I didn’t take up the habit until I was thirty, and moved into an office at FCT&D where my chief, then in his latter forties, was a smoker. I found the secondhand smoke easier to bear if I applied a protective coat of tar to my own lungs. Twenty years later, and fifteen after I’d moved on from the International Division, he had long since quit and I was smoking two packs of Camel unfiltered each day.

I stubbed out my last ciggie at about mid-day on my fiftieth birthday, reasoning that I’d have to quit someday, and that nicotine withdrawal would be easier to endure on its own rather than coupled with some debilitating respiratory ailment. I recall with some fondness the morning ritual of coffee and smokes, and the resultant thirty-point boost in IQ lasting for hours—excellent work habits through early afternoon!—but apart from that I don’t miss it, and have never been tempted to take it up again. I don’t even like to smoke pot anymore, and generally decline that form when it is offered me.

cardially,

I mean, I was certainly feeling something. Whether my interpretation was correct, I can’t say at this remove, only that I would analyze complex contracts, invoices, mill sheets, bills of lading, customs documents, et cetera with noticeably greater speed and efficiency before lunch. Of course, the fact that my lunchtime routine in those days was similar to the morning intake except with scotch swapped in for coffee might have had something to do with it.

(strange to think that thirty-five years ago I was, for professional reasons, pretty conversant with the steel industry and the international trade appertaining thereunto, and have now forgotten virtually everything about it—and much of that specialized knowledge, particularly with respect to the trade part, is superannuated in any event)

cordially,