Cigar salutations from the Old Glory Society*
Within hours of moving into a new house, less than a mile away, I discovered a bar owned by an Irish immigrant. In a pretty soft town, it had a hard reputation. Dudes were known to get cracked across the skull with pool cues and drunks would sit shoulder-to-shoulder in this place waiting for the sideways glance or the smug remark that would start the night’s fisticuffs. Still, a man needs a place to go.
I generate large clouds of cigar smoke, curling purplish-gray churning vapor streams, and most people hate me for it. Actually, they probably hate me for other reasons and just blame it on the cigar smoke. They make faces at me, sometimes they give me the finger, they make those dismissive noises that people make when they’re disgusted at aspects of society that infringe upon their breeding and their sense of entitlement. They can handle the litterbug and the panhandler, they’ll look the other way at people who take up two parking spaces or gals who speak in high-pitched voices into their iPhones because their conversations about the PTA need to be shared with the general public, but they’ll seek out the cigar smoker ten blocks away to tell him he’s the main cause of global warming.
The so-called Culebra cigar is the circus freak show of the cigar world. Three cigars impossibly twisted together, one big fat cigar band wrapped around them all and a little red ribbon tying them up at the head and foot. It’s a dumb idea … but if you ever get the chance to smoke one, it would be dumb to pass it up.