Burning Memories

 tExcept for the occasional dialog that doesn't sound like something we would have said in the 1960's, Mad Men has it down cold. It is the AMC series of three martini lunches, avarice, adultery,  and ass kissing in the advertising business during the age of the "New Frontier" and hula hoops.  The producers have done their homework.  The clothing, furniture, cars, and kids all look letter perfect to those of us who were around for the early years of an America that knew no bounds.

The most striking visual, at least to me, is the smoking.  We smoked EVERYWHERE and nearly all the time back then.  Planes, restaurants, offices, cars, home, no place was "smoke free".  It seemed as if everybody smoked because, in fact, they pretty much DID.  My dad smoked; mom didn't.  I can't recall a single friend whose dad was a non smoker, though I'm sure that one or two probably were.  Maybe half of the moms were inclined to fire up a Chesterfield, though they never seemed to smoke as much as the guys.

From the time most of us boomers were able to walk and talk we, okay mostly the guys, couldn't wait until we were old enough to buy a pack of butts and join the big boys' club.  We bought candy cigarettes and played with our pencils in school as if they were smokes and, when we had the chance, stole a stick or two from the old man's pack and lit up in the woods.  Camels were purloined by me and the Chamberlain boys next door because, well...that was the brand our dads bought.  I still remember Bob Chamberlain being sent home from Boy Scout camp because he got caught hiding a pack of Camels in his canteen.  (The idea was pure genius until the scoutmaster borrowed the canteen and filled it with water.  I don't know if he was mad at Bob for swiping something from his dad or if he was pissed because the cigs were so soaked he couldn't light them.)

Being teens in the 1960's most boomers began to smoke.  Hell, we had practiced for years and that stuff about smoking causing cancer and other bad junk was all new from the AMA and was probably wrong anyway.  Right?   I smoked.  My friends smoked.  In college they even had ash trays in the classroom!  (The best place to buy smokes at odd hours during college was in the basement of the University medical school where there was always a machine.  Nobody smoked more than doctors.)  Cigarettes were something fun to do that made you look more mature and besides, we were all going to live forever.  

I quit smoking years ago, as did most of my friends.  These days I hardly know anyone who smokes.  No smoking rules have made it nearly impossible to be a smoker.  You can't smoke on planes or at work; you most likely can't light up at home and woe be unto you if you reach for a cigarette in a restaurant.  It's hard work to be a smoker in 2010.  But here's the funny thing:  I would go back to it in a minute if it were safe and inoffensive.  Smoking was something to do with your hands in social situations.  It was a relaxing ritual and, let's face it, most people look kind of cool doing it.  It doesn't come to me in dreams to lure me to an early grave like booze does, but I think about it just the same.

The last time I bought cigarettes on a regular basis they cost about eighty cents a pack.  In the early 60's of Mad Men they went for around thirty or forty cents.  

Two weeks ago in New York, out of pure curiosity, I checked on the price of a pack of Marlboro's at a bodega on the Lower East Side.

$10.58  for ONE PACK!

No wonder 2010 doesn't look like 1964.

Party on Don Draper.

E