Daily Archives: February 14, 2023

Guess I better let him out…

I’m chuckling to myself. My father smoked a pipe packed with Prince Albert from his late teens until he died at age 80. He even resembled Prince Albert. But I digress. Dad was an actuary and insisted based upon fed gov studies from the late 1960’s that pipe smokers had a higher life expectancy than non-smokers. For the record, the same studies he cited put cigar smokers at even odds and cigarette smokers came in lower. This was all in the aggregate and the differences in life expectancy were all within a few years of each other. But the numbers don’t lie, he’d say. I am not encouraging anyone to take up smoking, so were clear; but I do enjoy sucking smoky goodness into my lungs and breathing it out.

I remember buying a pipe when I was 18. I guess a predilection for tobacco runs in the genes. I proudly showed my dad who proudly took the pipe out of my hand and removed the filter.

“Now you can smoke like a man,” he said.

I just never got the hang of it, though, and I reverted to Marlboros. Here we are 27 years later and I still think I’ll give it another go – despite the fact that stuff is harder to come by than honest journalism in Ferndale. As a kid I could go into the pharmacy and it was right behind the counter. Now you’d think it was fentanyl.

And in case you’re wondering why I mentioned Lent? It’s because I’m also using it to step down off of tobacco for Lent. I’m trying, folks. This time, though, I may leave the filter in.

St. Valentine, pray for us!