The Old Glory Society is a gentlemen’s cigar club that exists, not only in the physical world, but in your mind. In the Society’s formative years, I served as lead propagandist and I still write words about cigars and the groovy, historic vibe that surrounds them under the Society’s sacred banner.

Cigar Salutations From The Old Glory Society

I was at the carwash, I had an unlit cigar between my teeth, something I call a chewer (a cigar to be chewed on for an afternoon and then tossed, as the act of chewing makes it unsmokable). There was a young boy there, maybe three years old, with his mom and they were facing in opposite directions with the little dude facing me and my cigar. He stared at me with a blend of curiosity and terror. He had no reference point in his little mind for what I had in my mouth and as he gaped at me he started unconsciously backpedaling toward his mom. At the point when he backed into her she turned and looked at me and immediately clutched the boy close, spun him around as if to avert his eyes and headed off in the opposite direction.

Like most men of my generation, I probably had my first cigar in high school and I started smoking cigars in earnest when I was in my late twenties, say around 1988. In the almost thirty years since, I rolled with a chewer nearly every day, so I’d been gawked at by little crumb crunchers hundreds of times, but on this occasion at the carwash this kid, though partially gawking at the unknown, seemed scared. Now maybe he was just the timid type, maybe the lady he clung to was a single mom and we know they tend to raise weenies, still, it struck me that day that the cigar smoker—anyone with habit or passion on society’s fringe really—is essentially a pariah.

It can only get worse. For this little three year who was just stunned by the unfamiliar, it’s harmless enough, but in a year or two, when he’s old enough to ask, What’s that mommy?, he’ll be properly brainwashed using a script from the politically correct handbook. He’ll be told that smoking anything is dirty and evil, that smoking will kill you (probably this afternoon), that cigars are just like drugs, rolled up heroin actually and that if the smoke from that cigar touches you, you’ll be immediately struck down with cancer. As a result, any man smoking a cigar is the devil, the leaf-burning equivalent to a drug dealer, as evil as the child molester offering little girls candy. Dozens and dozens of times I’ve encountered grammar school kids with their parents when I’ve had a cigar in my mouth. They stare too but they’ve been warned about staring so they do in out of the corner of their eyes. They almost always start whispering to the adult…They’re telling on me, turning me in as it were, Uh-oh mom, that man’s smoking (it’s not lit). You can tell, you can absolutely tell, that they’ve been told that cigar smokers are bad. Well, we are bad, society says so.

Political correctness strips broad segments of society of their civil liberties. California is about to make smoking anything anywhere—the beach, the park, the back alley—illegal, and when that happens, I’ll be breaking that law. I know people who are absolutely militant about coming into contact with any form of tobacco smoke and I’ve also met many, many people who say they love the smell of a cigar. I’ve had strange women want to be very, very close to me, moved almost to tears, because the smell of my cigar reminded them of their dad or grandpa. I’ve never ever been okay with my cigar experience invading someone else’s personal space; when in the very rare instance I get asked to move or lose the cigar entirely I do so willingly. But I’ll never surrender my individual rights, I’ll not be bullied and I won’t cave to the hysterical masses, because today it might be cigars, but tomorrow maybe the bulls eye lands on Catholics or bacon eaters or facial hair. It won’t end.

We should all be clear, society thinks cigar smokers are the devil. Don’t blink. Don’t underestimate the power of the irrational mind. I believe it’s a hobby, a passion just like stamp collecting or anything else, and I believe cigar smoking to be a wondrous, ancient ritual and the mark of a true gentleman. I smoke to your health.