My daughter Cathy asked me some questions about some of the events in my life which I hadn't written before. Some may be better left untold. She Asked:

"How and when did you start smoking? What brands? Quitting?. "
I had my first cigarette when I was about 12 years old when I sneaked one from my fathers pack which was laying on the kitchen table. It was a brand called "20 Grand" named after a famous race horse of the time who won the Kentucky Derby in the year I was born, 1931. In those days cigarettes were a very short length compared to today's brands and none of them had any filters of any kind. I don't know when they started putting filters on them. I remember I had acquired a cigarette holder somewhere that came apart and you could insert a filter in it that looked like a miniature cigarette. It probable did a good job as it was a gooey brown mess when you removed it to replace it. That should have clued me in that that gook was entering my lungs. I just had an occasional cigarette the next few years whenever I could sneak one. I remember the day when I had the first pack of my own. Wow!, I felt like a big shot walking down the street with a full pack in my shirt pocket hopeing someone would notice as I felt very grown up now that I had my own pack. I switched to the Camel brand about then because I had seen some of my friends smoking them. This was during the world war years of 1941-1945 and no one knew or suspected that cigarettes could cause cancer. My father died of lung cancer but it was never attributed to smoking. He was wounded in the leg while fighting in France in World War 1 but he was also exposed to Mustard Gas while in the trenches. He developed cancer in later years and he had open sores on his leg that would not heal and they blamed the cancer on the mustard gas. One thing I always wondered about my mother told me that while in the Veterens Hospital in Indianapolis IN. He had a chance to live a few more years if they removed one of his lungs, I don't know why he chose not to but he was dead within a few months. I remember thinking for a very long time after he died that maybe he was not really dead at all and maybe one day he would just walk into the house and everything would be as before. Anyway back to the cigarettes, When I was about 16 years old I used to go to a tobacco shop on the corner of 6th. & Main street in downtown Cincinnati that sold cigarettes from all over the world. Some were packaged singularly so you could buy only one of them to try them. One day I felt like experimenting and bought several types that I still remember after all these years. One was an English Oval. Is was as though someone has mashed it into a football shape and it was very long, about 3 times longer that a regular cigarette and as thick as a small cigar. It was packaged in a glass tube with a stopper on one end which I thought was really neat. I also bought some clove cigarettes that were made in India, I didn't like them at all. And I also experimented with some from England and other countries. In those days a pack of cigarettes cost 20-25c, even I could afford that. Up until that time I bought them a pack at a time and they seemed to last a long time. The next big change came when I joined the navy. On board ship there were no taxes of any kind on cigarettes and they were very cheap, around 15-20c per pack. There was not a lot of leisure activity in the middle of the ocean except to read, eat and smoke and I did a lot of each. I changed my brand then to Lucky Strike which was also a cigarette without a filter, They advertised L.S.M.F.T. Which meant "Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco" Shortly thereafter I switched to Pall Mall's. A cigarette that was much longer than my Camel's. I suppose it should have clued me in that The habit had bit me and I wanted each cigarette to last longer. After I got out of the navy I was smoking about a pack a day. After I started working in an environment that allowed me to smoke while I worked, like at the Becker Drug chain, I soon rose to 2 packs a day, although many of those cigarettes lay in the ashtray and burned up unattended. I was also starting to develop a cough, It really didn't bother me very much as I cleared my throat when I coughed and then everything was fine. This went on for years and everyone kept saying "How can you smoke those things without filters?" To be honest when I tried to smoke a filtered cigarette there was something lacking in the taste, I realize now it was the lack of nicotine. I wasn't getting a high from them. To make matters worse I got a job at The Dittman-Adams Co. A tobacco and candy distributor and one of the perks was I received free cigarettes. I think I started to smoke just a little more at that point. There were times when I would wake up in the middle of the night and reach for a cigarette and much to my disdain I discovered I was out of them. What to do? I got dressed and made a trip to the local convenient store. I had my cigarette and went back to bed, The same thing happened in Chicago one morning at a buying show, I had to walk about 4 blocks to find a store before I could start my buying at the show. There were also times when I would go around the house checking ashtrays and lighting the longest stubs to get a few puffs. When times were tough I bought a cigarette rolling machine made by Bugler, The best selling roll your own brand. You could roll a pack for about 10c. I used to gather up all the butts in the house, open them and recycle the tobacco. That should tell you how poor I was at the time for you could buy a package of Bugler for abouy 10c. All of these bad habits stayed with me for many years until a day in 1992. That's when I had a heart attack. They put a stent in one of the veins of my heart and I was informed that the attack turned 1/2 of my heart into scar tissue. I was told I had to stop smoking immediately and loose some weight. I promised to do both, SURE! In 1992 you were permitted to smoke in your room and in your bed. I had a pack of cigarettes with me and when no one was around I sneaked a smoke. You might not believe this but it happened. I was put on oxygen with a plastic supply tube under my nose. I lit up a cigarette while this thing was on and a small ball of fire shot out in front of my face. I suppose I was really lucky, the whole thing could have blown up. For the next year or so I quit smoking at least once a week. It usually lasted no more than a few days. I had a hacking cough that sometimes was so strong that I actually threw up. One day at a getogether with my 3 daughters they cornered me and I promised them I would quit. I pasted an unopened pack of Pall Mall on the refrigerator door and swore never to open it and I didn't. Quitting was hell, I ate instead of smoking and gained 40 pounds. I tried all sorts of Substitutes including fruit, candy, all sorts of snacks and nothing seemed help until I discovered "Wrigley's sugarfree bubble gum flavor" gum. Whenever I felt the urge to light up I chewed a stick of this gum and the urge temporarily went away. I discovered it had to be this brand and this flavor or it didn't work. I still have that pack of Pall Mall's attached to a poster that one of my girls gave me that said "YOU DID IT!