Hunker Down with Kes: Why I Don’t Smoke

Me and Buddy Wiggleton grew up wanting to be the Marlboro Man. We studied his picture on the billboard above the DX Service Station out where Highways 79 and 22 intersected. You talk about a rugged guy. We believed with all our little hearts he could drink a cauldron of hot molten lead and spit out horseshoes till the cows came home.

Which, of course, is exactly what the Marlboro cigarette people wanted us to think. 

Buddy did point out a few discrepancies between two little guys on the ground and the giant on the billboard: neither of us had a white cowboy hat, or a crimson red shirt with a western yoke, double front pockets, and pearl buttons, or a black vest. We were 13 years away from growing a moustache. And no matter how hard we scrunched, we could not get any sun burned, wind whipped wrinkles to pile up around our eyes. 

And there was one other small incongruity, neither of us smoked.

Yet!

But we grew up in a world and a time when just about every grownup did. Well, most all of the men anyway. And a lot of the women. I believe the term was “fashionable.” We saw it in relentless newspaper and billboard ads. We listened to the “Lucky Strike Hour” on the radio. When we finally got a TV, near ’bout every other show was sponsored by a cigarette company.

The slogans still dance through my head: “I’d walk a mile for a Camel,” “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should,” “Come to where the flavor is. Come to Marlboro Country,” “Call for Phillip Morris,” “L.S./M.F.T.” (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco)

It is no wonder that by the beginning of junior high we were down in the big ditch behind George Sexton’s house with some cigarettes in our hands. We didn’t have a whole pack. Good golly, that would cost 25 cents! Which was the equivalent of FIVE packs of baseball cards. There ain’t no way on God’s green earth we’d do that!

Ricky had “borrowed” a couple of Lucky Strikes out of an open pack his dad left on the kitchen table. Yogi and Buddy did the same. I was the only one that didn’t bring any smokes to the game. I wasn’t brave enough to risk Daddy finding out I had pilfered something from him.

We pretended to be sooo grownup passing a cigarette around. But we ended up being a little disappointed. It didn’t taste nothing like a Baby Ruth or Butterfinger. It was just hot air coming in and going out.

And Yogi, who was always our cutting-edge guy, got to telling us, as we smoked, about Kent cigarettes with the new “Micronite” filter. He said it was supposed to be a safeguard to your health. That was so strange to us. We had never thought of cigarettes being unsafe.

It didn’t cross our minds there might be a problem with puffing on them morning, noon, and night. Of course, come to think of it, as Yogi pontificated on, I got to pondering how some of the older men in town didn’t quit coughing until the middle of the afternoon.

And I remembered some other slogans, “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarettes,” “L&M filters are just what the doctor ordered,” and Chesterfield assured us “Not a cough in a carload”

Maybe there was more to this smoking thing than they were telling us….

Mr. Bill Rogers was our junior high principal. When they could not find anyone else, he stepped in to be the football coach. Buddy and I were in the seventh grade. He called the team up after practice one afternoon and out of the blue said, “Young men, if you want to be a good athlete, don’t ever smoke. It will cut your wind.”

Well, I wanted to be a good athlete. And I hoped and prayed that a few puffs down at the big ditch hadn’t ruined my chances.

I never even thought about smoking again.

The jingles went on without me. The billboard overlooking the DX Station changed from the Marlboro Man to a Buick Skylark. I never got to look “cool” by sticking a cigarette behind my ear. I never rolled up a pack of Pall Malls in my white tee shirt sleeve. I didn’t waste time hanging out with the guys smoking behind the ag building in high school between classes. 

But I did save a lot of money. I have no idea what a pack cost today. But I suspect that it would be a bit north of the 25 cents me, Yogi, Ricky, and Buddy didn’t pay.

I dodged a bullet for sure. And I am thankful for a junior high football coach who cared enough to warn us about the dangers of smoking when we were still wet behind the ears.

Although, honesty compels me to admit, I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know to this day exactly what “cut your wind” means. But it sounded bad enough to get the job done!

Respectfully,

Kes