THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 27, 1995 TAG: 9508230044
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: HE SAID, SHE SAID
SOURCE: KERRY DOUGHERTY & DAVE ADDIS
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
KERRY SAYS:
When I was a child I had an uncle who traveled in a cloud of cigar smoke.
You know the type, Dave, a short fat guy alternately chewing and sucking deeply on a big fat old stogie. He also kept a pistol in his sock and crooned ``Baby needs a new pair of shoes,'' when he shot dice - but what did you expect from a certified cigar chomper?
You couldn't get the aroma of this uncle out of the house for days after Christmas. A drive in his car required that the windows be rolled down on the most bitter cold day. And an embrace from this lovable smoky uncle required a deep breath inhaled at a distance of three feet, followed by a quick trip to an open window.
What am I getting at here? Cigars. They're back. Just as cigarette smoking has almost totally fallen into disrepute, here come baby boomers lighting up something even more foul - stogies.
Earlier this month we went on our annual camping trip to the mountains of West Virginia. Crystal blue skies, cool mountain breezes. Almost heaven. Until the sun went down, that is, and the men began ceremoniously sniffing, licking and clipping cigars.
``They keep the mosquitoes away,'' Steve said sheepishly as the children demanded to know what their vehemently anti-smoking dad was doing with a cigar in his mouth.
All the guys were smokin' em.
Then last weekend we were at a party in a fashionable part of town. Hundreds of people were sipping cocktails and sampling the catered food when I got a whiff.
Yup, the yuppies were lighting up on the deck.
A couple of weeks ago the president created a minor stir when he was spotted with a big fat cigar in his mouth.
Madonna smokes them. So does David Letterman.
Somehow cigars have become the status symbol cigarettes were in the 1940s, when no glamorous actress would appear on screen without one.
Smell aside, there are elements to this craze that I don't like: the cost - these babies will run ya $4 and up - and the artificiality.
Back in the old days, men and women donned evening wear when they went to dinner parties. After the meal (brought to the table by servants, natch) the women retired somewhere while the men went into the library to light up their cigars and sip brandy.
Now what we have are just a lot of yuppies with more money than brains, trying to be somebody they're not.
Steve says it's no worse than trendy bottled water, vintage wines and gourmet coffee beans.
But to me, cigars don't conjure up power and wealth. They mean short fat guys with guns in their socks.
DAVE SAYS:
You've caught me with my Macanudos down on this one, Kerry. I don't have a point of view on cigars.
If yuppies want to smoke them, that's fine. Anything that concurrently kills mosquitoes and keeps yuppies out of view is OK by me, even if just hides them for a while in a veil of stanky blue smoke.
I have problems enough already. I still smoke cigarettes. I hate cigarettes, but I still smoke them. Which, in the Great Smoking Wars, makes me sort of the Knight Errant of Ambivalence.
In restaurants, I sit ``non-smoking,'' even if I'm alone. People paying that kind of money for a night on the town shouldn't have to smell anything they didn't order. Especially eau d'ashtres.
On international flights, I sit ``non-smoking.'' After 10 hours in the air, the smokers' section of a jetliner looks and smells something like the bilge of an Etruscan slave ship.
But still, you'll find me in the alley out back of the newspaper a couple of times a day, huddled with the other outcasts, which would seem to answer the question of whether cigarettes are addictive.
So I'm not going to toss any moral judgments around if rising execs or hip gen-Xers want to light up an occasional $4 smoke. Everybody needs a little rebellion in their lives. If the starched-shirt set feels that a good Saturday night cigar is a reward for a hard week's work, who's to argue? If the young believe it's chic, would they listen if somebody older told them otherwise? Not likely.
It's really hard to define a fad whose initiates run the loop from Dave Letterman to Madonna, from Bill Clinton to Rush Limbaugh. The only thing those people have in common is fame and more money than they can burn, even at $4 a pop.
Cigar fans, though, might keep one little fact in mind: The most famous cigarista of our lifetime, Fidel Castro, gave them up a couple of years back on order of his doctors.
What can be said of adopting a habit that proved too raunchy even for a tinpot socialist Caribbean dictator? MEMO: Kerry Dougherty can be reached at 446-2302, and via e-mail at
kerryd(at)infi.net. Dave Addis can be reached at 446-2588, and
addis(at)infi.net. by CNB