By Edward Master
I seem to read more and more every week on the internet about store closings, restaurant chains going belly up, and activities people have stopped doing.
Remember when people smoked everywhere at any time? I recall when basically my wife and I stopped going into bars that permitted lighting up. I recall too when bars proudly announced they were smoke free. How about the “no smoke” sections of bars and restaurants?
Specifically, when we were in Indiana (PA), we often passed on softball team gatherings at New Years because our sponsor was a local watering hole, but full of smokers. We didn’t like inhaling second-hand smoke and later going home smelling like cigarettes. Physically, my eyes burned a little from the smoke and my nose plugged up.
My father and mother were each smokers. When I was little, mom would send me to the store for a pack of Salems, maybe 30 cents or so. My older brother came back from the Navy lighting up no-filter Camels. My father stopped smoking cold turkey after a heart attack in 1976. My mother stopped not long after dad did when she saw a spot on her lung x-ray. She lived into her 80s.
My Grandpa Master smoked a cigar periodically (along with a chaw of tobacco), but I don’t remember him inhaling. Grandpa Johnson lit up a pipe every so often and once in awhile rolled his own cigarette. My Uncle Ed Johnson smoked a pipe, but was not much of an inhaler.
Thankfully, I was never a cigarette smoker. I tried, but couldn’t inhale. I was also too tight with a buck ($$$). My vice was dipping snuff. I gave that habit up when I got a hole in my throat. The docs always asked if I was a smoker and I proudly said that I was not. I was told the snuff had no effect on my throat. Thank goodness!
I remember when the workplace had designated smoking areas. How about the cigarette butts outside doorways? How about tall ashtrays throughout offices?
When I worked in Boyers at the mine storage facility, there a few assigned smoking areas with clouds of blue smoke. I was never given a reason for my throat cancer other than the doctors believed second-hand smoke may have been a cause.
I guess the days of piles of cigarette butts outside car doors are mostly gone. The sneak away is probably a vanishing act in schools too.
My wife was never a smoker, but she would regale me with tales of the teacher rooms with clouds of blue smoke. I recall how times changed when people asked you not to smoke in their cars nor in their homes. What a change! Those were the days, or were they?
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