Morning Thoughts: December 2, 2017

It all started because I forgot to grab a pack of cigarettes ere I went on the midwatch. That led to one of my best decisions ever.

Conditions were right. I had only been aboard the USS Hunley (AS31) for two days. I didn’t know a soul, unless you count the personnel officer who told me he was assigning me to a crappy detail because he didn’t like Vietnam veterans. (I had foolishly asked for East Coast duty as my new assignment. Big mistake).

That afternoon, I had gone to the PX on board and bought a carton of Marlboros. It cost me $2.10, or 21 cents a pack. I had smoked a half-pack up when the messenger from the quarterdeck woke me up for duty guarding the chow hall. About 0015, I realized that I had forgotten my cigarettes. Send me aft for a fathom of waterline, but I was pissed. Few people were awake, and I could have easily snuck out on the main deck for a smoke.

I thought about it a lot for the next hour or so. I had been accustomed to sometimes three packs a day on my last assignment, depending on how the watches fell. (We had stood 6 on and 12 off).

Somewhere around 0130, a drunken sailor weaved across the empty chow hall heading for his bunking area. I had a flash. He probably had cigarettes and would gladly share one with a shipmate. I started across the deck.

Something made me stop. “Here you are,” I said. “Going to accost a perfect stranger and beg for a favor. You can make it until you are off watch.” I turned and waited. It made me have something to look forward to on what was turning out to be a miserable tour of duty.

My relief came, and I rushed forward to where I bunked, thinking about that beautiful package of Marlboros, the same ones that cowboy smoked. They were, the claim stated, as fresh as the great outdoors.

Reaching my bunk. I had another thought. “You’ve gone for hours lad. Can’t you wait until morning? “Yeah. Why not?”

Morning, and another thought got underway. “Hell,” I says to myself, “you’ve gone over 12 hours without a cigarette. What if you went all day in addition to that?” Guess what I did the next day? I just didn’t smoke and began training myself not to think about it. Luckily, I didn’t have anyone much with whom to talk about it. Talking about quitting is a sure sign you’re not going to succeed.

That was 49 years ago. I threw the half-used pack away a month later. Two months following that, I sold the rest of the carton to a shipmate. I shit-canned my Zippo lighter that had gone to war and back with me then, and my deliverance was complete.

Here’s the deal. Breaking the habit of smoking is real simple. You just quit. You don’t taper off. That means you haven’t quit. You don’t use pharmaceuticals. That only signals to your brain that you are too weak to quit. You don’t talk about it. That uses up much of the psychic energy that is required for resolve. Mainly, you just don’t smoke.

It helps if you are thrown, as I was, into a new environment. I never associated life aboard a ship with smoking. Mainly, you just don’t smoke.

Is it easy? Hell no. For 20 years or more, I would dream that I had resumed smoking and boy did it seem nice. I would awaken and, after some time, would remember that I had quit years before and never started back.

That was 1968. Some 15 or so years later, I ran a complete marathon, 26.2 miles. Okay, I waddled the last three miles, but who was counting? Now, when I enter a downtown bank building when it’s below freezing and see office workers huddled against the wind, shivering and puffing, I can’t help thinking how simple salvation would be. Mainly, you just don’t smoke.

Don’t blabber to me about how you plan to quit smoking, or how you haven’t smoked a cigarette in eight hours. Don’t go spending good money on drugs to help. Save that money for wine or Four Roses to celebrate anniversaries of your victory. Unlike other victories, you don’t have to do anything. You just have not to do something.

It ain’t no big thing.

Mainly, you just don’t smoke.

They say he died of cancer.

Growing Up Southern: November 23, 2017

Rupert and Ronnie Austin and I thought we were some pretty fine fellows, almost grown after all. Rupert was nearly 13, I was 12, and Ronnie 11. Younger brother Larry, now Mayor of Mansfield, Arkansas wasn’t old enough to go on manly-type adventures. So the three of us set out, a small band, but as unstoppable as an entire division of well-armed troops.

The Austin boys lived near my grandmother in Cleveland County, Arkansas, in a place called the “Pleasant Ridge Community,” pleasant enough as I remember, but boasting no ridge of which I am aware. I visited there often, mostly in the summer months.

They lived about a mile and a half from what was then known as “The New Warren Road,” that connected Pine Bluff and Warren, Arkansas. The community was large enough, and the road heavily traveled enough, to boast a grand grocery store owned by a man named Barnes. It figures in this adventure.

My grandmother caused it all by telling us how her brothers had taught her how to smoke grapevines when they were kids. Of course, we had outgrown grapevines by then. Besides, if you got one that was too hollow, they tended to burn your tongue. We were practically grown men, and had that strength of purpose born of the certain knowledge Southern boys possess that anything they think of should be put into action without delay, particularly potential endeavors tinged with a slight salting of sin.

“How much do you reckon they cost?”

“A quarter I think.”

“Lucky Strike or Camels?”

“I ‘spect they’s all the same.”

“No, I meant what kind do we want?”

“Daddy smokes Camels. We could say they are for Daddy.”

“Our daddy’s dead.”

“Hell, I know that. Tell you what, Boogie Shannon told me if you looked in a certain spot, you could see a nekkid woman on a pack of Camels. In the hump, I reckon.”

“I’ve looked and I never.”

“Well, we might try again.”

“All right then. Let’s say Camels. They’s just this one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve only got a dime, and that’s my ‘picture-show’ money.”

“All right then, we won’t do it.”

“I never said that. I just meant I hate to take a chance on something I never done before and spend my picture-show money at the same time.”

“Well,” I’m fixna spend money I was saving to buy a twenty-two.”

“If we ever get a television, I’m gonna buy me one of them Winky Dink kits.”

“Shut up. That’s kid stuff. Ya’ll in or out?”

“In.”

“In.”

There’s a time in the southern summer when heat settles upon a stifled world that becomes almost oily from the weight. Adults and other sane members of society avoid direct exposure to such an indignity. Thus, unsupervised and unfettered young boys use it as the time of their greatest and most nefarious adventures. A mile and half walk down a graveled country road is but a pleasant jaunt. If the walk is ennobled with the promise of a glorious moment of sin at its termination, so much the better. Lying to a kindly old man named Barnes is simply practice for adulthood.

Walking back may lack the original luster, at times anyway.

“Were you pukin’ back ‘air?”

“No, I was, uh, spittin’ out a bug that flew in my mouth.”

“Sounded to me like you was a’pukin,”

“Do they really like to do this?”

“Who?”

“Men.”

“Hell yeah I reckon. You never seen John Wayne pukin’ from one have you?”

“Not yet. Do you like it?”

“It’s okay. I don’t think I’d walk a mile and a half ever day for one.”

“Anybody want the rest of mine?”

“No, you can have it all.”

“How many’s left in there?”

“All we started with but three.”

“What we gonna do with the rest?”

“You keep them.”

“I don’t want ‘em.”

“Maybe we can trade them to Luther Wayne Rodgers for something.”

"I don't 'spect we will. He still remembers them glasses you sold him that was supposed to let you see through a girl's dress."

“I don't know about these thangs. They must use different ones in the movies. They couldn’t be this kind.”

“Probly. Oh Christ, Ronnie, go over to the ditch to do that.”

“I think I’ll just stick to grapevines from now on. I like picture-shows a lot better.”

“Yeah. Ya’ll ‘scuse me just a minute.”

We shall leave these nearly grown men now with this thought: the road to manhood is a rocky one and one filled with surprises emanating from adventures seemingly chosen at random. Some are pleasant friends. Some are harsh teachers. All offer a gift of the pedagogical if we pay attention.