When I was about 4 or 5 years old living in the Clay
Homes Project my friends and I were free
range kids. I think our range was
anyplace in the downtown area of Marietta.
During this time I noticed grownups smoking cigarettes. They looked so knowledgeable and sporty when
they took deep draws of their cigarettes and inhaled. I wanted to be like that.
My next door neighbor Carol Joe Clayton, one year youn-
ger
than me, and I watched smokers. We took
note that after they smoked awhile they would throw down their cigarette with
it still smoking. We picked up a
cigarette and sucked on it and had a mouth full of smoke. We were thrilled. We were just like grownups!.
We did not know about inhaling. But we did know about image and sophistication. We were getting pretty good with that. Until we got caught.
I don't remember how we got caught but I remember being
caught; and the punishment.
My mother said something to the effect that if I liked
smoking so much she was going to buy a pack for me and see that I smoked every
cigarette in it.
She went across the street to Steel's Grocery and came back
with a pack of Lucky Strike Cigarettes.
She told me to sit down and start smoking. I thought it was pretty funny what she was
doing and I happily lit up one. After I finished she showed me how to ground
it out in an ash tray. Then she told me
to take another one. Then she told me I
needed to inhale. She told me how to
inhale and hold the smoke in to get the most out of it.
After three or four I begin to get dizzy. I told her that is all I wanted for now.
She said something like, "But you are not finished with
the pack, have another one." I
could barely get it down. I was dizzy
and felt sick at my stomach.
"Light up another one." After I finished that one.
I ran to my room crying.
And that ended my smoking
recreation for about a dozen years.
Almost 70 years later when I see a picture of the above I feel a slight nausea deep within me.
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