When I think of my tobacco use, it boggles my mind how it was ever even legal at all. Even more mind boggling is how young I was when I was allowed to buy it, use it, and continue using it until I could potentially be dead from it. And for many people, that shit is still going on.
For me, it started when I was about eight years old, if we don’t count the prior years of second hand smoke since before I was even born. I’m sure I was coerced to use it by my older brother, so I wouldn’t tell on him. He made me pretend to smoke weed once for the same reason. Even we knew, as dumb little children, there was something inherently wrong with tobacco. Although our parents, the people in charge of our health and well being, didn’t seem to be too concerned.
They both were heavy smokers. Dad probably killed off three packs a day. Mom probably just murdered one a day, but much more on the mandatory for all, drinking infused, furious fighting weekends. Dad eventually died from alcohol abuse at sixty, but those Pall Mall cigarettes had him buckled over in nightly, violent, coughing fits for at least fifteen years.
As kids, we were involved in the cowboy life. I was so sure I was a real cowboy, I wrote a letter to Willie Nelson proudly proclaiming it. I didn’t just choose to write Willie out of the blue. There are much bigger cowboy types to brag to, but there was a history between my parents and Willie that go back to the sixties, alcohol infused, living room puke parties, and probably some intoxicated donkey riding adventures that no one should ever talk about. My dad was a radio advertising salesman, and my mom stayed home, but sometimes, she had a job. She politically ran for county clerk, and she lost. She did secretary work for a lawyer, so she became a legal expert on everything, and she once was a substitute art teacher for a Catholic school. She would often come home in tears from the torment of those fine, knife throwing, Christian students.
So even though we were not a family of ranchers or wranglers, we were somehow still cowboys. In our defense though, we did have a horse named Lady, and eventually we raised a couple of pigs, (appropriately named, Skoal and Copenhagen) and some chickens, and there was a huge garden, and we even slaughtered a steer, once. And my dad shot stuff and killed stuff like snakes and porcupines, and my pig.
So we were cowboys mostly because we wore the hats and boots. Maybe the most ironic part of that is that we were living right next to the Navajo reservation. My brother and I shared the twenty mile school bus ride to a public school with ninety-eight percent Native Americans. It wasn’t until just a few years ago I realized, why, I got beat up and picked on so regularly. It might have been that I was wearing the cowboy costume in a daily game of cowboys and Indians, where I was vastly outnumbered by the Indians.
Another amazing part of tobacco culture was the promotional products and pop-culture marketing. Not only were we bad asses, but we could show ourselves off with spittoons, belt-buckles, and custom chrome snuff can lids. We were the shit. There was nuthin’ more cool than a dirty, white, Chevy pickup, with a rope hanging in the back window, and a dirty Copenhagen spittoon on the dashboard.
One year, Santa Claus brought me and my brother Skoal (Green) and Copenhagen (Black and Brown) branded logo, bottom weighted, no-spill, flanged top, plastic molded, portable, spittoons for Christmas. And sometimes on birthday’s, custom, rodeo style, shiny metal, tobacco can lids. Sometimes with a paisley stamped, metal bottom part. Fancy shmancy!
Rodeo’s are so much fun. Unless you never think about the widely promoted addictive substances and apparent animal cruelty, which we never did. There was also the fair, and animal auction, which is the currency farms, ranches, FFA ,and 4-H clubs strive upon. Nothing wrong with that, until we decide there’s something wrong with that. Most of us do eat animals, someone has to farm them, it’s good business, it’s not like we’re poisoning weeds like a mafia or anything.
My mom discovered I was using the Skoal when she washed my pants, and the cardboard, wax lined can of chopped up, wintergreen flavored tobacco leaves contaminated the wash.
Skoal was always a gateway snuff to the Copenhagen. To this day, I don’t know what flavor that is. But it’s intriguing.
So we were conditioned, like our parents in the sixties and seventies, to think tobacco use was not harmful in any way. The social normality was to use nicotine every moment of every day.
Personally, both of my grandfathers died of emphysema, I currently have a friend with stage four lung cancer, I struggled like hell to quit smoking after twenty-two years, when I swore I would never smoke when I was younger. I dipped snuff and chewed tobacco from the age of seven, which I’m convinced made my addiction stronger.
I feel like, as Americans, in the greatest country the world has ever endowed, we should’ve always been above the kind of business model that knowingly causes illness for profit. Why aren’t we?
The whole point of freedom should be a higher quality of life. The security of health and wellness. We allowed a corporate entity to create a culture based on a style that was, and still is devastating to our health.
That is truly mind boggling.
