When I was a youngster, I lived in a house with four smokers.
My uncles smoked cigarettes like there was no tomorrow, my mother smoked lightly, and to my grandfather there was nothing “finah than a La Palina.”
Whenever the White Sox games were on the radio, I would join my grandfather to listen to Bob Elson’s play-by-play broadcasts, but by the time the third inning was starting, I had to leave the room because the cigar smoke was too thick for me to breathe well.
He was sorry that I had to leave, but he didn’t stop smoking.
My grandfather was a master of ignoring the bad news about smoking giving a person lung cancer and other lung-related problems. This news never detracted from the pleasure of lighting a stogie. My grandmother and I told him many times about the dangers of smoking and that he should quit, but our words rolled off his back.
Finally, something clicked in his brain regarding the death threat of smoking, so he decided to quit. In those days, there were no stop-smoking groups, no one-to-one counseling, no stop-smoking help line, nor were there any pills to help one quit, so he told the family that the use of his willpower would help him conquer the habit.
My grandmother and the other members of the family didn’t think he would be able to quit because he had been a smoker for 50 years. Well, he devised a plan that he felt would work.
Every time he had the urge, he would chew a stick of gum, knowing that his reward was practically free, taking into account the money he saved not buying cigars. He also knew that the gum would not give him cavities since his teeth were false.
The second part of the plan was a walking regimen. This was not difficult for him to accomplish; because of his job as a civil engineer, walking was his primary mode of inspecting the job sites where his crews worked.
He asked me if I would join him on Saturday and Sunday afternoons walking around Oak Park. I gladly accepted because I knew that with his knowledge of the village, I would get top-flight history lessons, which I did.
Back at our home, no one except me believed that he would cease smoking. They thought he would smoke on the job, but he told the family he was smoke free, and the lack of cigar odor on his clothing convinced them he was on the level.
After six months, family members chipped in and bought him a wrist watch to reward him and to replace the pocket watch given to him by his father when he graduated from engineering school in 1902.
I now gladly joined him to listen to Sox games, feeling comfort in the fact that my breathing would no longer be affected by cigar smoke.