I was a smoker. I haven't had one in 30 years and haven't been a regular daily smoker in 40 years. This is my history of smoking cigarettes. I started smoking as a young teenager. I started out smoking Winston and then Marlboro but eventually settled on Kool. I continued smoking into my years in the Navy and you can see a carton of Kools in my locker in the photo. Then about two years later I quit which was sort of amazing because cigarettes were so cheap in the military and smoking was an established ritual including smoke breaks where if you didn't smoke you didn't get the break. Also when you were a smoker and had cigarettes then there were always other people around bumming smokes. So I quit with a couple of years left in the Navy. Then later while living at the Seymour Street house and going to college I started up again in late 1975. That lasted about two years and then I quit again. I started living with Becky in 1976 which was a big factor in quitting. I started smoking one more time in 1984 while working at the Pastime Lounge spinning records on Saturday nights. The odd thing is that I would only smoke while working in the bar. I would go all week without a cigarette but then smoke like a chimney during my 10 pm to closing shift. Bars in Buffalo were open until 4 am but I would usually stop playing records around 2 but sometimes we went a lot later. Then I stopped working at the bar and quit smoking for the final time in 1986. I haven't had a cigarette since then.
There were always cigarettes in our house when I was growing up. We grew up in a haze of second hand smoke. Our great grandparents lived with us for about eight years in the late 50's and early 60's. Grandpop smoked a lot of Pall Mall unfiltered cigarettes. He sat on the couch in the living room and smoked all day. His two fingers on his smoking hand were yellow. My mother smoked packs of Kent but somewhat infrequently. Our dad never smoked at least while he had kids. Mom-Mom and Mart also smoked but our grandmother quit very early in our lives. Mart smoked all along and eventually died of lung cancer after having one of his lungs removed. His showing me his recent scar from the surgery was a big factor in my quitting smoking again in the 70's.
Smoking was everywhere when I was growing up not only at home but seemingly everywhere you went with the exception of maybe church and school. Well, but in college people smoked in the classroom if the instructor allowed it which was most of the time.
When I traveled sometimes between Norfolk Virginia and Philadelphia by bus people smoked on the bus. People smoked on airplanes. Of course people smoked in bars and restaurants and it wasn't until many years after I quit smoking that restaurants started having non-smoking areas. Eventually smoking got banned in public spaces but that was such a big change from the way things were when I was growing up and well into adulthood. It's now hard to image what it used to be like.
Sometimes today someone will be walking down the street smoking a cigarette and the smell is obvious and annoying. I've written a post about a neighbor and the stench of her smoking that bothers a lot of nearby people.
I'm glad I was able to stop smoking. My brother Tom wasn't able to stop and it killed him last year.
