Not so lucky strike

On March 24, 1927, nineteen years and six days before I was born, Brown and Williamson company merged with the London-based British American Tobacco company and set a series of events that sparked this blog.  The merger created the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation.  By 1931 all the corporate offices and manufacturing operations were moved to Louisville, Kentucky.

One of the newly created brands of cigarettes was named “Lucky Strike.” Lucky Strike was introduced as chewing tobacco in 1871, but by the early 1900s, it had evolved into a cigarette.  These cigarettes were made in Louisville.

Just across the Ohio River from Louisville is the city of Jeffersonville, Indiana.  Clark County Hospital is located on the northern side of town.  That is my geographical point of insurgence into the pre-hippy, flower child rebellion, officially designated as “Baby Boomers.” I am on the cutting edge of that generation.  The year was 1946.

Finding a cheap acre of farmland on Hamburg Pike north of Jeffersonville, my parents built a house.  Before we moved in, Mr. and “Granny” Smith constructed their home next to ours.  At the back edge of our acre was a fence that separated Mom’s garden from the Gillenwater’s pasture land.

In approximately 1952, Farmer Gillenwater received a truckload of Lucky Strike cigarette rejects to be used as fertilizer for this pasture.  He piled them in his manure spreader and liberally spread them over his field.  That had to be in the evening because Louie, my older and wiser brother, and I discovered the field flush with long white cigarettes like manna from heaven in the morning.  I can still clearly see the wonderful gift. Some of them were all busted up, but others were pristine two-foot-long smokes.

After racing across the road to get Jimmy Shaffer, Louie’s best neighborhood friend, and acquiring a box of matches, we each selected our cigarette and hid behind Granny Smith’s two-seater outhouse to light up.  Our smoking did not last long.  It was awful.  While I was still coughing and gagging and laughing, Granny Smith’s face popped around the corner from one side of the outhouse and Mom’s face from the other side.  The coughing and gaging continued, but the laughter vanished.

The next time I tried to smoke was in the Army.  I was in Alaska and felt safe in that Granny Smith’s and Mom’s appearance was unlikely.  But the smoking experience was just as bad, and the taste was worse the next morning.

Every time I am asked at the doctor’s office, “Have you ever smoked?” I remember my encounter with Lucky Strikes and wonder if I should confess.

Very often in life, I have found that opportunities to indulge in something questionable just seem to fall from nowhere. “What luck!” I say.  But life is better and healthier if I leave luck alone.  My life is good, but it is not because I am lucky.  It is because God has provided for me, and I took His gift of grace.

Photo – Taken at the pond a short distance from our home.