Smokin'

November 17, 2022

Throwback Thursday (personal artifact): I still have my e-z wider "Rolling Machine." For a short time in the mid-1980s, when I was in my mid-20s, I rolled my own cigarettes using Drum tobacco from The Netherlands and e-z wider rolling papers. I just puffed on them; I didn't inhale. I thought it made me look eccentric, imposing, and artistic. I was going for the bohemian image for which I still strive. I also used to smoke Djarum kreteks (clove cigarettes) from Indonesia, also not inhaling, on and off throughout the 1980s and 1990s. I have also enjoyed the occasional cigar, including something that looked like a culebra with a thin straw stuck in the end while on a vacation in the early 1980s. I have even contemplated smoking a pipe, which I never did. You know, I attempted to smoke part of a Marlboro Red cigarette in the early 1980s under the tutelage of one of my triplet friends at university, inhaling this time, but I luckily failed miserably and just couldn't get beyond the coughing and the throat burning. These days, the only smoke with which I deal are smoked turkey and smoked provolone cheese.