From auctioneer to ashtray-maker, it`s crying time in tobacco country.
The news from which the industry may never recover is this: I have kicked my butts.
Yes, me. The last smoking show. The mayor of Marlboro Country. The guy who kept tobacco-workers employed and helped send their kids to college. I have quit. Totally. Completely. Without a doubt.
I think.
There will be no depression in Durham or weeping in Winston-Salem simply because I have stopped buying two packs a day. Nevertheless, the industry is in trouble. If I, having the willpower of lint, can quit, so can everyone in America.
No applause, please. The time when I might have deserved it is long past. Had I quit 10 years ago, a pat on my back or a shake of my nicotine-stained hand might have been in order.
But quitting in 1991-after a trillion warnings from the surgeon general, angry stares in restaurants and endless nagging from my 5-year-old
granddaughter-is hardly a praiseworthy example of rugged self-denial.
Besides, I had an inducement: surgery. When medical people start rummaging around your clogged arteries, you start to reconsider your bad habits.
But there were social inducements as well. I had become a misfit, a public nuisance. Times had changed. ”Do you mind if I smoke?” had become less acceptable at gatherings than, ”Do you mind if I commit an ax murder?” At airports, I was finding myself exiled to roped-off areas, which, increasingly, contained only me. At a conference last fall, I was the only participant using the smoking room. People walking by stared through the glass door as if peering at an exhibit of Peking man.
How long have I smoked? I don`t know exactly, but I probably discovered tobacco around the same time as Sir Walter Raleigh. I do recall bumming a cigarette at one large gathering. It may have been my first communion. After that, I smoked through wars, civil uprisings, pennant drives, Watergate and reruns of ”I Love Lucy” reruns.
Sure, I tried to quit. And did. Over and over. People like you began making up jokes about people like me. Such as:
”Yes, I did try that nicotine chewing gum, but it wouldn`t stay lit.”
All around me, friends were quitting. Some became incredibly self-righteous, changing overnight like people in ”Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” One day they said, ”Gimme a smoke.” The next day, it was:
”There`s no smoking section in heaven, brother. God will smite thee or move thee to Cleveland.”
I kept on, as if stuck in traffic on Tobacco Road. My first teensy-weensy motivation to quit came before the surgery, not from something as lofty as reading a medical journal, but from something as dumb as watching ”Them!”-a film about giant ants attacking Los Angeles.
In it, I noticed that the young scientist smoked. So did the old scientist. And the old scientist`s daughter. And the police. And the military commanders. Everyone in the movie smoked except the ants, and they probably had no money to buy cigarettes.
”Them!” was made in 1954. Watching it on TV, I could not believe how many of us smoked back then. And how few of us smoke now. There was a message there.
So, how am I doing as a non-smoker? Well, you could ask my wife, except she is off checking hotel rates to escape a husband with a temperament akin to Godzilla`s.
Otherwise, I am fine. I hardly think of the fact that I used to smoke. Up until Jan. 29.
At 17 minutes and 10 seconds past 1 p.m.
