The Cigar Episode

Ahh, our first written story! I'm excited! This one is from my dad, Herb Puckett. 
~~Lori

The Cigar Episode

My dad normally did not smoke cigars because he could not afford them. He was a Bull Durham man. But he stopped the Bull Durham when he found alfalfa and mouse pills in the tobacco sack. Bull Durham was a little cloth sack of tobacco with a drawstring on it with the cigarette papers to build a cigarette glued to one side. Everything was all neat and put away in one package. So anyway, he comes home with a cigar. I was well under school age. I don't know [exactly] how old I was. So I looked at that and told my dad I wanted one too. Well, of course, mom freaked, says, oh my god, don't you do that! Well, my dad says let's let him do it, he'll get sick, and it won't have an attraction anymore. That sounded like a peachy keen good idea. So he got one out and lit it up. I puffed away on it. They kept watching me, no sign of a green face or anything. About then, it was dinnertime. So we both laid our cigars down in something that sufficed as an ash tray. Had dinner, lit up again. So Dad said ok, this is going to do it, this will get him. We'll finish this off.

So it came to pass that like so many of man's best plans that often go astray, I finished that cigar. I did not get sick. I announced that that was a pretty good deal. I was told that if I was ever caught doing that on my own, I wouldn't be able to sit down for awhile. That's all I remember about the cigar. Though at school, in later years, a couple of the guys used to call me Smokey Stover. It was a cartoon guy running around on a single wheeled device that went to the fires. So I was Smokey Stover for awhile. And so ends the episode of the cigar.

A little history lesson:
*At this time during The Depression, Bull Durham sold for 5 cents.

*Smokey Stover was the brain child of cartoonist William (Bill) Holman. (1903-1987) He wrote about Smokey's escapades along with his boss, Chief Cash U Nutt in over 150 leading newspapers.