{"id":906,"date":"2022-01-03T13:17:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-03T22:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/?p=906"},"modified":"2022-01-03T14:08:56","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T23:08:56","slug":"ill-thank-you-for-not-smoking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/?p=906","title":{"rendered":"A brief (personal) history of smoking"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My father often spoke of his growing-up adventures with his younger cousin Jim, and one such adventure that comes to mind today is his experience hiding out behind a shed and smoking uncured rabbit tobacco out of a corn cob pipe. Although many people apparently smoke, chew, and make tea from rabbit tobacco, and swear by it, in its green state it made my twelve-year-old father ferociously ill. But that could be considered a good thing, because the experience must be part of the reason that he grew up to be a non-smoker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I tried smoking at about age fourteen, and one time I came home from school with a single cigarette inside my notebook, which then fell on the floor of the truck, where my father later found it. \u201cHmmmm,\u201d he said, shaking his head dramatically. \u201cA cigarette on the floor of my truck! How strange. I wonder where it came from. . .\u201d I did my level best to look as puzzled as he appeared to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The few times I smoked a cigarette I experienced something not unlike the rabbit tobacco debacle of that earlier generation. I recall leaving biology class in the ninth grade, smoking about a third of a cigarette in the bathroom, and coming back to class to lay my reeking, sick-and-dizzy head on my desk. Why, you may ask, did I do this? Well, consider that time I wandered into the same bathroom to find some other girls preparing to smoke. They were making motions to hide their supplies, when one, who had been privy to my extra-curricular activities in biology class, piped up, \u201cIt\u2019s ok. She\u2019s cool.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a teacher, I spent four years in a classroom that had a vent directly to the outside of the building. This vent came out in a sheltered spot that was not often visited by faculty; therefore, kids would sneak out there to smoke. They didn\u2019t know, however, that as soon as they lit up, I would smell it, and send a message to the office: \u201cYou\u2019ve got another one.\u201d The principal would wander out there casually, as if he had some other errand, so that the guilty parties never caught on as to why they were getting busted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why smoke? I remember when cigarette advertisements disappeared from television, and when Joe Camel was forced into early retirement. I know about the warning that tobacco companies must place on their packages. I have witnessed the price of a pack of cigarettes increase from forty-eight cents to something like ten dollars, probably much more by now. A fourteen-year-old may feel cool smoking in front of a bunch of other fourteen-year-olds, but the feeling won&#8217;t last, and will perhaps be replaced by such things as addiction and illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There but for fortune, and a fierce allergy to tobacco smoke, may have gone I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"794\" height=\"774\" src=\"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/rabbit-tobacco.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-907\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/rabbit-tobacco.png 794w, https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/rabbit-tobacco-300x292.png 300w, https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/rabbit-tobacco-768x749.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 794px) 100vw, 794px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For your further edification:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some information about rabbit tobacco:&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/thesouthernherbalist.com\/articles\/rabbit_tobacco.html\">Darryl Patton: The Southern Herbalist<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bing.com\/videos\/search?q=joan+baez+there+but+for+fortune&amp;view=detail&amp;mid=E7DD468E3D678936E20BE7DD468E3D678936E20B&amp;FORM=VIRE0&amp;ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3djoan%2bbaez%2bthere%2bbut%2bfor%2bfortune%26cvid%3d0e04a9ab73f64d66b7902f942a4c01de%26aqs%3dedge.0.69i59j0l4j69i64j69i61j69i60l2.7254j0j1%26pglt%3d163%26FORM%3dANSPA1%26PC%3dU531\">Joan Baez &#8211; There But For Fortune &#8211; Bing video<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My father often spoke of his growing-up adventures with his younger cousin Jim, and one such adventure that comes to mind today is his experience hiding out behind a shed and smoking uncured rabbit tobacco out of a corn cob pipe. Although many people apparently smoke, chew, and make tea from rabbit tobacco, and swear [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[392,391,390],"class_list":["post-906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-in-powhatan-virginia","tag-joan-baez","tag-rabbit-tobacco","tag-smoking"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":909,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions\/909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}