SMOKIN’ IN THE SIXTIES
by
Carol Marlene Smith
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PUBLISHED BY:
Carol Marlene Smith at Smashwords
Smokin’ in the Sixties
Copyright 2011 by Carol Marlene Smith
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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SMOKIN’ IN THE SIXTIES
Right off the bat I want to tell you that this is a story about how I quit smoking not how you can quit smoking. If you wish to take this method and use it then I have every faith that it would succeed for you. It just makes too much sense not to succeed.
First let me tell you a bit of background on what kind of smoker I was, because I believe that there are a variety of different types of smokers. This is only my guess for I have not done any research on this and this method is only based on my own experience.
To start, I was not what you might call an early smoker. I did not begin to smoke until I was around nineteen. I had had the occasional cigarette now and then from the time I was about fourteen probably. But it was just that, a single smoke now and then, offered from someone else.
When I was offered a menthol smoke I liked it. The coolness was a treat compared to the regular cigarette which I found harsh on the throat and not too appealing, probably one reason why I never took up smoking before nineteen.
So at nineteen I found myself working at a grocery. We all had our regular fifteen minute morning and afternoon break times. But I found the smokers in the store were taking extra breaks.
“I’m just running out back for a smoke,” they would say. And I got to thinking that if I smoked I would get a lot more breaks throughout the day. And I would probably take one of these little smoke breaks with a colleague from time to time and turn the smoking break into a social break as well.
So, okay, I bought my first pack of menthol cigarettes. I don’t recall the brand because I smoked so many different brands of cigarettes over the years, I can’t even remember some of them.
Here I am, having my first smoke out back with a few of my working partners sitting around me. And I light up. Well, of course they are surprised to see me pull my cigarette pack out of my pocket. And let me tell you it was not all a nice first experience.
To start with I got a few stares but mostly grins. I sat there puffing and blowing out the smoke and before long there were gales of laughter among my group. They thought it was hilarious to watch me smoke.
I can’t remember how I was holding my cigarette and all that, but apparently I was looking like quite the novice. The teasing was all in good fun and I was not offended by it but a bit embarrassed.
After a few days the teasing died down except on occasion. I worked with a good bunch of people and although most of them were quite a bit older than I was at the time, they meant no harm.
I worked at the grocery for two years then quit and moved to the US. I lived in Albany, New York and found a job as a cashier in a cafeteria of one of the government buildings. I worked there for about six months and continued to smoke perhaps a pack a week. I was still an unqualified smoker. I don’t recall anyone making fun of my smoking during this time. Mostly people didn’t care much about what I did. I made few friends at the workplace.
When spring arrived I quit my job and returned home to Nova Scotia for a brief vacation. When I returned to the US, I got a new job in a regional credit office of a large department chain store.
Although I still worked in downtown Albany, I moved from Albany to Schenectady to live. Each morning I caught the bus at about seven or seven thirty to go to work.
I had not been in Schenectady long when one of my co-workers who lived in the Schenectady area offered to give me a drive in his car each morning and night. So I gave up the bus which I was happy to do. This gave me a bit more time in the morning as driving by car took a shorter time than the bus did.
I had been thinking for quite awhile about my smoking habit and I wasn’t happy with it. It was not because I was smoking and didn’t want to, it was because I was not really smoking, and I was not happy with being a dragger and a blower.
So on one of those mornings while I was waiting for my drive to pick me up, I sat in the living room and decided that was the day I was going to learn how to smoke. I was going to learn to inhale.
When I was young, before becoming a teen, there was a woman who used to visit our house. And she would sit in the kitchen and while she told long tales of sometimes interesting subjects (and sometimes not), I would sit and listen. (As a bystander ie child) But more interesting to me than the stories she would tell, was her method of chain smoking while she told them. I have to say I was mesmerized by watching her drag the smoke down deep into her lungs and then keeping talking.
The smoke had disappeared and I waited breathlessly for it to reappear. Pretty soon there it was in all its white/gray glory, either gracefully gliding from her lips or spouting out her nose. Wow. This was amazing to a ten or twelve year old which I probably was at the time.
Not only that, but she had tricks. She could also blow smoke rings. Oh God, if only I could do that! What was this cigarette magic that she performed every time she visited?
My dad smoked. My mom never did. In fact she hated the sight of cigarettes. Although my dad smoked cigarettes on occasion, he was mostly into smoking the pipe. And he smoked amphora which was a beautiful aroma. He taught me how to fill his pipe properly, not pack it too tightly, and I loved doing it. It made me feel proud when he let me fill his pipe, then he would light up and say it was a good smoke. He also smoked cigars on occasion and boy the smell of them was amazing as well.
So back to me in Schenectady on that fateful morning when I decide to become a “real smoker”, here I was sitting, waiting for my ride. I light up and take a long drag. My throat burns like crazy and I gag. It is horrible! But do I stop? Nah, not me. Remember, I am going to become a “real smoker” if it kills me.
I have been shamed too long, laughed at, teased about, the brunt of a bad joke. Not anymore. I continue to drag and inhale that menthol laced smoke. Cough and gag some more. Probably close to a half hour event. How many cigarettes it takes I don’t remember. But by the time my drive arrives, I have become a full fledge true smoker.
I walked out the door with my head held high knowing that today I was different than yesterday. I was one of them now. I was a full fledged smoker.
So, from that day forward, my cigarette purchases continued to increase. I stayed in Schenectady and worked in Albany for another three months or so. Then I boarded a bus and headed south. Smoking all the way.
Any young people reading this might not realize what it was like to smoke in those long ago days. You could smoke anywhere, in the office, in the back room of the grocery store, on the bus, or on the street. There were no barriers for smokers. In fact it was a prestigious and socially acceptable thing to do.
Not so much for ladies. A lady did not smoke on the street, walking down the sidewalk, and if you did, you were no lady. So that was a no-no for me. As in those early days I considered myself a lady. I smoked like a lady, holding my cigarette between my forefinger and my middle finger. I often accepted “lights” from a male. It was a courteous thing for a man to do for a lady. It was no different from having a gentleman open a door for you. I would sit in the car and wait for my gentlemen friend to get out of the car, walk around to my side and open the door for me, the lady. I even went as far once as to purchase a cigarette holder. This way, “the lady” did not have to hold the smoke and get that awful nicotine on her lily white fingers.
Boy, have things changed! Now a smoker is practically an outcast. A leper to society you might say. A smoker is frowned upon, considered weak, addicted, no spine, a whiner (especially someone who tries to quit a million times and never succeeds but continues to go on about how they hate to smoke but just can’t stop, blah blah blah).
So my journey as a smoker continued. I only spent a few months in the south but that is where my smoking habit really developed. I was constantly around other smokers and many very seasoned smokers. It seemed I had a cigarette in my fingers most of the time. I now had my own silver Zippo lighter, with my initial on it, given to my by one of my boyfriends. You could say that I was now a pro. I was one of them. I was fast becoming a seasoned smoker. And I could inhale with the best of them, and I could blow the most incredible smoke rings. I even learned to blow a smoke ring inside of a larger smoke ring. I bet the folks at the grocery back in NS would not be laughing at me now. As that old song goes, “If they could see me now.”
By the time late fall came around, I was on another bus heading north. My bus pulled into Ottawa and I spent a couple months there. My smoking habit hit an all time high by then. (Or low, depending how you look at it) I was probably up to three packs a day by then, and having my first morning smoke in bed lying flat on my back before I could even rise. I recall waking up, not opening my eyes, and flailing my right arm toward the night table to grasp my cigarette package and fumble for my lighter so I could have that first, and delicious, smoke of the day before I could correctly open my eyes. So that meant I had to get a job pronto. If nothing else I had to support my smoking habit. All things are relative and although cigarettes were only 58 cents in those days for a large pack, (imagine that!) wages were anywhere between 50 cents to a dollar an hour for the unskilled worker, which I was at the time.
I spent a few months in Ottawa before returning home to Nova Scotia and getting work in Halifax. For the next few years I continued to support my smoking habit, and on occasion quitting, one time for four months, my longest time. During this time, I used the method I am going to be telling you about shortly. But I wasn’t serious. I was a doddler, an excuse machine. I can’t quit now, I just lost my job. I can’t quit now, I just started a new job. I can’t quit now, I am looking for a job. I can’t quit now, I just broke up with my boyfriend. I can’t quit now, I’m changing jobs. Or the denial…I can quit anytime I want to, I just haven’t got the time right now. I’ll take it on seriously…someday.
It was all about the old stress excuse. I need my crutch! I can’t do it alone. I can’t face tomorrow without my ciggy. In those days there weren’t too many methods available for the smoker who wanted desperately to quit. No arm pads, no pills, no seminars, not every Tom, Dick, and Mary telling you how easy it can be, if you just follow them.
That is why I am NOT telling you how to quit smoking. I am NOT asking you to quit smoking either. And I am certainly NOT begging you to quit smoking, for I am of the belief that a smoker will only quit for real when the smoker wants to quit. Oh a few might quit because his or her partner wanted them to. But that smoker is going to be miserable and probably fall back into the old smoking habit before too many months. You have to want to do it for yourself. You have to be ready to acknowledge that you finally want to do something big for yourself that you finally want to shrug off the chains that are holding you from doing it.
Whether ready or not, read on and see how I did it for myself. I did NOT do it for my mother who nagged me. I did NOT do it for anyone other than for myself. Let it be known that I was still around a lot of smokers. In those days about two out of three people smoked. So there was very little pressure at my work place or among my friends to quit, because most of them also smoked. It was a leisurely, relaxing time, looking forward to those coffee breaks with your companion cigarette. The cigarette was related to your relax time. At work or at home, I would hurry through my chores, knowing that once I finished one deed, the cigarette was waiting. I could sit down, have a break, smoke a cigarette, maybe have a coffee, (of course they went together like love and marriage in those days). And when I got up to carry on to my next chore, I was refreshed, rejuvenated, full of energy and ready to go.
Okay, you’ve waited long enough. Let me begin to tell you how I quit smoking…forever.
It was on a cold, bitter winter evening, and it was about eleven o’clock, and I was living in the country at the time, where I purchased my cigarettes up the road at the nearby service station. This is when I was home. Of course I usually purchased my cigarettes by the carton then at my place of work, which was a grocery store at the time.
So, back to the cold, dark night. I was watching TV and getting ready to go to bed. It was the weekend, and it was a Saturday night. And I noticed that I was smoking my last cigarette! How could that have happened? How could I have let myself get out of smokes, on a winter, bitter evening with the snow howling around my door?
Instantly I thought of morning. I imagined myself waking up, with my eyes still tightly closed. I would feel the need…and when I reached out for my cig and my lighter, my hand would come in contact with a flat package. I would panic and open my eyes as wide as possible and jump up and grab the pack and peek inside, trying to produce that last cigarette that would get me up, so I could manage to start the day. But it wouldn’t be there, as much as I might stare at the package, turn it upside down and pound on it trying to shake that hidden cigarette out that must be stuck in the corner, it had to be. But it wouldn’t be.
I shivered, thinking of the scenario to come, and I didn’t like it. The alternative was of course to get up, get dressed warmly, lugging on heavy coat and boots and gloves, maybe even something for my head, considering the way the wind was whipping up a storm out there. I couldn’t drive because my driveway was probably filled with snow by now, and it was just a five minute walk to the service station. But oh how I didn’t want to go through that. But if I didn’t hurry, the station would be closed for the night, as it closed at midnight. I had to decide. I had to make a decision. Would it be a morning with or without a cigarette to help me start the day?
Now this is where I get mad, and I’m mad at myself. I am totally livid at my own self. You stupid person! You are nothing but a slave. You are a slave to that damn cigarette! And you know it. What else, or who else would get you out of a comfortable living room at midnight to trudge in the snow for what? For a damn cigarette? And you pay money for that. You spend part of your hard earned money for cigarettes. For your habit. You spend somewhere around forty dollars a month for your darling cigarettes and you don’t make more than forty some dollars a week. Does that make sense to spend a quarter of your monthly earnings on cigarettes? And all you accomplish from it is yellow fingers, (I had given up the cigarette holder by now. And just to let you know, I had also given up being a lady, as I smoked on the street. I walked down the street as proud as a peacock holding my cigarette in my yellow-stained fingers and not giving a damn if I was a lady or not), bad breath, and stinky clothes, not to mention the state your lungs must be in by now.
So I pondered it all. As I stated earlier, my longest achievement of quitting using my own method, had been around four months. It had not been so hard to do, but at that time I had just said, I’m quitting and did so. But I didn’t make the plan. I didn’t set the goal.
So here I am, talking to myself at almost midnight, (the time is running out if I am going to make it to the service station before closing time) and I finally talk myself into sanity. I make my last statement to myself. I no longer wish to continue being a slave to a cigarette. So I rise, go empty my overflowing ashtray, wash it and dry it.
I go to bed. I rise in the morning and open my eyes, knowing full well that the flat cigarette package is sitting on my living room coffee table. There was no need to carry up cigarettes and lighter last night.
I am gloomy and feeling like shit. My mood is as bleak as that damn looking snow that I now have to shovel out of the driveway sometime today. But first, since the sun has come out and for once the wind is not howling, I walked downstairs, get suited up in my boots, jacket and gloves and head out the door. I smash my way through the snow drifts and trudge the five-minute walk to the service station and buy a LARGE carton of cigarettes. By now I have changed from menthol to a mild brand of regular cigarettes. The smoke of my choice these days? Peter Jackson, in the cool looking black package with the horse on it.
Yes, I once again became a slave to the cigarette. But not a total slave as you noticed, I did NOT go out in the freezing snow storm at just before midnight to get that cigarette for morning wake up time. So I had made my first choice that night before. Sure I got the cigarettes but they didn’t force me out into the cold that night. That was my decision, not to go, not the cigarettes decision. That made me a little less of a slave and kind of gave me some hope that maybe someday soon I might get my life back and my body.
This is where the plan came in. This is where I set my goal that would not come into reality until the spring. All winter, I carried the mantra in my mind, I, no longer wish to continue being a slave to a cigarette.
Come May I take my vacation. Of course I plan my vacation. When I will go, where I will go, how long I will stay, when I will return. I knew the state my workplace would be in when I returned. I knew that while I was away for two weeks, that only the basics would get done, for I ran the office, I did the reports. They would not get done and they would be waiting for me when I returned from my vacation. It would be a stressful time because it meant I would have to catch up. I might have to work overtime to get things back to speed. So, I was going on vacation, that can be fun but it can be stressful also. Not a good time to quit smoking. Yep, the old excuse. I didn’t even consider quitting my cigarettes while on vacation.
But as I had planned my vacation, I also planned my release from slavery. I set a goal. I would smoke, as much as I wanted until I was driving home and crossing over the little bridge from New Brunswick to Nova Scotia.
You see, I had driven on my vacation to Saratoga, New York. And during my drive home, I could smoke as much as I wanted. I enjoyed those last cigarettes at first. Driving along, listening to the radio, a cigarette in hand, oh wait! Now there are two cigarettes in two hands. What the?
Oh well. I laughed it off. In my eagerness to enjoy, I decided that if one ciggy on the go was good, then two ciggys on the go must be better. All too soon that bridge was looming before me. But before that, my little party was starting to take a downer. I was actually getting sick from smoking. One butt was no more than smashed out than a brand new cigarette was in my mouth. This had probably gone on for hours while driving. In a way this kind of had me liking the idea of reaching the bridge.
I had not only planned out my goal, but I had envisioned it. I could see myself driving home from my vacation, with all that mounting work ahead me in the office, but before that, the little bridge. I could almost envision myself looking down on me, crossing the bride with a cigarette in hand, and leaving the bridge empty handed. Freedom ahead!
So as I approached the bridge which said, Welcome to Nova Scotia, I had an almost new cigarette on the go. The bridge was not very long so the end of it came within a minute or so. As my tires left the bridge and hit the pavement once again, I smashed that almost new cigarette out in the ashtray with as much force and venom as I could muster. There you go, you little slave pusher. I’ve had the last of you. Look at your crumpled body, lying oh so pathetically in that stinking ashtray.
I looked ahead at the highway to Nova Scotia and took a deep breath. I rolled my window down and breathed deeply again. Hello lungs. Welcome back. I am going to take care of you and the rest of me. From now on we decide what we do. And I yelled out the window. I am no longer a slave! I’s free! Mammy I’s free! It made me smile.
I knew there would be trying times ahead but that moment of freedom was so exhilarating. My downer came a couple nights later as I worked late into the night all alone in my office above rows and rows of cigarette cartons. Every kind and description of cigarette was just a couple of steps down, waiting for me. But did I cave? Not on your life. For on my desk, right beside me, like an old friend, was my cigarette package, about half full, with my silver Zippo lighter with the initial, lying on top.
I occasionally looked over lovingly but sternly and said with a smile, You are not going to get me. You can just sit there and look appealing, but I’m through with you. I am no longer a slave to you.
Then I looked away. I carried my cigarettes and lighter around for many a month. I found it the best and probably the only way that I could do without. Because I knew they were right there, waiting for me. I could have a smoke anytime I wanted. But I wouldn’t.
If I had quit and not had a cigarette near me, I probably might have caved and had the urge to buy some. The feeling of being empty handed, out of ciggys, might have been enough to make me start again. But I had them always with me, carried them to my bedside at night, laid them on the table and went to sleep. Woke up, opened my eyes and looked at them, thinking the same thing, that I could have them if I wanted; it was all up to me. Was I strong enough to resist? You bet. It made me feel powerful and in control. It gave me a reason to move forward cigarette-free.
I also took my cigarettes and lighter to work and while I worked in the office they continued to sit before me to the left of me, where I could keep my eye on them.
I had smoked about seven years, but the first two years could hardly be counted as I was then as you know a puffer and a blower, not a real smoker.
So now you know how I quit smoking…forever. I have been cigarette-free for over forty years. I am healthy, I don’t reek of cigarettes, and although my fingers are a bit twisted and not as pretty as they used to be, at least they are not yellowed and stained.
And, oh yeah, I rewarded myself. After three months of not smoking, I had continued to save that money. And I bought myself a beautiful wig. Wigs were all the fashion in those days. I could look at that wig and say to myself, all that money would have gone up in smoke.
You can take what you want from my experience. Take nothing and continue on your smoking way. It is nothing to me. Your journey is yours. You make the decisions in your life…or do you?
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About the Author
This is a personal memoir that I hope you will find informative, amusing, helpful maybe, but most of all entertaining. Some of my other short stories (fictional) for a chuckle are Breakout Day and Foiled Again.
Getting into novels Who Wants to Murder a Millionaire? offers suspense and mystery; and for romance download a sample of Heart of Winter or Angel’s Blessing. For romantic suspense Jewell is my latest novel. There are other short stories, some free. Hop on over to Smashwords.com and take a look.
I have worked in radio writing commercials, and I have also been a freelance journalist. For five years I co-owned and operated a Bed and Breakfast. I live and work in Nova Scotia's beautiful Annapolis Valley.
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