Do you smoke? I did. I quit on my thirtieth birthday sixty years ago. That is longer ago than most people are old. I started during the war, World War ll, that is. Most everything seemed to be rationed, but cigarettes weren't.

My dad smoked. During the Great Depression, he smoked a pipe. Cigarettes were around then, but pipe tobacco was cheaper than cigarettes. As a child I enjoyed the aroma when Dad lit up his pipe. His tobacco came in a small bag with a drawstring.

I remember Prince Albert pipe tobacco in the red tin. After we got a telephone in the late thirties, my brothers and I would call a store and ask if they had Prince Albert in a can. When they said they did, we would yell into the telephone, “Let him out” and hang up. It was funny back then, not so much now.

When Dad got a job in town, he went back to cigarettes. Cigarettes were hard to get during the war. Most men rolled their own. When Dad found a cigarette rolling machine, he was in hog heaven. You put tobacco in one place, the paper in another place and pulled the lever. All that was needed then was to wet the end of the paper and paste it down with your finger. He would make a pile of them at a time, but Dad preferred the store bought kind.

I was working in town, after all, I was sixteen. I had a chore to do for Dad – buy cigarettes for him. (You didn't have to be eighteen then.) If I saw a line queued around the block at a store that sold cigarettes, I got in line. People only queued up for one thing and that was cigarettes.

One evening, sitting in my rented room, I decided to try smoking a cigarette. It had to be a pleasurable thing to do because Dad had smoked for years. I lit up. After a few puffs, I was coughing, sputtering and ready to heave. Did that stop me? Nope. I was hooked before the carton was finished. I didn't understand the power of addiction. I enjoyed smoking.

On a Bell Telephone trip to New York, I saw women smoking on the street. What a sophisticated thing to do, I thought. Back home I lit up walking downtown and received nothing but glares. Our town was so far behind the times, I opined. Many women smoked back then, but not on the street.

Other than for health reasons, there is a down side to smoking. A car full of smokers was one cloudy mess. If you didn't smoke, too bad, so sad, you couldn't stand it. Everyone smoked in the bars. Women even smoked nursing their babies. There were no cancer concerns. We didn't know much about it back then.

The car windows would have a greasy film from the cigarette smoke. The windows at home did, too. The drapes and curtains reeked of stale smoke. Women prided themselves on having the prettiest ashtrays in the neighborhood. We even had smoking stands. That really was an ashtray at armchair height. I haven't seen one in years.

There was nothing more revolting that an ashtray full of cigarette butts the morning after smoking all evening. But even then, when out of cigarettes, I would sort through them looking for the longest one to light up. Smokers know what I'm talking about. To stop smoking was a blessing for me. It had taken a toll on my family. I am sure I wouldn't be celebrating my ninetieth birthday, if I had continued. Another time I will tell you how I quit and why.