Leaving a local restaurant tonight I noticed an older middle age gentleman smoking on the covered porch outside. He was alone, as are most smokers these days, since smoking is banned in so many places. The moon had risen in the east. He was looking east in the direction of the moon. He seemed to be deeply lost in thought, contemplating something important, or perhaps he was simply enjoying a brief moment of quiet and the calmness nicotine gives to those who make it their friend. The smoke curled upward around his weathered face.  He looked older than his years. I could tell he had lived a hard life. He did not appear as healthy as he should, with body too thin, skin red and thickened from oxygen deprivation over a very long period of time. I could not tell in the brief moment I observed him if he was happy or sad. I only knew he seemed to be alone, as if in another place where he found comfort for the few minutes his cigarette burned.

Observing this lonely man outside the restaurant caused me to flash back to a long time ago. I remember my dad with this same pose. He too smoked alone. As the only member of our household who smoked, he smoked outside. My dad preferred Salem cigarettes as his brand of choice. They had filters on them to make them less dangerous, or so it was thought at the time. He never smoked inside the home, only outside the home. I remember riding with him when he smoked in the pickup truck. He let me ride in the front bench seat with him in this time of no airbags, not even seat belts. I sat on the right; he sat on my left as he was driving. I enjoyed being with my dad. He did not speak a lot, but he smoked regularly. He too seemed to find a place of calm for the few minutes his cigarette burned. In deference to me riding with him, he always opened the small vent window on the driver’s side and kept his cigarette close to it, so the smoke never filled the cab where I was sitting. Quickly, as I watched, the smoke rushed outside, into the evening or morning air.

I am the oldest of six children, so my memory of my dad is that he worked a lot, I mean a whole lot, all the time! He had, as I recall, three jobs. First, he worked in Charlotte at a place called Pneumofil. I only knew that he set up machines, which bent metal. On that job he worked either first or third shift. Second, my dad started a small business repairing TVs. In the 1960s, most televisions still had vacuum tubes. One of my jobs in the TV shop on Saturdays was arranging all the tubes in shelves across the wall into their correct order. From 1 volt to 24 volts, but mostly 6 volt and 12 volts, I spent hours arranging the tubes in exact order. Some were 12BA6, 12SA7 or 6SN7, 6SNGTA, 6SNGTB, or 12SQ7. You get the picture.

Arranging vacuum tubes in their boxes is a good way to learn about the alphabet, series of numbers, and how just a little change can make a whole lot of difference. My dad smoked when he worked on TVs. He taught me how to use the vacuum tube tester. I was never as proud as when I fixed one TV all by myself, by simply replacing two faulty vacuum tubes.  My dad called these repair jobs “gravy,” because he made just as much money from the tube replacements as he did soldering components underneath the base. Old cathode ray TVs used a lot of transistors, capacitors and something called “a flyback transformer”.  This last item is what charges the electrons in the large cathode tube, requiring from 18,000 to 25,000 volts to present a picture on the TV screen. I was fascinated to watch as my dad would use long nose insulated pliers to carefully remove the heavily insulated wire going into the upper right back of the large cathode picture tube. A blue, orange or yellow arc of electricity would flash as the flyback transformer was being discharged so it was then safe to work on the TV. Simply unplugging the TV is not enough, unless the flyback transformer is discharged, the TV is “still hot”, as my dad would say.  He warned me never to put my hands near the back of a TV cathode tube not yet fully discharged.

I especially enjoyed the days we discarded the old cathode ray TV tubes. They were full of phosphorus and other substances used to make TVs glow, to make the picture on the screen. Often these large tubes for the TV screen would go bad and need to be replaced.  We removed the yoke from the long neck of the TV tube, since it was full of copper, but the tube itself we would take down to my grandfather’s gully. As we threw these down into the steep gully onto all the old washing machines and other junk from the farm, the tubes would explode like a small bomb with a great whooshing noise and the phosphorus smoke would rise up into the air over the red bank gully. It was a long way down into the gully, so there was never any danger of breathing the stuff, but I did enjoy watching the large tubes explode. This was a long time before the EPA, of course. God knows what they do with discarded TVs any more. I heard that computers end up in China, where the people salvaging recover gold and platinum, if they don’t die first of cadmium poisoning.

My dad’s third job was installing sound systems in department stores. He hired me as his helper and we rode all over North Carolina and once as far as Knoxville, Tennessee installing background music systems in department stores. He obtained contracts from stores to install these systems. In the 1960’s it was a new thing to have background “mood” music. Not every department store had sound systems. Someone somewhere determined that shoppers are more likely to buy more stuff with pleasant, soft (not loud) music playing in the back ground as they shop. So this was an opportunity for persons like my dad, who was very skilled in electronics to make some extra money. I don’t remember how many of these stores we did together. I do remember one in which I drank ten soft drinks in one day and thought I might die on the way down the mountain coming home if I did not arrive at a bathroom quickly. It takes a great deal of concentration to hold back ten cola soft drinks. My dad described this as “your eyeballs are floating.” I learned that day that to prevent “floating eyeballs,” a sane person stops drinking at four Pepsi colas!

I distinctly remember the day my dad gave up cigarettes. It happened after his doctor told him he had emphysema. Dad grew up working in the cotton mill, as did all his family. He started smoking at age 13. Afterward, he served in the army in the motor pool in Okinawa, Japan. He told me the army paid all the soldiers in money, but also gave them two packs of free cigarettes each week. Two packs of cigarettes a week is apparently as good as having extra money.

While working for several years in the Gastonia TV & Appliance Repair, on most Saturdays dad would give me two quarters to go across the highway to purchase for him a pack of Salem cigarettes. I was about ten years old, so I knew how to safely get across the highway. The cigarette vending machine sat across from the TV shop on Highway 321 near the new Hardee’s restaurant. It was easily accessible by all, so for two quarters, 50 cents, anyone could purchase a pack of cigarettes. The choices ranged from Salem, Winston-Salem, Pall Mall and a few others. Cigarettes in North Carolina at this time were not taxed, to help the farmers who raised tobacco sell more of their product in the state. A carton of ten packs of cigarettes sold, as I recall, for $2.40 or so. (This was also the time of the 29 cents per gallon gasoline – I remember one gas war in South Gastonia where the price dropped to 19 cents per gallon for one day).

One day the price of cigarettes increased from 50 cents to 75 cents a pack. I remember dad being very upset. He said, and I quote, “I will never pay 75 cents for a pack of cigarettes!” So on that day he quit, cold turkey and never went back to smoking again. He replaced the habit of smoking cigarettes with chewing a lot of Juicy Fruit gum. This suited me better anyway, since now I could bum a stick of Juicy Fruit off him occasionally.

My dad died a few years after he quit smoking when he was driving his pickup truck home from his job in Charlotte, going south toward home on Highway 321. He was hit head on by a drunken young soldier going north on this same highway, just out of the service and who celebrated too much the night before. I was thirteen years old; my dad was 39. I was born on March 13. My dad died on March 31. I wondered for a long time if these dates had any significance.  Three times 13 =39.  If you reverse 13, it becomes 31.  This was my childish way of trying to find some type of order out of this terrible chaos. I wanted to know from the universe’s perspective if my dad was destined to die, or if this happened for no reason at all. I still inquire often of God on matters such as these, but without any resolution.

I made a promise to myself and my dad on the day he died. First, I promised him and myself I would never smoke cigarettes, since my mother told me my dad died when his lungs filled up with fluid. I figured that might be because he had emphysema from smoking for so long and his lungs simply gave out when faced with all the traumatic fluid.  I tried to go to the hospital before he died, but they would not let me. Second, I told myself I will never drink alcohol of any kind. I never have (I did taste champagne once at a wedding). Serving now as a primary care physician, I take care of a lot of persons who smoke cigarettes, vape, or smoke marijuana or even things much stronger. I daily see the effect cigarette smoking has on a person’s lungs. We all know stories of those who have burned all their eyebrows off and sometimes their face and hair while smoking, while using oxygen in the home. Also, of the number of persons killed or maimed each year by drivers who have too much alcohol in their body, there are too many.

Since practicing family medicine, I have helped at least two hundred persons stop smoking cigarettes, and at least one gave up marijuana that I know about. Of the persons doing vapors, I have yet to help many of these. There is something about the oral fixation of smoking that so many like. It is not just the nicotine; there is something more happening in and to the mind. For a little while, the person smoking goes to a quiet place and alone drinks in some kind of forbidden pleasure.

Just like the man I saw smoking outside the restaurant tonight looking at the moon; my dad was in another place, but I cannot say where he actually traveled. He went someplace inside his mind to find an inner peace, the intoxication provided by the nicotine. This peaceful place lasts, of course, only as long as the cigarette burns.