One Christmas when I was a boy, I went to the then-new Southdale
shopping center — nobody had yet coined the term “mall,” though
Southdale was the first — just outside Minneapolis with my mother.
I was waiting on a gallery bench outside a store, when I saw a
young man and a young woman fly into one another’s arms in delight
and surprise. The two of them, college-age and apparently returned
home for the season, had been shopping with their families, and had
evidently not expected to see one another — at least not quite
yet.
There they stood, lovers, their arms around each other, blushing
with delight, while, in the background, their families smiled. By
silent consent, the families melted away, leaving the two alone. I
sat and watched. The young woman displayed that wonderful, fresh,
clean, trim type of beauty the Midwest produces. The man, also
typical, was a rangy, beaky, amiable sort, like a middleweight
wrestler. They lit cigarettes and they smiled and they told each
other stories about their semesters away at college. The restrained
susurrus of holiday Southdale plashed about them, people,
fountains, gentle music.
The world was a lot nicer when everybody smoked.
My first editor, Bob Bork, used to arrive at work in the
morning, hang up his baseball cap, and stack two fresh packs of
Viceroys, one on top of the other, next to his telephone. Bob once
read over one of my stories, written when I was fifteen, and
complimented me in terms I’ll never forget: “Ya got the touch,
boy!” Bob could blow the biggest, thickest, heaviest smoke rings
I’ve ever seen. He told about the time he blew one in a bar and it
settled perfectly around a beer bottle. “Do that again!” demanded
the astonished guy on the stool next to him.
There were Jim and Tom MacDonald, two wonderful young men,
brothers, with beautiful bass voices, who sang in our church choir.
At choir practice one Thursday night, Tom said to Jim, “Give me
cigarette and I’ll make it disappear.” Jim gave him one. Tom lit
it. After church, downstairs in the parish hall, the whole
congregation bloomed in the aromas of smoke and coffee, and the
laughter rang out.
My mother’s dear cousin Jean, the best friend a teenaged boy
ever had, used to stump awkwardly around her apartment out by Lake
Minnetonka and make me comfortable while she smoked non-stop and we
listened to her component stereo system good and loud, and talked
about everything. And, in her late forties, my Aunt Lettie fell in
love with a St. Paul cop, a widower, and ended up with the happiest
marriage I have ever seen. Russ, with his white crewcut and square
beefy face, would sit in his favorite chair in the house he had
built and puff on El Producto seconds (two dollars for a box of 50)
while Lettie bustled in and out of the kitchen, beaming at him.
Russ outlived Lettie by more than 20 years, long enough for me to
try one of his cigars. They were terrible.
The world has changed, and it’s a meaner place. Little children
who once would have gathered around a pipe smoker to say, “That
smells good” and “Daddy, why don’t you smoke a pipe?” now point
fingers and say “That stinks!” and “You’re gonna die!” Carrie
Nation and her saloon-busting hatchet are totems of historical
ridicule today. But Carrie Nation’s heirs in the anti-smoking
movement have tapped into all the same wretched excesses of
American culture — bluenosery, totalitarianism, and vandalism.
There is a difference, of course. Today’s Carrie Nations have used
thirty years of anti-tobacco jihadery to practice the sinister
modern techniques of the Big Lie and the Big Lawsuit.
Along the way, they’ve corrupted science, destroyed objective
journalism, and made the truth nothing more than a commodity.
They’ve demonized tens of millions of people and turned tens of
millions more into preening, self-righteous jerks.
And of course they’re not done. Having practiced and perfected
their techniques, they’re now casting around for new targets. Food
looms as the most likely. But there are others, lots of others.
I would say that George Orwell himself would be challenged to
describe it all. But of course he wouldn’t.
