Uncle Archie was never really ready for work until he had a Kent fired up and stuck in the corner of his mouth. When that one was gone another replaced it. The continuous smoke that streamed from those dangling Kent’s would climb the stubble of beard shadowing his lean sunburned face, curl around his baseball cap, then drift off over the fields – kind of like an incense offering for a fruitful harvest.
Smoking was about the only vice he had. In fact, it was just about the only purely pleasurable activity he allowed himself on a regular basis. The rest of his life revolved around work, relieved only by meals, sleep, and Sunday church service.
He suffered from emphysema toward the end of his life. It hastened his death, and probably was the main cause of his death. I’m sure most folks blamed it on the Kent’s. No doubt they’re right, but all the dust and pollen sucked in over the years played a role in it, too. And even if the cigarettes were the single cause, and he had it all to do over again, I don’t think Uncle Archie would have given them up. A man needs some respite from the virtue of plodding practicality – even if it eventually kills him.
I understand why he smoked, but I’ve always been a little mystified about why he chose Kent’s. My Dad smoked Camels, and my other uncles smoked Lucky Strikes, or Chesterfields, or some other typical working man’s brand. Most smokers pick a brand that has an image they can identify with. Oh sure, they’ll claim it’s taste they’re after, but the truth is most cigarettes taste pretty much the same – except for the difference between filtered and unfiltered ones. So why Kent? Kent has a sort of upper middle-class image. The guy who owns the local Massey-Ferguson dealership might smoke Kent’s, and Country Club golfers might smoke Kent’s, but farmers usually don’t.
Maybe it’s a clue to something about Uncle Archie’s psyche that has remained private. Almost everyone I have ever gotten to know well has revealed sides to themselves that couldn’t be guessed at. I spent a lot of time on Uncle Archie’s farm, but I can’t say that I know much about him. I’m sorry for that. I wish I could go back to those earlier days and interview him – and many of my other relatives as well. That being impossible, I write about them, and
I wonder.
Why Kent’s?
I bought a pack to see what I could discover.
Nice design, simple and balanced. But I doubted the design had any great impact on his choice. Uncle Archie had never shown much interest in aesthetics. I lit one. It was pretty good. It actually had a flavor. Flavor was something I had previously been unable to detect in filter cigarettes. Could it be as simple as taste? I guess it could. If you plan on smoking a lot I suppose it makes sense to smoke a filtered brand, especially if you’ve found one that tastes good. I hadn’t given this possibility the consideration I should have because I had dismissed all filter cigarettes as so much hot, unflavored air. I was wrong.
I smoked the rest of the pack, just to be sure.
The Kent’s held up pretty well – smoke after smoke. Based on that, it seems likely Uncle Archie’s choice was simply good sense and no mystery at all. I might even have switched to them myself except that I’ve given up smoking cigarettes.
Now I smoke cigars.
I used to smoke 4 or 5 packs of Camels per day. But I started paring back a bit because I was developing a fairly severe smoker’s cough (of course I denied that my cough had anything to do with smoking). I cut back to 2-3 packs a day, then 2-1. Then I started mixing a few cigars in with the Camels. At first I experimented with the usual drugstore varieties. None had a completely satisfactory taste or aroma, and they had a bitter aftertaste. Still, I liked the fullness of the smoke, so I kept trying different brands.
I happened to mention all this to a friend of mine, Wayne Kipp. He enlightened me.
A drugstore cigar is to a real cigar what naugahyde is to hand-rubbed leather. Typical over-the-counter cigars are wrapped in chemically impregnated paper to keep them burning (as are all cigarettes). This inner wrap is then hidden by an outer wrapping of genuine tobacco leaf to disguise the outrage. Beside that, in many brands paper scrap is used to fill out the meager amount of real tobacco inside. Needless to say, all this has a significant effect on taste and smell. Anyone whose experience with cigars is limited to the drugstore variety is innocent of experience with cigars, altogether.
About 2 weeks after my conversation with Wayne a package from him arrived in the mail. Inside was a brass-latched cedar box filed with 25 neatly arranged, hand-wrapped cigars; each ringed with a bright red band embossed in white with the name, Te-Amo. Engraved with a wood-burner upon the lid of the box was a proclamation that these cigars were made entirely of 100% pure, long filler tobacco grown from the rich soil of Mexico’s San Andres Valley. It was a very pretty gift. Almost too pretty to disturb. Almost, but not quite. I took one out, trimmed the end, carefully applied flame to the tip, and breathed in... an epiphany.
Superlatives danced through my brain. Gentle wisps of aroma curled ‘round my head in soothing benison. The flavor was full, rich, enticing – wonderful.
This was a smoke.
Thanks to Wayne’s thoughtful gift a new world opened up for me. I’ve learned a lot about cigars since then.
Cigars are made in a wide assortment of shapes, sizes and types of tobacco. Some of these varieties are given names like Corona, Churchill, Lonsdale, Robusto, and so on.
These names are vaguely useful, but since there is no agreed upon rule for these classifications, length and ring size provide more reliable description. Length is given in inches, ring size in 64th’s of an inch. 50 ring size is slightly larger than a nickel, 38 ring size is slightly smaller than a dime.
Cigars are composed of 3 distinct parts: filler, binder and wrapper. The filler can be short-cut pieces of leaf jammed together, or longer pieces that run the length of the cigar. Long-filler is better. The binder in good cigars is a half leaf of tobacco that is wrapped around the filler. In lesser cigars the binder is a paper-like sheet made of compressed pieces-parts of scrap leaf. The traditional half-leaf binder is better. The wrapper is the final touch of grace. It is the source of much of the aroma and flavor. Some cheap cigars try to cover their sins with a respectable wrapper – though the truth will out in the smoking. A good wrapper is important but it’s not everything.
Wrappers come in several colors: Candela (light green); Natural, or if grown in Africa – Cameroon (light to medium brown); English Market System, EMS, for short (a darker brown); and Maduro (very dark brown, sometimes almost black). The lighter colored wrappers tend to be lighter in flavor; the darker colors tend to be richer in flavor – although there are numerous exceptions. There is also something called Connecticut Shade wrapper that is generally recognized as the best leaf for a light-bodied smoke. It seems to me to be a variety of Natural wrapper. I could be wrong about this. I’m still learning.
I know very little about the different strains of tobacco grown. I have read a bit about Olar, which is a hybrid of Connecticut Valley leaf crossed with Havana Leaf. Cubanito is a descendant of the Havana tobacco that Cuba is so famous for producing. Other than that I have yet to find out.
One thing I discovered recently is the joy of the pocket-sized cigar guillotine. It’s a terrific improvement over the pocketknife I had been using to snip off the tips. It makes a quick, clean cut with no fooling around at all. I suppose it will eventually get dull, but I’ve been using it for a couple of months now and it’s still sharp.
Another thing I’ve discovered is the importance of keeping the tip dry. Tars seem to accumulate more in a wet tip than in a dry one. It may be that wet tobacco enhances a capillary action that draws the tar downward. All I know is that a dry cigar can be smoked down to less than an inch without any bitterness, and a wet one can’t.
There are an amazing number of cigar brands and it’s always fun to sample a new one. There is only one well-stocked smoke shop within easy driving distance of me, but one is enough. In the course of my visits there I have sampled many fine cigars: Macanudo, Don Lino, Tresado, La Aurora, Don Jose, Don Tomas, Onyx, Olar, Bering, H. Upmann, Punch, Partagas, Kingstown, and many more. I usually get only one per visit because the prices can be very steep. Most are in the $2.50 to $6.50 range but some are priced as high as $12. apiece, or more. There are a lot of great cigars around but since I like to smoke 3 or 4 per day, I can’t afford to smoke any of these brands regularly. However, I’ve done a little detective work and I have located an acceptable alternative: bundles of “seconds”.
Hand-wrapping is a process that doesn’t always produce a perfect cigar. People paying many dollars apiece for their cigars find less-than perfect cigars unacceptable. Manufacturers turn these rejects to a profit by honestly treating them as “secundos”, bundling them in a plain cellophane wrapper, usually in group of 12-25 units, and selling them at a much reduced price. I find that very acceptable – especially the price.
And I’ve found a convenient source.
The guy who manages the local Discount Drugmart must be a cigar smoker because down at the far end of the cigar shelves – away from the ersatz cigars that comprise the regular drugstore brands – are 3 or 4 “brands” of bundles. I say “brands” but really these cigars carry no brand name. In place of a label they have seals that identify them as a product of Jamaica, or Honduras, or whatever. The Jamaican’s seemed to be always in stock, the others come and go. I usually get the Jamaican’s.
Every now and then I find bundles at other drugstores, too. They’re almost always tucked away at the far end of the shelves. I think most shoppers don’t know what they are, and most stockers don’t know what to do with them. Too bad. If more people knew what a bargain these bundles are, they would probably be available in more places. On the other hand, maybe the marketing managers of the big drugstore brands exert pressure to keep the bundles off the shelf. In any case they’re the ones to look for if you want to save some money and still get a good smoke.
Some drugstores do carry a few brands of serious cigars. Every now and then I see boxes of Macanudos and Partagas. Cuesta Rey’s in 3-packs are often placed on the same shelf as the fake cigars. Doubt about which brand is a real cigar and which isn’t can be solved by looking for 2 lines of very tiny type on the side of the box: “These cigars are predominantly natural tobacco with non-tobacco ingredients added”. I suppose this is a federally mandated disclaimer. As a rule I don’t have much use for federally mandated anything, but every rule has it’s exceptions. This is a good one. I take it as a warning label. When spotted, put the package back on the shelf and move on.
Real cigars aren’t predominantly tobacco; they’re 100% tobacco. And that’s what makes them so different from drugstore cigars – and cigarettes as well. Certain qualities of pure tobacco surprised me. A few months after smoking cigars, only – my “smokers” cough disappeared. I think it was the chemicals in the cigarette paper that caused my cough. Pure tobacco doesn’t seem to aggravate my lungs. Part of it may be that less smoke is produced by cigars, and less smoke is inhaled. Cigars go out when you don’t puff on them, cigarettes don’t. One small drawback to this is that I go through a lot more Bic lighters than I used to.
I don’t mind. It’s a small change investment for a big benefit: better breathing, and a much better smoke.
I wonder if Uncle Archie would have switched to cigars had he known about them.
Would he have avoided emphysema by smoking cigars instead of Kent’s? Maybe. Certainly, cigars would have done him less harm than the cigarettes did.
I think Uncle Archie would have liked cigars, though maybe not the ones I favor. I like the big Churchills. Uncle Archie would probably have leaned toward a slender, smaller cigar.
It’s easy to imagine him up on his tractor with a fine Dominican Palma stuck in one corner of his mouth... with just the trace of a smile out of the other side...savoring the sweet smoke that would linger in lazy wisps around his head until it curled gently away up into a big, blue North Missouri sky.
Kind of like an incense offering.
