When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, cigarettes were the thing to smoke. Pipes and cigars were old fashioned. Only old men like Groucho Marx and my grandfather puffed on big, fat stogies. My grandmother hated Grandpop's smoking. She complained that her sheer, white curtains contained so much smokey residue that they turned the wash water yellow. She tried to ration Grandpop's Dutch Masters or El Producto consumption by purchasing one small package containing five cigars when she did her weekly shopping. Rather than sneak out to buy more smokes, Grandpop poked a tooth pick into the butt end of his cigar so he could puff it longer.
I thought cigars were stinky, but I liked watching my grandfather cut off the tip of his corona and go through the lighting and puffing ceremony. I was even oddly fascinated with the slimy end left stuck on the toothpick. I turned against cigars the day I went to school after spending the night with my grandparents. A classmate, a new enrollee from a state south of the Mason-Dixon Line, loudly exclaimed, "You smell like see-gars." I was ten or eleven at the time, and I wanted to smell like my mother's Coty perfume.
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| This early 1930s photo shows my uncle pretending to smoke one of my grandfather's stogies. Fortunately, my uncle's attraction to cigars didn't carry over into adulthood. |
Every now and then Grandpop got a whole cardboard box of cigars, probably as a Christmas gift. We grandkids received the empty boxes. They were great for storing trinkets, and they lasted a lot longer than the paper rings we sported on our fingers.
I don't remember any wooden cigar boxes. Wooden boxes had a much higher purpose than holding marbles or jacks - they could be turned into musical instruments. Check out this informative video:
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