Tobacco and My Daddy

To this day I love the smell of a good pipe tobacco.  Sometimes I'll go in a tobacco shop just to breathe that smell.  It reminds me of my Daddy.

Daddy was a smoker.  No.  Smoker is really not a strong enough word.  Daddy was a chain smoker.  He would light his next cigarette off the one he just finished and continue smoking all day long.  I never really liked the cigarette smell, but later in Daddy's life, when he was just a little younger than I am now and dying from heart and lung disease, he tried (unsuccessfully) to stop smoking cigarettes.  This is when he started smoking his pipe more often. 

Pipe smoke has a totally different aroma from cigarette smoke.  I just love that smell.

I remember sitting on Daddy's lap at night and watching Gunsmoke or Paladin (Have Gun - Will Travel) or Rawhide or some other such show he enjoyed.  I'd lay my head back on his shoulder and breathe in that tobacco smell. Those times are one of the few times I can remember being content as a child.  I loved my Daddy so very much.

Daddy always wore button-up shirts, and although he worked with his hands repairing televisions and radios all day long, Daddy's hands were always clean.  His shoes were always shined and his pants' creases were always crisp.  Every hair in place.  He even cleaned his glasses.  How he managed to maintain such a filthy habit as smoking is beyond me, but I expect he had a genetic predisposition towards the nicotine, since almost my entire family uses tobacco in one form or another. 

Daddy was all about cleanliness.  Even his ash tray always appeared to be clean. 

Daddy used a stand ash tray that had a little button you pushed to make the ashes and cigarette butts fall out of sight.  It was similar to this:

See the little lever? Daddy's ashtray was this same style, but it had a button instead of a lever. It worked the same. If you push the lever or button, there is a little door there that opens and the ashes and butts disappear! 

Daddy kept his ashtray beside the upholstered rocking chair in the den where he loved to sit of an evening.  His pipe would rest on the wide rim waiting for him after his dinner every night.

I'm not sure what reminded me of Daddy and his tobacco today, but it made me smile to remember that smell.  I can't think about it long or the smile turns to horror as the memories of Daddy trying to breathe that spring and summer of 1962 surface.

Let's not think about that today.  Let's remember the rocking chair and Matt Dillon and that lovely pipe tobacco smell.  Let's remember that and be thankful for those memories.  I am truly blessed.