Smoking Cowboys

Rolling your own cigarette and smoking was a just a given for the tough lawmen and notorious bad guys of the Old West movies. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood made it look cool, but in my estimation that’s the only place it does look cool. I grew up around a family of smokers. That wonderful legacy was then passed on to my brothers and now my brother’s daughters. Plant a potato get a potato I guess. I don’t blame the film stars for setting the example or the tobacco company for making the product. I personally think tobacco companies are being sued way too much. I admit they’re evil poison-mongers who give other evil poison-mongers a bad name. Yes, they lie about the addictive nature of their products and get rich doing it. But come on, tell the truth, we knew they were lying all along. If you’re saying you didn’t know cigarettes were bad for you, you’re lying through that hole in your trachea. Of course it causes lung cancer. Of course it causes emphysema. IT’S SMOKE! How could you not know smoking is bad for you? Is having teeth the color of caramel corn normal? Is coughing up your lungs one smoldering loogie at a time normal? Here are some signs that you might want to quit smoking: 1. Before lighting up, you wrap a nicotine patch around your cigarette. 2. Your newborn twin sons are named Benson and Hedges. 3. You name each cigarette and have a personal conversation with it while you smoke. 4. You’re at Arlington Cemetery, paying your respects to JFK, and you lean over and light one up off the eternal flame. When I find myself in a room where everyone is smoking, and it gets too intense, you know what I do? I leave the room. My acceptance of smokers is one of the compromise, one of the little negotiations that one must make if one is to live in modern urban society. I agree that John Wayne would have seemed less cool in The Quiet Man or McClintok if he weren’t smoking, but I also agree he would have been around longer if he hadn’t of smoked. Ultimately lung cancer was the only thing that could ever kick the Duke’s butt. And as a fan of the Duke – that’s just sad.