In a smoke-filled world, three friends in their 90s are happy to have quit the habit

It was about 1944 when our little gang started lurking on the sandstone front porch of Cochran’s Grocery in west Tulsa, grabbing up cigarette butts discarded by store patrons. We pinched off the burned ends, split the cigarettes down one side and dumped the unsmoked tobacco into a cigar box.

We would then venture into Cochran’s combined grocery-residence and, from friendly old Mrs. Cochran, we would buy a nickel pack of papers. Then we rolled ourselves two or three fat handfuls of smokes.

Eighty years ago during my childhood, we addicted Americans loved smoking. We kids went through plain raw cigarette butts — just relighted — which we scavenged outside Cochran’s, plus wild grape canes and cornsilk smoked in a pipe — rotten tasting but so cool looking.

All choked up in seventh grade, I quit and never smoked again. In a way, I had no more skin in that game — except for the skin of good friends and family members.

My father was most important of those. August was a janitor in his young life, and later, he rose to the boss. He smoked, regretting the practice often involved use of cuspidors, also known as spittoons. Emptying spittoons of tobacco residue was one more nasty job for my dad.

Smoking is a cause of 480,000 deaths in the United States each year. The great good news is that since 1965, our population of smokers has declined by more than 70%, from 42.4 % of Americans to 11.5% in 2021.

I believe this saved the lives of two great friends: J. Harry Jones, a fellow Kansas City Star retiree still active at age 93 in a Chicago retirement home, and Nat Cassingham, 96, an exercise class pal who led me and my lady, Pat, back to the delights of ballroom dancing.

So Nat’s survival (and thus ballroom dancing) proved a life saver for me as well.

By age 56, Harry was smoking two packs a day, and desperate to quit. The late Sen. Jesse Helms, of South Carolina, was the most formidable tobacco champion in Congress. With a letter to the editor in The Star, Harry started a new corresponding group to shame him.

“I wanted to embarrass myself, commit myself publicly so I wouldn’t start smoking again.”

His strategy worked. Thirty-seven years later, he’s tobacco free, and back writing a political column to friends.

It stars a fictitious Kansas Republican. So far, in nearly 100 episodes, U.S. Sen. Ida Shirley Dubetter has dueled with an angry President Donald Trump. Dubetter’s only regret?

“That in these critical times, I am so fictional.”

Cassingham, a retired printing company operator who just celebrated his 96th birthday, was 13 when he first differed with his mother about cigarettes.

“Roy Rogers does not smoke!” she told him.

“So what if he doesn’t?” Nat thought (but didn’t say out loud). “Humphrey Bogart sure smokes.”

The state and federal governments fostered his addiction. As a member of the Missouri National Guard, he was called up as a young man to help deal with the 1951 flood on the Kansas River. Officers passed out free packs of cigarettes to the troops, as the military did for troops during World War II. After 30 years of smoking, he was up to more than a pack per day.

“I smelled bad and was an addict,” he said. “I ate a barrel of hard candy, anything to fill my mouth.”

Then, at last, he stopped. After his first wife died, Nat met June in a grief recovery group. Ballroom dancing warmed them to one another. Sixteen years ago, they married. Three years ago, they introduced me as a widower to Pat, now my new soulmate and housemate.

When I opened this column with a mention of the grocery, just to be cute I was tempted to call the star of that scene, “Old Lady Cochran.” Then I recalled an episode later related to me by my mother.

Having discovered he would soon die of colon cancer, my dad tried teaching my mother to drive so she could manage after he was gone. They were squealing around a corner as she slid down in the seat, her foot jamming hard on the accelerator. Drive wheels racing, the car lurched forward, leapt over the grocery residence steps and crashed through the sandstone front wall. My uninjured but stunned mother peered into the anxious faces of Mr. and Mrs. Cochran, seated on the sofa.

They all sat there a couple of minutes before Mrs. Cochran at last spoke up again.

“Coffee!” she said. “I got the pot on. We can all use a cup of coffee.” That’s why the grocery lady did not come out in this column as, “Old Lady Cochran.”

My mother never did learn to drive. The Cochran house got fixed.

My dad did not get fixed. A year later, partly thanks to his 50 years of smoking, he died of cancer, unlike me and my friends Harry and Nat. We all topped in time and still today live on in our world.

Contact the columnist at hammerc12@gmail.com.