Cigarette stories

A doctor asked me recently why I’d quit smoking.  The price.  I love kids and think they should have health insurance, but that last federal tax was a little over the top. The last carton lasted until March 31^st and  I quit on the next day, the effective date.  Several years ago.

“Only the price?”  He was dubious.  “Health?  Social attitude?  Restrictions?”

“Nope, only the price.”
“Well,” he said, “admit it.  You’d start again any day.”
“Absolutely not!”

“Why not?”

“After I spent fifty years looking for a reason I’m not about to be looking for another reason To Do It All Over Again.”

He’s a short, round and jolly man and laughing all over by the time I got to the end of the story.  He said he had a smoking story for me.  “You smoked?”

“No, my brother.”  His brother must be as tall and thin as the doctor is short and round. An engineer.  A runner.  For recreation, marathons, half marathons.  The engineer often told his doctor brother the running was the antidote to the cigarettes.  The doctor didn’t have any argument convincing enough.

One time the two of them, the doctor and the engineer, were sitting by their father, who was in a hospital bed.  The engineer, making conversation, asked what if dad choked.  “He’d be resuscitated,” the doctor replied.  “How do you do that?”

The doctor got up and looked around the office.  He wanted to show me, too.  He picked up the heavy metal grip of the instrument he’d just used to check my ears.  He said, “I got up, went over to the wall and took down the instrument. Handle just like this. Long flexible tube to go down the throat.  It has a light on the end, so I can see where I’m going.  I turned on the light and wiggled the tube around to give him the idea.”

His brother jumped up and asked if he was in that hospital bed for any reason and coughing up cigarette phlegm, that’s what would happen.  “You bet.’  His brother said “That’s it, I’m done.”

Some time later the doctor asked the engineer how he was able to still go to bars and shoot darts.  Before the cigarettes were sent outside.  Wasn’t he still tempted.  “Sure,” said the engineer.  But it always went down the same way.  He’d ask.  Someone would give him a cigarette.  He’d ask for a lighter.  Someone would give him a Bic.  He’d flick.  Do you know, the flame of a Bic is the same size and intensity as the light on the end of a resuscitation tube.  He’d break the cigarette in half and give the donor a buck.

The Engineer in England (and France), with the flora, the fauna and the sly humor

I’ve mentioned before, my dad was a great photographer, with a concentration in flora and fauna.  And scenery.  People, including family, didn’t figure large in his work until he had grandchildren.  Then he became the photographer of grandchildren.  Fortunately, there were thousands of slides, so I came down to a few hundred of friends and family.   He was so keen on making master photos that I just recalled making him a shirt one Christmas.  It was a regular flannel shirt, to which I sewed six or eight additional pockets in which he could store lenses and filters.  Anyway,

Flora

Fauna

Local color

Good fun

An engineer in England

Dad travelled a little for work.  I liked going to the airport to see him off and to pick him up.  Walt got sick when dad was gone.  When mom understood the cause she quit worrying, and said he was home sick for his father.           

The airport was by the Goodyear air dock, the Akron Fulton airport, built in the ‘20’s by Bain Fulton, who was also a pilot during the Second World War.  The building, beautiful art deco, fell into disrepair in the seventies and eighties, but has been restored and remains in use as an international airport. 

We never went into the terminal; dad drove up to the chain link fence and went through the gate to the plane.  We wrapped our fingers in the links, stuck our noses through and watched him leave.  When we picked him up, we sat in the car and waited for the plane to come in.  Looking back, travelling on Navy planes on Goodyear business may have been the reason for coming and going from the tarmac.  Perhaps commercial aviation operated similarly. We picked him up once in a blinding rainstorm featuring strobing lightening flashes.  That was a wet one.

In the spring of 1953 dad went on a two month trip to England, together with three other fellows from Goodyear.  I know they were engineers, but that’s all.  Dad didn’t talk about nuts and bolts of work and I’m sure I wouldn’t have been interested in any case.  I do remember a story he told years later about visiting an installation in Texas, in the middle of nowhere.  There was a problem with prowlers going over the fence to see what they could see until someone posted big signs:  DANGER.  KEEP OUT.  RADIO WAVES.

Dad went to England as an engineer, but he brought back pictures of sights we would not have seen otherwise.  He bought his trusty 35mm Kodak for the trip, the camera he used for the next twenty some years, and packed a kit bag of film, together with his drip dry shirts.  Late that summer, after the slides were cataloged and mom had typed up his note cards there was an outdoor picture show in our back yard and the entire neighborhood saw Dad’s England.  Jan was born six weeks later.

 The Cornination Procession of Princess Elizabeth

The bird nest in the window above the procession

"Keep off the Grass", if not planned, was typical Dad humor.

I wonder if it rained once while he was there.

Bill’s adventures

My brother’s first wife was the trophy wife.  She remained in this country for several years after they divorced, until a series of hardships caused Hazel to make the decision to return to her village in England.  We kept in touch and knew she married a man she met at a rock and roll club.  A Teddy Boy.  Hazel was a nursing assistant and Bill the town gardener. 

It was just another late fall evening in our house when Mom answered the phone.  It was Hazel, who had an awkward question to put to us.  She and Bill wanted to come here to visit her boys and could they put up at our house.  She’d understand if we said No, but it never hurts to ask and would be so helpful……Mom put the question to Jan and me and Hazel heard us holler YES in unison.

They arrived in December and Mark and I picked them up at the airport.  Same old Hazel, and who couldn’t like Bill.  Well, nobody.  Between them he and Tom knew every song, singer and group from 1950 to present.  Mates, as Bill said.  Walt and Bill went shopping for tools for Bill.  Mom went with Bill and Hazel to see her two boys in Virginia.  On the way back Mom went eastbound on the Pennsylvania turnpike.  The signs strangely kept saying fewer and fewer miles to Philadelphia.  How silly.  Until they realized they had driven long enough to be in Ohio.  It was a long day, and the very next day home Mom bought a compass for every car in the family.

We had lots of company in to visit.  Uncle Hank kept looking around the table one night and beaming.  Who could believe it.   Former husband.  Present husband.  Former in-laws.  All present company.  And Bill was a keeper. 

When she wasn’t off visiting, Hazel tucked into odd jobs in the studio and Bill puttered about until his mate, Tom came home from work.  The weather was very mild for December when they first arrived and Bill did a lot of yard puttering.  It was well trimmed and raked those several weeks.  He looked for odd jobs about the house and kept the studio hearth swept and the ashes carried out.  Very late one night I woke up to a lot of commotion in the side yard and bright flames.  The commotion was Jan and Tom returning home from bowling, looking for the garden hose Bill had stowed neatly, turning the water back on.  The compost bin was in full flame, probably from a smoldering coal still in the ash bucket.  The bowlers put out the fire.  Bill never woke up.

Near the end of the visit it began snowing.  Inches and inches, topping out at over a two foot accumulation in a short time.  Bill had his taste of winter weather and could go home happy, and telling about shoveling feet of snow off the porch and sidewalk. Only one thing left on his wish list.  A ride in his mates'  lorry.   Tom was an over the road trucker back in the days before he retired.  Bill sighed and asked about Tom’s day when Tom came home.  We knew what he wanted, but it would be so against the rules, he didn’t ask.  After he heard about every delivery, every loading dock backed into and pulled out of, every shift of all twenty gears, a long sigh.  At the end of the last week, on Thursday night Tom asked “Can you be under the light at the head of the street at 6 am tomorrow morning?"  “Right, mate!” 

And the next morning the little man went up the street, outfitted in the winter gear we had cobbled together a week earlier.  An old coat of mom’s, a muffler, some mittens, a stocking cap and my pink, puffy, knee high boots.  He had a glorious day.

Hazel and Bill visited several times over the next decade.  When he was back in our kitchen we realized how we missed “Aizel, where’s my tay?”  “Bugger.”   Our yard was never so well tended as the weeks he was here.  Bill built our grape arbor and planted the grapes.  I still have his card:  Bill’s Lawn Mowing Service.  Our trophy sister-in-law had a trophy husband.  One night Jan and I came home to find Hazel on our answering machine.  Bill had died that morning of a heart attack.  We lost a good friend and a great gardener.  Aizel gave him a Teddy Boy send off.

How he’s grown

June 4, 2011

Jan reckons he’s entered truancy.  He assimilated consequences for some behavior and limits counter trips to forays for plant leaves.  Especially philodendron, from the kitchen counter planter.  A piece he surely broke off has been stashed in the Christmas cactus pot, probably by his fairy godmother, our friend Dee.

There’s the evidence for the Grand Jury:  kitty teeth holes.  It would explain why he found his way to the top of the gardening cupboard.  He surveyed his find, found Christmas cactus even more delightful than philodendron, and removed a good portion to toy with on the ground.  Sadly, for Toby, he was found out by Jan even as he was in mid air.  He got what for, and refused to speak to the spoil sport for an entire day. He still speaks to me.

And performs other studio jobs: