a cigarette is all you get

It was overcast as I stood at the corner of 16th and Market Streets, waiting for my friend Steve to meet for lunch. I huddled next to a news stand and craned my neck hoping to catch Steve's approach from 15th Street. A few stray raindrops grazed my face ever time I looked up. I checked the time on my cellphone several times. It looked like Steve was running a bit late, but he was walking from the other side of City Hall, so I would cut him some slack.

Luckily, the diversity of the bustling lunchtime crowd offered plenty of distraction and even a modicum of amusement. Pretty soon, this guy crossing the street from the southwest corner was about to provide some brief entertainment.

With a spring in his step, the older man walked up to the news stand, just a foot or two from where I was standing. He wore a threadbare knit cap, pilled and frayed, pulled down to eyebrow level. His eyes were totally obscured by a pair of large black sunglasses, which were functionally unnecessary on this gray, misty afternoon. The lower visible part of his face was flocked with a coarse growth of wiry hair, sparse in places and wildly unkempt in others. He hunched over slightly under the weight of a haggard backpack, obviously stuffed with treasures and necessities that needed secure accompaniment. He drummed his bony fingers on the protective Plexiglas window of the stand in an attempt to get the proprietor's attention.

"How much is cigarettes?," he asked in a gravelly voice.

I couldn't hear the reply through the Plexiglas, but it obviously outraged the man. He curled his hands into fists and banged down hard on the small counter, making the packages of M & Ms jump slightly from their display. Then, with extended fingers and his palms facing down, he made a bouncing motion with his hands while he berated the news stand owner.

"Six fifty-five?! Too high, man!," he growled, still exhibiting the international gesture for "lower" with his hands, "You is way too high. They sell 'em for six-fifty up th' street, but I don't feel like walkin' all the way up there."

He argued a little more with the unseen (from my vantage point) owner of the news stand and then finally walked away. I can only assume he made an attempt at haggling on the price of cigarettes, hoping to get the owner to concede the extra nickel. Since the man walked away shaking his head and empty-handed, I can safely surmise that no such concession was made. He disappeared into the crowd on 16th Street, passing a smiling Steve on his way to meet me.

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the ashtray says you were up all night

I am not a fan of cigarettes. My father smoked like a chimney, starting in February 1944 when he joined the US Navy for a two-year hitch at the end of World War II. Although he claimed he had quit at various times, he didn't. He stopped smoking when he died. His father smoked until he died from emphysema. My father smoked and watched his father die from a disease directly related to smoking. He continued to smoke anyway. 

When I was a kid, my father used to send me to buy cigarettes for him. There was a market within walking distance of my house. My dad would give me fifty cents for a pack of cigarettes and an extra dime to buy a candy bar for my trouble. The store owner didn't bat an eye as he handed a cellophane-wrapped package of Viceroys over to a seven-year-old.

I have vivid memories of my father waking each morning with a dry, hacking cough. Bent over, he would brace himself with his hands on his low dresser and cough uncontrollably. Then, when the coughing subsided, he'd pop a cigarette in his mouth and fumble for his lighter.

My mother smoked as a young adult. She continued to smoke after she married my father, not at all pausing through two pregnancies. She eventually quit when I was in high school and became a militant opponent of cigarettes. Being married to a chief offender was difficult and maddening. On regular household cleaning days, my mom would remove disgusting, yellow residue from nearly every piece of furniture in our house — their bedroom furniture accumulating the worst of it. My father would smoke at the dinner table and crush his cigarette butts out on his plate.

In the middle 90s, my immediate family took our first trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario. We marveled at the natural majesty of the falls and the surrounding landscape. We had a blast visiting the hokey tourist attractions on nearby Clifton Hill. We stopped in a small convenience store and were floored by the price of cigarettes. My wife and I are not smokers, but the $7.50 (Canadian currency) per pack price was incredible to us. A clerk explained that the cost was mostly taxes that funded the nationwide health care. We gave fair warning, on a subsequent trip, to friends traveling with us. They were smokers. During our trip, they ran out of cigarettes. If they wished to smoke, they would have to pay the high Canadian prices. They did and they did. (A quick Google search reveals that cigarette prices in the United States have caught up to or passed the Canadian prices of twenty years ago.)

So, now after years of research, it has been determined that cigarettes are bad for you. They can be traced as the cause of or a contributing factor to any number of ailments and diseases. They make your clothes stink. They make your hair stink. They make your breath stink. They impair your breathing. They impair your ability to properly taste food. They are expensive, commanding a price as high as twelve bucks a pack in New York.

Yesterday, I passed a woman sitting on the curb on 15th Street as the busy Philadelphia lunchtime crowd hustled along the sidewalk. She was clad in a dirty pink winter coat. Her knees were protruding from large holes in her dirty jeans. Beside her was a dirty, wrinkled plastic shopping bag that held, I imagine, her few worldly possessions. She held a torn piece of corrugated cardboard upon which she has scrawled: "Homeless. Hungry." Between two fingers, she squeezed a burning cigarette. Based on the current prices in Pennsylvania, that cigarette cost 34 cents. If her being homeless and hungry is presented (as her handmade sign advertises) as my concern, then her smoking is my concern as well. Even if she bummed that cigarette, it seems as though that was a bigger priority than obtaining food or shelter. I refuse to help someone who takes no interest in helping themselves.

In the introduction of an illusion performed by magician Penn Jillette, he puffs on a cigarette and states: "Hey kids, don't smoke... unless you want to look cool."

Some people don't get the joke.

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