Chapter Nineteen
posted in Novel |
Here’s Chapter Nineteen of Lost and Found. This is one incident which describes a huge mistake. As many of you know, I now have a serious lung problem for which there is no cure. While I’m sure environmental factors may play some role, beginning to smoke and such a young age, and continuing to do so for almost 40 years, was certainly a major contributor to this disease. My fervent advice to any of you who may be smokers — JUST QUIT!
I better get this posted before the winds arrive this morning. We’re due for some nasty weather today.
Be well — be in peace,
Ron Rink
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During that winter I had my first cigarette. One of the older kids gave me one while we were resting from a hockey game. I had smoked before, but not a regular cigarette.
Last fall, I went with some of the kids in my neighborhood to the candy store down the street from the elementary school and bought some cheap, corncob pipes. Once we had the pipes, we would go out to some of the victory gardens and take the dry corn silk off the tops of the corn stalks, stuff it into our pipes, go hide somewhere and smoke our pipes. None of us inhaled the corn silk, but it made us feel big to be smoking something. The taste of the corn silk was good. (I have heard about corn silk eventually being used by herbalists and naturopathic doctors for alleviating problems with the kidney, bladder and urinary tract. I don’t know what they would think about smoking it, though, since they make a tea out of it)
Jackie Clay, one of the older kids playing hockey gave me a cigarette. “Here ya go, Van, it’s about time you started smoking. Just suck the smoke into your mouth and then breath in,” Jackie said.
I thought I was going to pass out. I got dizzy and felt everything going black.
“Go on, Van, take another drag, it won’t hurt you,” he said.
I coughed and coughed and tried to throw up. Jackie and the other guys laughed so hard I thought they might wet their pants.
“Hey, Rollo, that’s a nice shade of green you got there,” one of them said.
Another one of the guys yelled, “Hey, Van Buren, you gonna smoke the cigarette or just play with it.”
The next night I went out to skate again, and Jackie gave me another cigarette. I didn’t really want to take it, but I was feeling like I had to learn how to do this if I wanted to be part of the group.
It wasn’t as bad that time. I still coughed a lot but I didn’t feel as sick from it. Each time I tried it got easier and easier, until finally I was smoking every time I went skating because I could bum cigarettes off the other guys.
The stores in the neighborhood wouldn’t sell cigarettes to kids my age, so I soon began to steal them from my father. At first, I would just steal a couple of them from his open packs when he wasn’t looking. That wasn’t the easiest thing to do because he usually carried them in his shirt pocket. Once in a while, though, he’d leave a pack open on the table in the living room and I’d cop a couple.
I eventually learned that he kept his cartons of cigarettes on a shelf in the front clothes closet. I managed to steal them a pack at a time without his ever realizing they were missing.
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