Smokies from the ex-smoker

I was scrapbooking while the TV was on tonight, and I heard the distinctive sound of a Zippo lighter. Click, zzzzzzzzzz, phphphph, cuh-click!

It was Marlee Matlin in "Children of a Lesser God." I looked up and watched her exhale a cloud of smoke. And I was, of course, mesmerized. Smoking is pretty, darn it. It's so photogenic. No wonder it's still going on in the world today.

Someday I should photograph my Zippo collection. I love Zippo lighters. I have good stories about all of them.

My mother met my father during World War II. (I was a late surprise for my parents -- I really am not as old as most WWII couples' children are.) Anyway, Mama met Daddy at Maison Blanche in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Daddy was a Naval aviator. Mama was a secretary to the head of the candy division at Maison Blanche, who happened to be Daddy's long-lost uncle.

It's almost a scene out of a movie: "Good looking sailor walks into office where typewriters clack and telephones ring as 'Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree' plays on tinny radio. Shy, bookish secretary looks up and is instantly smitten. Sailor asks for long-lost uncle. Uncle proposes a night on the town in the Big Easy. Gorgeous rival secretary is busy. Shy secretary gets to go out on double-date with boss, boss' wife, and handsome sailor, then spends the next two years chasing handsome sailor to the altar."

It didn't take Mama two years. She snagged Daddy with a Zippo lighter. Everyone smoked in World War II, and Daddy was no exception. The thing was, with the rations and the hoarding metal for munitions and planes and such, you couldn't get a Zippo lighter. Daddy was using paper matches to light his cigarettes. Mama noticed this, and when he shipped out, she went to the counter at Maison Blanche -- which was a huge department store back in the day -- and told the girls there to let her know if they got a shipment of Zippos. Sure enough, a few months later when they did get some Zippos, they called Mama in the candy office.

Mama used up ration coupons and some of her hard-earned salary. She bought a Zippo lighter, and she promptly packaged it up and sent it to Daddy with a lighthearted note, "I noticed you didn't have a lighter, so I thought I would send you one. Here you go! Hope to hear from you soon!"

Puh-leeeeeeeeeze, keep in mind -- the entire time all this was going on, Mama was about 18 years old, and she was the only gainfully employed person in her entire family. Her father got occasional work, but he was disabled. Her mother was a real, old-fashioned housewife. Her older sister Sybil had been abandoned by a deadbeat husband, and Sybil didn't work. Sybil had a baby named Rodney. Mama's younger siblings were Dolores, who kept cutting school, and the baby of the family was Buddy, who was precocious and managed to make trouble where none was to be found.

Mama was supporting seven people on her secretarial salary, and she still managed to snag a guy that the Navy kept sending back to college with nothing more than a lighter.

I'm telling you, Zippos are good. Even if cigarettes are not.

The photo above is the Smoky Mountains. I don't know who introduced tobacco to the world, but whoever it was caused a lot of trouble for me and all the other happy smokers. I still don't think of myself as a non-smoker, but maybe I will be someday. In the meantime, I'm keeping my Zippos and my Smoky Mountains. I hope everyone understands. Some things are just too nice to be forgotten simply because they're related to smoking.