My apology last week came about as a result of my habit of not checking facts. The key word is “habit”, which leads me into my topic today.

The habit that comes to mind is that of smoking cigarettes. Wally smoked when he arrived in Oliver during the 1930’s. He told me he didn’t inhale, but then every spring he suffered from a cold. His smoking ended when his carelessness started a fire in the orchard’s long dry grass and he lost some trees due to the fire. He quit cold turkey that day. His only reflection of the past was his disdain for the the habit.

I, on the other hand, heard so much of the negative of smoking that I became immune to it’s dangers.

My first introduction to cigarettes was through a neighbor named Beverly Tasker. Both her parents smoked so getting cigarettes was easy. My first puff made me dizzy and I coughed a lot. I asked her how she smoked the stuff? Her answer was to french inhale. I was hooked.

When I started buying my own cigarettes, they cost .45 a pack. Of course gasoline was only .25 per imperial gallon too. That was the year of 1965. I remember pulling up to the gas pump with my Honda 90cc motor bike and getting .10 worth of gas, which was about a quart and a half. The attendant looked at me incredulously and I said, ” all I have is a dime, my tank is empty and I have to get home!”

In 1973, when cigarettes cost an enormous .90 a pack, I quit. I weaned myself of the smoking habit by smoking the leaves of other plants. Those leaves stunk worse than the tobacco but they did the weaning job.

From 1965 to now, 2014, if I had continued to smoke I would have spent over $100,000.00, that is a good down payment on a house or a nice lottery win.

I know though, that all it would take is one puff on a cigarette and I’d be back to the old habit as if I had never quit.