By: Sandy Williams Driver
My father, Dalton Williams, came home from Burma in 1945 with a far away look in his eyes, a mangled left hand and a pack of cigarettes.
During World War II, cigarette sales were at an all time high with 30% of all American tobacco products manufactured being sent overseas to be distributed freely to the soldiers. Supply planes flew low over beaches and jungles to drop huge containers of C-Ration packs which included, among other things, a K-1 biscuit, soluble coffee, chewing gum, four cigarettes and a pack of matches.
Those coveted cigarettes brought a few minutes respite from the extreme conditions the young recruits were forced to endure. After the war, thousands of those men, like my dad, returned home loyal customers of the popular brands such as Camel, Lucky Strike and the first king-sized cigarettes, Pall Mall, introduced in 1939.
On a copy of Daddy’s physical exam papers when he was inducted into the Army in March 1944, the simple word NO is written under the question, Do you smoke cigarettes? When Dad was honorably discharged a year and a half later, Two packs a day is scrawled under the same question.
While growing up, I don’t ever remember a time when there wasn’t a gold-colored pack of Pall Mall 100’s in the front left pocket of my fathers shirt. As a little girl, I used to sit on the arm of his chair and watch him smoke away the hours.
I always begged and pleaded for Daddy to blow rings and finally, he would breathe in deeply and then magically exhale the tiny circles of smoke that floated all around us. Those were the days before anyone had ever heard of the dangers of secondhand smoke or even the hazards of firsthand smoke.
When I was six years old, we lived in the small community of Rabbittown in Albertville, Alabama, and the Collins family lived next door. They had a daughter, Monica, just a couple of years younger than me and we were inseparable growing up.
Like Daddy, Mr. Collins also smoked and the two of them went through several packs of Pall Malls and Winston’s every week. I believe they preferred to smoke outside while tending their gardens or mowing their lawns because then they didn’t have to worry about nagging wives fussing on them about spilled ashes and yellowed ceilings.
While Monica and I played outside during those warm summer months, we were always finding cigarette butts scattered over both our properties. Sometimes we paid them no attention, but one particular day we decided to see what our daddy’s found so appealing about the thin, little white sticks.
We diligently searched both yards and picked up a small bowl of the discarded half-inch stubs. Carrying our treasure, we sat down on a narrow step attached to the side of the Collins’s house. We didn’t have a lighter or even a match, but one by one, we put those left-over filters of both our Daddy’s habits into our young mouths.
We didn’t care that those cigarette butts had been lying outside for Lord knows how long and no telling how many squirrels or neighborhood dogs had walked across them and did no telling what on them.
Like Eve in the Garden of Eden, we were both sorely tempted and decided we just had to get a taste of the forbidden fruit. We sucked on those dirty stubs as hard as we could; trying to get a trace of what we knew must be something mighty good because of the large number of them our daddy’s smoked every day and because of how our momma’s condemned them when they did.
We had almost gone through the entire bowl, savoring the small dregs of nicotine, when all of a sudden we heard a voice sternly say, Whats in your mouths, young ladies? I quickly looked around and spotted my mother’s face in the bedroom window on the end of our house facing the Collins’s house. Even from a distance, I could tell she was mad because her eyes were all squinted up and her mouth was set in a hard, straight line.
Monica and I jerked those tiny cigarettes out of our mouths and tossed the rest of them, bowl and all, across the yard. We jumped up and ran as hard as we could; hoping to outrun my momma’s disapproving eyes and the keen hickory switch we knew she kept on the top of our refrigerator. (Those were the days when folks whipped kids, whether they were their own or their neighbors.) Even though our young legs carried us down the hill and across the nearby vacant lot, we still had to eventually go home for supper. Momma had informed Mrs. Collins of our afternoon escapades, so me and my smoking buddy both went to bed that night with stinging legs.
As far as I can recall, Monica and I never tried smoking again while we were growing up and neither one of us smoke today. Cancer kills millions of people every year including my daddy in 1999. The harmful effects of cigarettes are widely publicized these days but, I have still never been one of those folks who pitch a fit when someone lights up close by me. I just inhale the pungent aroma and think about Daddy and hickory switches.
Published U.s. Legacies July 2004
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