Smoking!

When I think of it, I always remember the comment the character Morgan Freeman played in “An Unfinished Life.” He’s looking at a cigarette butt and says, “I miss smoking.”

I started smoking in college. I want to say it was my sophomore year, and the only reason I can think of wanting to smoke was because I was in the awkward state between being a kid and being a man. I went over to the drugstore near the campus and purchased a curved pipe and a pouch of Borkum-Riff Whiskey-flavored tobacco.

I lit it up and walked across campus feeling like all that.

I smoked a lot over the next several years.

I’d say the most I smoked was when I was working for the Sheriff’s Office.

By this time, I was a Master of the pipe. I owned several. I had a leather pouch I kept my tobacco in. I had all the tools. I never went anywhere without my pipe, my pouch, or matches.

And speaking of tobacco. I smoked the best I could get. The Valley didn’t have any real tobacco shops at the time, and so I purchased by tobacco from a men’s clothing store called El Cid’s. It was on the main street of Alamosa.

Every payday, I walked in and purchased six 5-pound tubs of Private Reserve, a tobacco I’d taken a liking to. I got paid once a month as a deputy, and by the time the following payday rolled around, I was scrounging for tobacco.

Yeah, I was pretty bad.

I still smoked even after I enlisted in the Army.

Then one day, I went out to enjoy my pipe. I charged it, lit it, took a breath, and promptly threw up.

I never picked it up again to smoke it.

All the pipes I had back then are gone.

The only pipe I own is one my wife purchased for me a few years ago. I have it on a stand and a jar of tobacco next to it.

I’ve never smoked it.