A Church of the Open Road
mini memoir
My grandfather, “Hap” Bagnell smoked
Lucky Strikes, a habit conferred upon him by the US Army. So-called “tailor-mades” were once
offered as part of a doughboy’s c-rations. Young teens in the 1960s didn’t receive c-rations, but we
could easily get our hands on cigarettes.
Cigarettes made us cool.
Cigarettes made us adult.
Cigarettes made the girls like us.
Or so we thought.
In those days the Marlboro ad campaign was moving from the
elegant choice for women of the forties and fifties to the rugged “come to
where the flavor is” west. Cue
Elmer Bernstein. Many of the guys
in the seventh and eighth grade fancied themselves leather-skinned cow busters,
therefore the routes spoking out to the neighborhoods from the junior high were
littered with Marlboro butts. Some
kids were a bit more individualistic.
The town jeweler’s son lived a half mile away from me. He picked a menthol brand called
Alpine. Their slogan was “Go to
the mountains, it’ll do a lot for you.”
One of the twins who lived next door was different too. His brand was Tareyton – “I’d rather
fight than switch” – although he wasn’t much of a fighter. Ultimately, as kids were joshing and
poking at each other and puffing on the way home from school, I felt late to
the party. Out of the gang. Different, in a bad way. That’s how you feel when you’re
thirteen. And I knew I needed to
do something about it.
Out through a couple of orchards in
back of our house, a tilt-up, pre-McDonald’s hamburger stand was positioned next
to the state highway. Going to the
“Jolly Kone” was a slightly longer, alternate route from school, but there you
could get an order of fries and a milkshake for about eighty-five cents, so a
visit was worth the extra time and trouble.
In the back corner of the stand’s small, enclosed dining
area stood a cigarette vending machine about the size of a jukebox. On the front of the machine were three
or four rows of rectangular clear plastic buttons. Beneath each surface was a small likeness of a package of cigarettes. There must have been three dozen to
choose from. Staring at it one
day, while downing a strawberry shake and waiting for my fries to cool off, I
was overwhelmed by all the choices.
Which of these brands would ultimately be mine?
I wanted to fit in so I had to start packin’ smokes, but
within limits, I liked being a bit different. So I eliminated Marlboro for obvious reasons and both Tareytons
and Alpines. I considered Lucky
Strikes for a long while but figured maybe I wasn’t being fair with the others
brands on that machine. I
ruminated on this for quite some time until, walking home with the boys one day,
I settled on a plan. I’d start
with whatever brand was in the upper left hand corner of those rows of buttons and
move across until I settled on something that I liked. The next time I dropped in for my fries
and shake, I figured I’d take the 15 cents change I was to get from my dollar
bill, drop it in the slot, push that first button and pocket whatever came
out.
One problem with this plan however: A pack of cigarettes
cost 35 cents.
The next time, I’d be ready.
And I was.
I placed my order.
“Your usual?” the owner asked.
“Yeah,” I stammered as he slid my change across the Formica
counter.
When he turned and went to work dropping my fries into the sizzling
vat and whirring my shake together in the Hamilton Beach, I slipped over to the
cigarette machine. The mechanical
activity in the kitchen would certainly cover the sounds of my sin. Deftly, I slipped a quarter I’d saved
and the dime I’d just received into the slot. They clattered into place sounding like thunder to me. I glanced over my shoulder, happy to
see the cook not peeking round the corner at me, then I stabbed at the upper
left button. Something tumbled out
of the machine like a rock fall and thumped into a slot at the bottom. Blindly, I grabbed whatever had fallen
out, slipped it into the front pocket of my jeans and escaped through the screened
back door of the dining area. No fries
and shake this day.
Heart pounding, I raced through the orchards to an old shed I’d
predetermined would be safe to begin my exploration of finer tobacco products
and where I’d hidden a book of Hap’s matches. Making the boy-cave, I paused for a moment to catch my
breath. Then I fished in my pocket
and pulled out the pack of cigarettes.
Chesterfields. Never heard
of ‘em before. The package was adorned
with some sort of shield or coat of arms and lettered in fancy English style
stuff.
Pretty sophisticated,
I thought. I think I’m gonna like these!
I fumbled with the package until I found the slip of
cellophane that when pulled would unwrap itself revealing a foil top that I tickled
open with my nervous fingers.
Tightly packed inside was an unknown quantity of something tobacco-y
enveloped neatly and uniformly in rolls of thin white paper. I picked and pulled and picked and
pulled at one until, with a ragged end and its contents spilling out, the first
cigarette came free. Mangled, I
looked at the thing. I must have
really torn it up because, unlike the Marlboros, Tareytons or Alpines, it had
no filter. It must have busted
off, remaining in the package. I
tossed the cigarette away, vowing to be more careful the next time. The second one came more freely from
the pack. Its contents still tight
and neatly wrapped, there was no filter on this one either. I peered into the dark cavity left by
the first two samples, but saw nothing.
The third one came out with ease and, yet again, filterless.
Finally, I reasoned that this must be how this Chesterfields
were made. Convenient, I thought,
and you can light either end. So I picked one, stuck an end in my
mouth and on about the third or fifth try, lit the other end.
If you could somehow combine week-old barbecue ash from our
grill, wilted spinach dried and dotted blue with mold and, perhaps some rusted
steel wool, that flavor combination would fall well short of how awful what I’d
just tasted, tasted. I pulled the
thing out as my eyes began to water slightly. Maybe its something
you just have to get used to, I thought, so I took another drag. And then a third. Not good, but maybe getting better? What
did I have to compare this taste to?
For several minutes, I puffed and wiped my eyes and puffed and wiped my now
dampening brow until the thing was burned down close enough to scorch my tender
fingers.
Before I stubbed it out, I recalled that several of the boys
could light a second one off the first if they held the new one steadily between
their lips and touched the lighted tip of the nearly spent butt to it. And I’d seen Bogey do this in the
movies. Cross-eyed, I tried it
rather clumsily. In the process, the
orange cinder of my first smoke briefly seared my thumb and index finger as I
touched it to a replacement that wouldn’t hold still in my unpracticed lips. Grimacing, I held on, thinking that
this, perhaps, was something the Marlboro man had likely mastered. Maybe this contributed to his being so
rugged and worldly and leathery. Less
than half way through the second, however, my forehead drenched, my body
somehow sweaty, a chill hit me. I
shivered a bit, then shook. I
leaned back, then forward and heaved a painful dry heave. I was in way over my head.
Struggling to find my feet, I staggered from my hideout
toward the house. Grandpa Hap
intercepted me. “So, boy,” he
said, “How you like smokin’ tailor-mades?”
I looked up at him though my watery eyes. How
the hell do adults always seem to know?
My lips quivered, but nothing came out.
“It’d be a good idea not to start,” he said, winking and
slapping me on the back.
And I didn’t.
The next day I buried the rest of that pack of Chesterfields
in the bottom of the garbage can – surely
no one would find them there – and waited restlessly until the following
Tuesday when the disposal company came by to cart off our trash.
When you’re thirteen, fourteen or
fifteen, walking and poking and joshing your way to or from junior high, sixty seems
old – a long time away. Suddenly,
when you’re in your sixties, it somehow seems young. Too young. I
think this as I am taking the long, slow journey home from services for the
first of the gang of neighborhood kids I grew up with. The one who’d made Tareyton his brand.
o0o
In grateful remembrance of
growing-up neighborhood buddy Perry Harve Allread.
© 2017
Church of the Open Road
Press
