First Cars and Cigars

Most of us have fond memories of the "firsts" in our lives. Our first girl friend or boy friend. For guys like myself, we also have fond memories of our first car.

My first car was a 1949 Ford. I do not know where the Benevolent Patriarch got this car-but it was a black 1949 Ford and it was "as old as the hills." And speaking of accessories, it had none.

No air conditioning-nothing but a heater. I do not even recall if the radio worked. But it was a wonderful car. In the Spring, Summer and Fall, you drove with the windows down.

There was nothing complicated about this car. And not too much could go wrong. Everything was pretty simple to work on. You opened up the hood, and behold, it was the wide open spaces.

That '49 Ford got me where I needed to go. It was wonderful to have access to a car and to be able to go see my friends across town. No one seemed to mind that the car was ancient.

Now the Cigar. Cigars are given out, or used to be, as a sign of congratulations when a baby is born. And somehow deep in his subconscious the Benevolent Patriarch (who is often inspired by the North Louisiana Gracious Matriarch) knew that a love of autos had been somehow birthed into the someday HarleyDad.

So, that summer Cigars were in order. It turns out that the Patriarch had been granted several big, black Cubanos from a business acquaintance. The Patriarch, who had that uncanny knack of knowing the right thing to do, and being a Baptist deacon and non-smoker, awarded two of the cigars to his non-smoking eldest son.

One beautiful fall Saturday, HarleyNotthenDad decides to go for a ride in his 49 Ford and takes one of the Cubanos. The window is open, the cigar is lit, and the ride begins.

Now those Cubanos were very strong. By the time the cigar is two-thirds gone, HarleyNotthenDad, feels somewhat light headed. I was driving down one of those wide New Orleans Boulevards going out to Lake Ponchatrain. I pull over and step out and fall flat on my face--dead drunk from a Cuban Cigar in New Orleans.

Later in life, I would smoke pipes and cigars and never had a reaction like this.

I was dead drunk in my first car, and never having taken a single drink. It took a while to let the effects wear off and continued on merry way. The remaining one third of the first Cubanos was tossed into the trash can, and the other Cubanos was given away. I was through with smoking for a while.

While writing this, I can not help but remember my funniest cigar story. I was a young corporate attorney in Houston, Texas having graduated from Big T Law School of Hard Knocks and Legal Chicanery. The inhouse group of attorneys all were ex-labor attorneys and all smoked cigars. All had been labor negotiators and believed that cigar smoke and smoke filled rooms were hard on the union negotiators.

Back then smoking in the office and elsewhere was permitted and no one thought anything about it. One of the attorneys I reported to was "Big Ed." Now Big Ed was a dapper international attorney who liked to pontificate, perhaps because he was an outstanding and experienced attorney. I was the new "kid on the block." The Group had fired the last new kid who had been a Harvard law school graduate.

At any rate, Big Ed was smoking one of his customary large cigars. He called me in and begin to pontificate. After about 15 minutes, this polished and sophisticated attorney puts his cigar in his mouth. However he was so entranced with his points, that he does not notice that he picked up the cigar and put the lit end in his mouth.

All of a sudden the cigar goes flying in one direction and dust and ashes in another. Physics does work. You do not have to realize that you have put the hot end in your mouth in order for it to have an effect. (Philosophically, this proves that there still is a sound if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there.) Well immediately the pontificating ceased. It was one of the funniest things that I ever saw. And I almost "bust a gut" trying not to laugh and hoped to salvage my legal career having witnessed one of the most hilarious scenes of my legal career.

HarleyDad