We have been homebound. I have a bum hip and My Life’s Editor is recuperating from a dermatological event, common fare for aged athletes and folks posting forty-five years in the Sunshine State. Herself hasn’t been able to play tennis for weeks. She had re-arranged the silverware drawer and checked the use-by labels on pantry items. It was only a matter of time before her eyes fell on me as something requiring organizing. Fortunately, a package needed mailing. She lit out for the downtown post office, and I dodged the fate of being improved on. A walk to the downtown post office is a pleasant excursion. A Mediterranean Revival pastry of a building, it is easy on the eyes and is a cool retreat on a hot day.
She decided to brave a sidewalk route along the shaded sin and debauchery block of Central Avenue, between 2d and 3d Streets. There are ten drinking establishments, with bars fronting the sidewalk and wooden tables staggering out to the street. Club 201 starts the parade (window sticker: “No Virgins Allowed, We ID”). It ends with Where’s Jubes Aussie Brew Pub (window sign: “No Weapons, No Club Colors”). Beach Drive, the tonier part of our city, is insulated from this sin and debauchery by two intervening sedate blocks. Beach Drive diners wear clean Ts with family-centric slogans and matching shorts. They order Chardonnay, go to brunch. Central Avenue patrons wear whatever they found on the floor that morning and are in it for $3.50 bottles of Bud.
As it was 10 AM, My Life’s Editor was too early to enjoy happy hour, were she so inclined (the sighting of her at a bar would be as rare as a sighting of a Democrat at Mar-a-Largo.) She weaved her way between early morning drinkers who were heading for the tables, cradling beers. Just before the end of the block, she braced herself to pass the penultimate establishment along the boozy gantlet – the cigar bar and saloon.
The sign hanging over the sidewalk reads “Central Cigars.” Under that inscription lounges a raven-haired beauty, a red-dressed Vargas girl, with an acre of leg exposed. A stogie protrudes from her ruby lips, held casually. She pairs the smoke with a martini. She smiles invitingly. Questions arise. Does the sign suggest the lady would prefer a cigar to a man? If you were her date, would you want her to have cigar-breath?
These thoughts likely do not cross the minds of the gentlemen who sit outside the cigar bar. They lounge back in their club chairs, oozing contentment. Gripped between thumb and fingers, the cigar rises to their lips. They suck in, eyes closed, then beatifically puff out a cloud of tar, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and nicotine, to name a few toxins. Have they got it good or what?
Cigars are more than things that smell and taste like the bottom of a Mohican’s moccasin fifteen minutes into their enjoyment. Cigars ooze masculinity, provide a haven in a feminized world. They transport a guy to the treehouse with the “No Girls Allowed” sign nailed to the trunk.
My father, the Army officer, smoked cigars on occasion. He smoked White Owls, a more plebian brand of smoke than those enjoyed by the customers of Central Cigars. Machine-made rather than hand-rolled, White Owls are to a fancy cigar like a Cohiba, as ground chuck is to a filet. He would light up on the links. Before teeing up, he would drop his lit cigar on the grass, where it would soak up insecticides before he stuck it back in his face and proceeded down the fairway. Cigars are also chewed. A revered member of a board of directors I served on would clamp on an unlit cigar for the duration of the meeting, occasionally waving it about to make a point. Considerably moistened, it gleamed under the overhead lighting.
In boarding school, we would go off campus to the Middletown drugstore and scrounge a pack of Swisher Sweets (available in cherry, natural or grape flavors) or Rum River Crooks. I preferred the Crooks, smoked them under the bridge on the way back to school. They nauseated me but gratified my inner rule breaker. When my daughter, the philosophy professor-to-be, was born, I bought a box of A & C Grenadiers to distribute to fellow members of the bank credit department, solidifying my guy-ness. Later in life, at the end of a workday, minions having gone home, I would stand in the middle of my warehouse and light up an Arturo Fuente Hemingway, a master of the universe moment for a very minor business mogul.
My Life’s Editor approached Central Cigars with trepidation. It was worse than she had feared. Sitting at an outside table was a double horror, a beefy man with a smoldering stogie and a small, scruffy dog sitting on the table. Her super sensory olfactory equipment went into distress mode. But the dog set off her wrath. No matter if it is Beach Drive or the block of iniquity, dogs’ butts should not be on chair seats or tabletops. Grumping, she passed the two and went on to the post office.
By her return, she had built up a head of steam, preparing herself to deliver the beefy cigar smoker a smoldering rebuke: “Your dog should not be on the table! What would you say if I used the restroom, not properly cleaning myself, took off my pants and sat my bare rear on the table you where you wanted to eat and drink? Would that be OK with you?!” When she turned the corner to Central Cigars, ready to fire, the big man was talking to a cigar puffing pal. The dog was on the ground.
She held fire. Thank God.
Lead Photo: Dan Smith, Creative Commons
Marshall Craig 