfish needs, such as health and long life. At least I have social security and Medicare.
It’s easy to see why I can’t start the day without a smoke…
