Smokin' Hot!

Summertime in South Florida, and the air is stagnant, stifling, breathless, and sodden. That's why I spend most of the eight months of summer in the air-conditioned bliss of my home or a tavern. The one bar I go to on Friday's is a smokers bar, but they thoughtfully leave the doors open, and turn the air-conditioning on high so that the smoke isn't so bad. It's not that I'm such a health nut about the air I breath, after all I did live in polluted Chicago for decades, and sat in smoky bars up there. Growing up, my dad smoked around us all the time, and over at my grandparents house my grandfather infused the place with the rank smell of his 'White Owl' cigars. It's just that most places are now smoke free and I have gotten used to not going home smelling like smoked meat.

As a child, it wasn't the heat of summer that caused us to stay sealed up inside, it was the bitter cold of winter. On freezing school days, our neighbor across the street would shuttle a carload of us children to school. If it was still too cold after school, we would be able to catch a ride from one of our other neighbors. Thinking about it now I realize that riding in those cars was probably quite a health risk. Not because the guys driving were bad drivers, no, it was because they smoked. The worst was the after school driver. While he was waiting for the dozen or so of us to get out of school, he was sitting in the parking lot smoking cigarettes.... with the windows closed. When we opened the car door, a thick cloud of smoke would swirl out. Inside the car, we would be riding in a bubble of smoke, the tars and nicotine permeating every inch of our lungs and clothes. We didn't care. It was like Siberia outside, and we gladly sat in that car playing with the smoke and writing graffiti on the nicotine stained windows. Back then all parents smoked in the car, and there was never any mention of secondhand smoke being a problem. Besides, it was probably good training for me later in life, when I was driving around town in my smoke filled, pot-mobile.