Tag: memory

When I was a kid there was a huge billboard in downtown Philadelphia with the Marlboro Man on it. You remember him, the rugged everyman who apparently smoked a pack of reds every day before lunch, and he somehow maintained his brilliant physique and eyes that could pierce steel. And out on I-95 there was another billboard dedicated to a caricature of a camel, also smoking a cigarette. In very small print on both signs was a warning from the U.S. Surgeon General saying something about smoking being harmful to your health. I, of course, saw neither one of these signs, but I knew what they looked like because they were everywhere.

We rode the subway to church most Saturdays, and in the underground world of the subway there were huge billboards lined up on both sides of the tracks. It was funny sometimes when a train was on the opposite track and I could see just a partial billboard through the gap in the train cars. When I first saw a Marlboro Man sign I was waiting for the El at 30th Street Station and there were two posters of him flanking a billboard for the film CB4, which also seemed to celebrate smoking as a lifestyle choice. And I wasn’t interested. It had nothing to do with the Surgeon General’s warning, and everything to do with how I was raised, to think my body was the temple of God, and to avoid anything that would ruin that temple.

So, why did I start smoking three years later? Easy. I wanted to fit in. Continue reading “Where There’s Smoke…”