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Ex-smoker likes second-hand smoke, first-hand memories
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Published: January 4, 2009
My New Year's resolution is to quit smoking.
Actually, I've got a head start of almost eight months on the hordes of people who made that their resolution Thursday. I just wanted to see if I could make it that long without a cigarette before I made my resolution official. The weed is an old friend that's been hard to quit.
Like so many other North Carolinians, I'm ambivalent about tobacco. It's helped build churches, hospitals and colleges in this state, and it's put many a student through those colleges. It helped build Winston-Salem and many other North Carolina towns.
David Payne, who grew up in Henderson, eloquently summed that up in his 1993 novel Ruin Creek. A young doctor tells the elderly owner of a tobacco warehouse in fictional Killdeer, N.C., to quit smoking. The old man tells a friend, "if tobacco's wrong, then this whole town's wrong … 'cause every store and house and church in Killdeer came from it … Every dollar was a leaf of bright tobacco first and grew right from the ground. ..."
True that. And adults can still choose whether they want to smoke. I'll never condemn it. Heck, I still love the smell of second-hand smoke once in a while. I can sympathize with President-elect Obama's battle to quit smoking.
I started at 16. I'd always loved the smell of tobacco smoke, associating it with good things and good people, such as a cherished uncle who loved his Winstons. I never thought too much about his smoker's hack.
Like every other teen smoker, I thought I looked cool. Cigarettes tasted good, as strange as that sounds now. They relieved stress. And nobody in my rock ‘n' roll generation wanted to live forever, anyway. Or so we said.
I smoked through long parties and short study sessions in college. I smoked cigarettes through more than 20 years of newspaper work, delighting in sharing countless smokes with sources and fellow reporters. I also smoked cigars, freely inhaling them as well. I kept on smoking even after most of my friends quit.
My doctor started urging me to quit when I went in for my annual physicals. I shrugged off his warnings. Last spring, he had me take a test that measured my lung capacity.
I figured I'd ace it.
The machine said I had the lung capacity of a 96-year-old, my doc told me.
I think he might have been exaggerating, since a recent X-ray hadn't turned up any spots in my lungs. But it was only a matter of time before that happened, I figured. I'd never tried to quit before, but it was time.
I made it almost a week, then went to a Lynyrd Skynyrd/Hank Williams Jr. concert. Definitely not a place for somebody trying to kick the habit. I was smoking with everybody else by the time Skynyrd played "Sweet Home Alabama," although I didn't flick my Bic when they played "Free Bird."
That was on May 9. I quit for good the next day, after 31 years -- most of my life -- of smoking.
I averaged about two packs a week, which is nothing compared to hardcore hackers smoking that much and more a day. I wasn't physically addicted.
But I was psychologically addicted. I loved going out on the loading dock at work, lighting up, and sharing a story with friends. I loved smoking a cigar while walking my dog. I loved the taste of cigarettes with beer.
I miss smoking. I envy the people who still enjoy it. It's still a way of life here. But it's a way of life that's rapidly changing as farmers go out of business and Big Tobacco keeps getting pummeled.
In a few generations, smoking will be a distant memory. But for now, I still like a whiff of second-hand smoke now and then.
■ John Railey writes local editorials for theJournal. He can be reached at 727-7357 or at jrailey@wsjournal.com.
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