Open Writing

Of the several brainless things I have done in my life, in retrospect, smoking tobacco takes the prize. I was raised in a smoking family so my predilection was guaranteed. My paternal grandfather, who lived with us, smoked a large pipe. As a small child I would watch with fascination while he went through the rituals associated with pipe smoking – the periodic scraping out of the bowl with a pocketknife designed just for that, and the cleaning of the stem with a wire pipe cleaner.

Grandfather hand-rubbed his tobacco from flat slices about three quarters of an inch by three inches long. He would place a flake of Ogdens Thick Twist between his palms and rotate them until the tobacco had the consistency of thick yarn. This would be followed by the careful and methodical packing of the tobacco into the pipe bowl – tight enough to last a while, but not so tight as to restrict the flow of air when it was drawn on.

All this was carried out at a very deliberate pace, as were most things in those days. Once lit, there was a prescribed sequence of puffs to get the combustion going – short and strong through pursed lips at the beginning, gradually becoming gentler and longer. When the combustion was going well, he puffed only intermittently, and would hold the pipe by the bowl so that the stem, like a conductor’s baton, became a means of punctuating or emphasizing what he was saying.

If the conversation was animated enough, the stem rarely found its way back to his mouth, and when he was listening, grandfather would nestle the bowl against the side of his nose so that the oils from his skin would burnish the maple or rosewood from which the pipe was made. While I was observing these rituals I would wonder why he went to such lengths to light his pipe and then hardly smoke it.

If he was working on something it would remain unlit in his mouth. Just occasionally he would put it into his jacket pocket thinking it was extinguished, only to have it later spark into life. One time his jacket caught on fire, much to my childish glee. He never had many pipes, as some men did – just four or five, usually acquired as gifts. But just as buying a tie as a gift is hazardous, choosing a pipe for someone else is also full of pitfalls.

Either the bowl is too big or too small, too heavy or too light, or is made from the wrong wood, or the stem is too curved or too straight. The pipes that were accepted and those that were not were plain to see, just from looking at his pipe rack. The rejects were all gleaming and pristine, whereas his favorites had taken on a staining and patina that no amount of deliberate hand working could achieve. If a favorite pipe had a silver ferrule where the stem joined the bowl, the silver would have the soft gleam that only thousands of microscopic scratches could impart.

My father smoked Players Gold Leaf, “Finest Virginia Tobacco” cigarettes. He was not a heavy smoker – perhaps less than ten a day. It’s hard to believe now, but I loved the smell of his cigarette smoke on the summer evening air when he lit one outside in the garden. My mother smoked, “socially,” and only when my father offered her a cigarette. Much later in life she took it up seriously, much to my surprise.

My smoking career began early in my teens. An uncle in Canada would periodically send us Canadian newspapers, and being aware of the post war exigencies and high taxes in England, he would enclose tea bags and loose cigarette tobacco. Since no one in the family knew how to roll their own, the tobacco just accumulated. For my first adventure in smoking I took one of my grandfather’s reject pipes and some of the cigarette tobacco to the local cinema. Yes, smoking was permitted - even pipes and cigars, believe it or not!

I slumped down in my seat in case I was recognized and took my first deep drags, not realizing that the loose, dry cigarette tobacco would burn more rapidly than pipe tobacco. In what seemed just a few seconds I became extremely ill and headed rapidly for the toilets. I don’t remember actually throwing up, but I’ll never forget the dry heaves, which were infinitely worse.

Eventually I was able to get off my knees and sit on the toilet, drenched in a cold sweat, trying hard to stop the cubicle spinning. Even when the malaise subsided I didn’t feel able to leave my refuge, but then I started to worry about being locked in the cinema overnight. I forced myself to leave, hoping no one would notice the green face I had just seen in the mirror. It was such a horrible experience that I’m amazed I persisted with the habit.

But persist I did, aided and abetted by my best friend’s mother, who owned a newsagent and tobacconist store. In our mid-teens she gave us packets of cigarettes, and not just any old brands. They would generally be Piccadilly, an oval, oversized cigarette, sold in silver and blue packets of 25 for some reason. They were very good, very expensive and quite effete, and we thought we were the bee’s knees. The second choice was du Mauriers.

By the time I was seventeen, my dirty little secret was out, and I had endured the rather halfhearted admonitions of my parents. I had become a regular smoker, and over the ensuing years my consumption of cigarettes increased steadily, as is typical. During my draft into the Army, the number I smoked each day took a sharp increase because I was overseas and there was no tax, so I could afford more.

In the years between my discharge and when I came to America, tobacco taxes increased every year in the UK, so to compensate I successively shifted to cheaper brands. I finally stooped to Park Drive; almost the bottom of the barrel, and a far cry from the Piccadilly of my youth, but I managed to avoid Woodbines, considered to be the absolute rock bottom. But my move to the USA set my habit to rights again. Here I could buy a carton of 200 Winstons for the equivalent of two pounds, almost what I’d being paying for a pack of twenty in the UK.

I continued to smoke around two packs a day until I was almost 50. I never considered stopping, and never suffered any noticeable ill effects. But one day I awoke to the blinding realization that the habit was totally ridiculous and obnoxious. By then, the last thing I did before sleeping, and the first thing when I woke, was to light a cigarette. I was a slave to the habit. In that instant I decided to stop, and haven’t smoked since then. Twenty-five years later I am eternally grateful that I had the strength of will to stick to my decision.

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