When smoking was allowed everywhere, were you aware of the stench?

No. I was used to it back then. Now find I am allergic to cigarette, weed and cigar smoke.

It was a smell that was very common so you learned to pretty much ignore it.

If you weren't a smoker, it was disgusting.

Yes, and yes. Evey fucking thing stank, you did get used to it to a certain extent but going somewhere smoking was forbidden was pretty refreshing

We used to have a room in the basement at my work for smokers. It was also used for union meetings, and it fucking reeked. The stank permeated everything - the vinyl seats, the formica table, the flouroescent strip lights, the lino floor. It was not a nice room

I remember coming home from clubs with my hair and clothes stinking of smoke.

I grew up in a nonsmoking house but when my aunts and uncles came over they all smoked. We'd open all the windows after they left and I'd always take a shower and wash my hair to get the smell out.

When I was older and went to bars and clubs, I'd have to shower to get the stench out. There was no way you could wear anything you wore out the night before without washing it.

Now the world is just filled with unwashed masses and the few that drown themselves in cheap perfume.

let us return to a world of cloves (before they changed them) and endless playlists of The Smiths...

I remember "The Smoking Car" on the Long Island Rail Road. It was like a gas chamber.

I remember my mom having to take NEW clothing she'd just bought at her favorite boutique and hanging it up outside to air out because the shop reeked of smoke so badly, due to all the women who worked there smoking nonstop.

I got used to it in New York where I made my young life after college. I liked a smokey bar or club. Then I went to European cities and the clubs and bars and restaurants were a SHOCK. Smaller, poor air circulation and EVERYONE huffing and puffing. Was gassed out of a few Parisian spots. When I moved to France in the 90s it was another shock. I went to dinner parties where people smoked between EVERY FUCKING COURSE. I still thought it was glamorous but it all started to change by 2000.

Banks were the worst. I absolutely hated going inside them. A cloud of smoke lingered at the ceiling that was thick enough to blot out the daylight. With no AC at most branches the stench was unbearable.

It was even worse on airplanes.

Now the worst smell on airplanes is when some dummy decides to paint their fingernails.

Don't remember the smoking in banks. Ha!

I remember the back of a plane was the smoking section, but you could smell it everywhere.

I cannot believe I ever smoked. And for fucking decades too.

At least I eventually stopped cold turkey no issue 12 years ago.

Bars I was used to but hated planes and theatres.

Smoking was everywhere. Cigarette butts stomped out on grocery store floors, Zayres, Ames, K-Mart, every grocery and department store.

Emergency room waiting rooms, doctors coming in to see you with a cigarette in hand.

The roll away tables you ate on in the hospital had built in ashtrays.

Smoking was EVERYWHERE.

Smoking sections in restaurants Ashtrays in the teacher’s lounge at school Built in armrest ashtrays in cars and planes

I think it all started to go away in the late 80s. I don’t remember it smelling bad

I'm not allergic to vape smoke. I know this because someone just blew a huge plume of vape smoke in my direction while I was crossing the street. It was strawberry scented not unpleasant but incredibly rude for the person to blow smoke all over. I'm allergic to all other forms of smoke, it is a toxic smell that lingers.

When I smoked (1965-1987), I didn't notice it. The minute I quit, I hated the stench. How did I evah???

Now I get a migraine if I'm around cigarette smoke.

Both parents smoked, everyone else smoked, every place was full of smoke. Even churches reeked because all the smokers' clothes stank.

I had emphysema at 7 and a lung transplant at 9.

But then I started smoking, just to fit in.

Remember when you could smoke in the hospital, eldergays? It must be so electrifying to be killing yourself and then getting some treatment at once.

When I was in graduate school , a married friend who was a smoker would invite me to his house for dinner on Friday nights. At the end of the evening when I got home, I’d have to take every article of clothing off and throw it in the wash. Everything would reek of stale cigarette smoke.

I think about this when I watch old films. They smoked in cars, on trains.

Sometimes when visiting friends in the City, you can smell smoke in the hallway from a neighbor who smokes in their apartment. Also, in France, my hotel room smelled of smoke because the guest staying in the room next door, leaned out the window and blew smoke outside of the room to try and avoid an extra fee for smoking in the room. The smoke wafted into my room and woke me up. This is a nice little hotel at Place Madeleine in Paris.

Sometimes, when it reminds me of my grandmother’s house, I don’t mind smoke. I do hate the smell it leaves on your clothing.

How does Fran Lebowitz stay healthy?

We smoked in college classrooms. I think that was the best! Helped to concentrate.

Bathhouses smelled like jizz and Marlboro.

Yes. I thought I was gonna die when I had to sit in the smoking section of an airplane once because it was the only seat available and I was trying to get home for Christmas. Thank god it was only a 45 minute flight from SFO to LAX.

My dad was a chain smoker, use one cig to light the next. His addiction would wake him up at night. My best friend’s parents both smoked. As a kid, cig smoke probably meant “home” to me.

I smoked for five years in my early 20s but I hated having the smell on me, especially my fingers—so fucking gross!!! And that yellow staining…. I currently cannot stand the smell and I’m very sensitive to it.

When you were in an area where there was cigarette smoke, or even the smell of cigarette smoke, that was "adult world," and as a kid, you didn't belong there, so git.

Everything smelled of stale smoke - restaurants, bars, airplanes, taxi cabs, waiting rooms, the office break room, etc. Hard to imagine that international flights were the last forms of public transportation to go smoke-free.

I was noseblind to it thanks to a two-pack-a-day dad. When I was in high school all of my friend’s parents thought I was smoked and was pressuring their kids to, even though I was one of the few who never did.

Even as late as the 1980s/early 90s non-smokers would allow guests to smoke in their homes. It was considered poor manners to tell someone to go outside, it was good etiquette to allow people to smoke in your home even if you didn't, as crazy as that sounds today. My non-smoking parents kept ashtrays underneath the kitchen sink for guests who smoked.

I've never smoked but my grandmother (turning 100 this year!) is a life-long heavy smoker. Even after her stroke. It just harms some people worse than others, I guess.

I never minded smoking in bars and restaurants, but airplanes? JFC that was awful. It's hard to believe smoking was every allowed on planes.

Smoking was allowed in airport terminals, people always smoked like chimneys in airports. One cig after another.

My grandmother died of emphysema caused by cigarette smoking, painful death

I'll never forget when Mayor Bloomberg banned smoking in bars, clubs, and restaurants in NYC in 2002. The way Dataloungers carried on histrionically here, you would have thought they were being gored by wild elephants.

When I first moved to NY in 1987, restaurants would have smoking and non-smoking sections, with non-smoking tables three feet away from smoking tables. I’d come home, hang my sport coat out on the fire escape, put all the rest of my clothes in a laundry bag, and take a Silkwood shower or I’d never get to sleep from the stench. Coming from a nonsmoking home, it was the WORST.

If I could know I would live to 100 and be smoking, I would start again.

That said, the smoking room in the United terminal at SFO used to crack me up. It basically was like a glass cage of smokers and you could actually see the clouds of smoke from the outside. Inside, it wasn’t as bad as it looked because they had some system for pulling the smoke upwards, but I’m still sure it wasn’t a risk free cancer environment.

I used to smoke in the hospital. I smoked 2 paks a day

LOL r43, the smoking room at Dulles was similar. It looked like the surface of Venus! Roiling yellow clouds of sulfurous gas!

Loved smoking. Would start again if they announced the apocalypse.

Seriously, the stink is what led me to quit.

Multiple tales here:

I grew up in a home where both parents smoked. Like many kids, I tried smoking as a teen. I liked it, but only did it occasionally (though I never did like second-hand smoke). The thrill was really more about "getting away with it", than anything. And after watching a great aunt (a FIVE PACK A DAY smoker) die of Emphysema, that was mostly it for me. After that, I would sometimes smoke when drinking, but that didn't last long.

A friend of mine (born in 1939) worked for Delta out of D.C. for decades, and for the longest time in his earlier years, he was a non-smoker. Then one day in the late 1960s, he asked a co-worker for a cigarette. The co-worker was surprised: "But you don't smoke!" "I know. Just give me one." It was a habit he kept, and forty-five years later, he died of lung cancer.

My grandmother was a lifelong non-smoker, who developed COPD due to letting people smoke in her smallish house for decades. It eventually led to her death.

And on a related note: I've been watching episodes of "Lou Grant" lately, and looked up Nancy Marchand (who also played Livia Soprano, but I never got into that show). When she died, she had BOTH Lung Cancer AND Emphysema. I can't even imagine having one of those conditions. Let alone both.

I realize that plenty of non-smokers develop lung cancer (Kathy Griffin is one), AND that smoking isn't the sole cause, but I hope that with the decline of indoor smoking, and the popularity of smoking in general, that those numbers are decreasing.

r36, yeah no one would ever dream of telling a smoker to go smoke outside. And people wouldn't ask for permission, they'd just light up.

My first nephew was born in 1988. My sister, whom I love dearly but is a quintessential frau of the highest order, started boycotting family events with her baby if people continued to smoke inside. That's when people had to sneak out or go hide in the garage to smoke.

I smoked for years, quit cold turkey, missed it and promised myself I could start smoking again once I became old. But during the pandemic when we were stuck at home I got stressed and bought a pack of cigarettes and I only had one, it was so gross and not fun like it had been when I was a regular smoker. I was kind of crushed to discover something that had once brought me so much joy now disgusted me haha.

But niw we are facists and no one is allowed to do anything

When I was still a child in The Netherlands, our trains had smoking sections back then. The smoking and the non-smoking sections were within the same carriage, only separated by a flimsy glass door.

The smoker's section was by far the cosiest. Yes, it stank, and you could cut the nicotine-heavy air with a dull razor blade — But people were chatty, and it was just a really nice part of the train.

Every 4-seater had two ashtrays built into the armrest,s as shown in the picture below.

I didn't notice the smoke, even on airplanes, when i was a kid but now I am much less tolerant to the smell now. I stayed overnight at a friend's house several years ago and she was a smoker. While I didn't think her house smelled of smoke, the sheets on my bed in the guest room reeked so bad I couldn't sleep.

I would smoke cigarettes while teaching my Shakespeare class. Thought nothing of it. Lots of teachers smoked while they taught

Yes, everyone and everything smelled of tobacco. Big stinky overflowing ashtrays. Olfactory sensors go numb, so eventually, you don't notice anymore. I grew up in a household with six smokers in Detroit. It's a wonder I am still alive.

[quote] [R36], yeah no one would ever dream of telling a smoker to go smoke outside. And people wouldn't ask for permission, they'd just light up.

That's actually not true. It was considered polite in American society (at all levels) to ask, "Do you mind if I smoke?" before you lit up.

That's why the American Lung Association (a powerful anti-smoking lobbying association) created a very popular ad campaign in the early 70s called "They Mind Very Much if You Smoke," encouraging non-smokers to complain when people asked if they minded if they smoked.

Here's another "We Mind Very Much if You Smoke" PSA.

I was very young when restaurants had smoking sections and I don't really recall any offensive smell from it. My parents were non-smokers though, so I think they intentionally kept their kids away from places where it was excessive. I could be wrong, but I believe cigarette manufacturing has changed since the 80s. I recall an article or someone saying that the reason cigarette smoking smells so gross now is really because of all the chemicals and crap they keep adding to them to "enhance flavor," etc.. I do wonder if it wasn't as offensive back then simply due to less/different ingredients in cigarettes. With that said, I do remember going out to the clubs that still allowed smoking indoors. At the time I didn't mind it (even kind of liked it; like someone mentioned above, it felt "adult"), but looking back it was utterly disgusting. I smoked on and off for years, but once you get away from it and actually have significant periods of time in which you don't encounter cigarette smoke, it really is jarring when you finally do. One of my friends lives in an apartment with her roommate in which they both smoke and it really is awful to go in there for even a short minute.

Ten years ago when iIwas buying my house, my realtor took me to look at a house where two serious smokers had lived before. The house was nice, but the smell of cigarette smoke was so ingrained even in the empty house I had to leave after about five minutes.

I'm not sure which is worse. The "recovering" junkie/alcoholic or the ex smoker.

I smoked socially and still will once and a while when having drinks with friends. Yes, it smells, ashtrays are gross, but I still think the ex smoker is more offensive.

I also think it was stupid to ban smoking in obvious places like bars and nightclubs. You could be standing 10 feet away from someone who was smoking and not even smell it. Those smoke removal machines sucked away any trace of the smell instantly.

The AA cult mentality seems to be present in "reformed" smokers who love to lecture when they should be minding their own god damn business.

R22 Vape is not smoke, it is vapor. I agree it was rude to blow it in your face. When I vaped, I wasn't a 'cloud chaser', and I tried to be very discreet with it around other people. Vaping helped me quit smoking, and last year I quit vaping.

After a night out in NYC, I used to go on my terrace and strip down to my underwear and leave my clothes to air out over night, so I wouldn't wake up to the stink the next morning (okay, technically it was already the morning when I got home).

You really had to scrub your hair with shampoo to get the smell out before going to bed, otherwise your pillow would smell, not just the pillowcase.

r37, almost 70% of people who get lung cancers are non-smokers. While it's incredibly unlikely that inhaling the 400+ chemicals companies spray on cigarette tobacco, including some mandated by the EPA and FDA, it also seems obvious from the actual data that smoking is not the leading cause of lung cancers and that something else is.

True story. When I flew JAT (Jugoslav Air Transport, that’s how long ago this was), one side of the plane was smoking and one side was non-smoking! Not smokers in the back! The Balkans were something else; everyone lived on coffee and cigarettes.

Put a cigarette in your asshole

R66, According to an article in the Proceedings of the American Thoracic Society, "It is estimated that cigarette smoking explains almost 90% of lung cancer risk in men and 70 to 80% in women."

R66 you missed a clause in your paragraph. Unlikely that what?

I love the smell and taste of ciggies. My first boy kiss was a heavy smoker so I have good memories of the taste. My youth was good so the smell takes me back to good places.

Smoking on trains was the absolute worst. The seats were impregnated with the smell.

Yes, the smell is as awful now as it was then.

Smoking on planes and in restaurants was awful. I didn’t go to a jazz club for 20 years because My clothes would smell like smoke whenever I’d leave

Non smoker. Don’t think I ever tried smoking. Parents were both smokers (Lucky Strike no less). College (1971 - 1975) everyone smoked. Lectures, classrooms, labs. Gay bars always reeked of smoke. A friend once told me he started smoking when he came out. Having a cigarette he would drink less.

After going out I would throw my clothes in the wash, take a shower and wash my hair before getting into bed.

I had my standards though; I would trick with a smoker, but I wouldn’t date a smoker. A quickie was fine, but anything more than a trick with a smoker was a deal breaker. I never let a trick smoke in my house.

My mom smoked while she gave birth to me in the delivery ward in the hospital

My great grandmother smoked unfiltered Pall Mall and lived to be 91. My grandfather smoked unfiltered Philip Morris and lived to be 84.

I started again. Many years a non-smoker, but aging and "brain fog" mixed with mild chronic depression facilitated my new (old) habit.

I am enjoying it. I figure - "What the fuck, I've only got so many years left, let's enjoy them.

No one smelled your farts.

Glorious then.

Former smoker here, but some of these comments are the biggest Mary's..... especially R62 and R73!

R66. What is the source for your claim? It’s absolutely contrary to common sense all studies posted on the internet

I agree. Smoke in old age if it pleases you. I have aged Spanish family who don't give a flip any more. They enjoy it.

When we lived in Switzerland and I was smoking I'd come home from work and hang my suit on a hook on the balcony to air it out for some hours. Neighbors did the same. It was a national cultural practice.

I could only smell it on my nightclubbing clothes, and I loved it. A mix of smoke, perfume and fresh sweat - the glorious scent of the Night.

You did get used to it. And it was everywhere like everyone above said. A few years ago we spent a couple of hours in a casino that allowed smoking and I was pretty annoyed and disgusted with what it did to my clothes. I guess I never really appreciated how annoying it must have been to be a nonsmoker back when it was everywhere.

As a kid in the seventies I remember the ashtrays and desktop cigarette lighters. I recall the bizarreness of huge clunky furniture adorning glass ashtrays. Hotels and casinos gave away matchbooks and encouraged you to steal the ashtrays With there logos on them. The world reeked of smoke and if you didn’t smoke by 18 something was really wrong with you. You were a pussy and worse. My grandma smoked perpetually and though I loved her and wanted to visit her her house was always closed up tight and I really could not breath in there. I recognized the Stockholm syndrome element. Petroleum companies are the new cigarette companies pushing the poison killing off the customer with climate changing products.

R71 = Patsy Stone

Some fragrances were designed to work with tobacco smoke in a room.

The first day of the first time that I quit smoking, at a time of year when it was cold enough to be keeping the windows closed, I couldn't believe how much my whole apartment STANK of stale cigarette smoke (and the obvious stench emanating from the ashtrays). Had to empty the ashtrays, wash them, then take out the garbage (the smell had simply transferred to the trashcan), and then open all the windows for a few hours. And wash ALL of my clothes, ALL of them. It was a great move on my part, unfortunately it took me a couple more decades to finally ditch the fucking things from my life completely.

What's not to love?

Those folks mentioned in this thread who are still smoking on up into their 80s and 90s are people who won the genetic lottery. It is VERY rare for men (especially) to survive to that age if they smoke every day. Look it up. For most people, cigarette smoking will just fucking destroy your health. It can do that in MANY different ways, all throughout the body.

Yeah, we know, but it's a personal choice. Don't mock the existentials.

It was disgusting, the stench stayed on clothes and on the hair, all i wanted to do once at home was taking a shower.

A personal choice made in youthful IGNORANCE by the inexperience young, about one of the most destructive and addictive "habits" there is.

Yes...it was nauseating !!

Smokers kill their sense of smell, so they rarely realize how bad they stink.

For years I was told you can't be allergic to smoke, that smoke simply causes non-allergic rhinitis, but I think that idea is changing in recent years.

My parents were heavy smokers and by the time I was in my teens, I tried to stay upstairs away from it, often with windows open even in the winter. I had constant upper respiratory infections and was miserable, and just got yelled at if I said anything about it. Old cigarette butts and filled public ashtrays were everywhere until the 1980s and it was gross, and to this day I hate seeing discarded butts in my yard or in public walkways. It's just disgusting.

The worst was offices, when people would smoke at their desks.

I remember my first doctor’s nurse would always have a butt smoldering in the ashtray. In a pediatrician’s office.

I like to tell straight guys smoking cigars that it lets me see what they’d look like sucking cock.

My mom was a nurse and she bitched for years about not being able to smoke while at work.

She and dad both died from smoking-related illnesses.

I have never smoked so I was always acutely aware of the smell. I still hate it. I met so many gorgeous guys who stank of smoke and I had to give them a miss.

My parents didn’t smoke but I was enthralled when my glamorous aunt and grandmother would visit us. the lipstick, perfume, nails, furs, laughter and cigarettes. My home life was dreary so I loved this sneak peek into another, seemingly glamorous existence. It gave me hope. As an adult I didn’t mind the smoking, but we were desensitized. Now it is gross to me.

*WARNING* THE SMOKING TROLL IS BACK!

Who the hell woke up the smoking troll? Here's to a weekend with a bunch of smoking threads...

I had just quit smoking when I was a groomsman in a friend’s wedding. His wife wanted him to quit (“no kids if you’re still smoking”) and so he did, too. Two years later he was in town and I picked him up at the hotel where he was standing out front, smoking. He put it out before he got in the car and the first thing he said was “Yeah, I started again, but only when I’m traveling for work. Don’t tell Donna.”

Not that I would, but no one would need to assuming Donna hadn’t last her sense of smell. If you don’t smoke, some one who smokes doesn’t just smell, they reek of smoke.

Yeah. It’s that obvious

I recall clearly the first time someone announced, at a wintertime party, that she would not allow anyone to smoke inside her house any more, and that any smokers had to go do it out on the porch. It was in January of 1992, and it was pretty surprising at the time. It caught on pretty quickly.

anti-smokers are racist

Take off your shoes if you want to come in, bitch, and no smoking on my property.

It was horrible.

OP, there use to be huge clouds of smoke hovering at the ceiling in cinemas and airplanes. It’s nauseating to think of it now.

[quote]I do wonder if it wasn't as offensive back then simply due to less/different ingredients in cigarettes.

No, it was plenty offensive back then.

R67 I used to fly Balkan (Bulgarian) Airline, with the same aisle division of smoking and nonsmoking. In reality, there was no divider – everybody smoked onboard.

The B level at the Rock (Rockefeller Library) at Brown Univ was where you could smoke and study etc. It was Eurotrash central. And I loooooooved it.

Some frau in French politics is trying to ban smoking in French film. Good luck with that. Every Euro director will tell you smoking is seductive and it has been used so in Euro film since the beginning.

Late 1980s. I was working for a small print shop. After work five of us would hang around to shot the breeze and throw darts. Three of the guys were chain smokers. I never smoked but after 3 or 4 hours I would smell like a chimney and my eyes were bloodshot.

I did deliveries for this company for 30 years. When indoor smoking was banned the buildings would usually send the smokers to the loading dock. I would see the same people smoking no matter what time of day I went to these buildings.

Smokers are drug addicts who can’t tell they reek

r120 Hey Mrs. Reagan, I thought you were dead.

Nancy never focused on cigarettes. The Repugs don’t consider them drugs.

The smelly drug addicts get testy when you point out to them that they stink.

J'adore the smoking pix troll.

[quote] Nancy never focused on cigarettes. The Repugs don’t consider them drugs.

Also, the Republicans were making way too much money off tobacco

Every time you light up, you give money to anti-gay right wing nuts

R125 is posting from 1975. Tobacco companies are global entities in this day and age.

I remember coming home from nightclubs or even pubs in the late 90’s and having to take my clothes off in the basement so they wouldn’t stink up my bedroom. It also stayed in your hair until you washed it. It permeated everything. It was gross.

r130 didn't get laid much, huh?

R127. Damn. HAF.

Before it was law, Sidetrack was the first gay bar to go smoke-free in Chicago. And then it was only "the glass bar", with doors separating the smoking and nonsmoking sections. Occasionally guys would try to cruise through the nonsmoking section with a cigarette in hand. They seldom got very far without some queen screaming "You can't smoke in here - get out!!!"

When did we turn into a nation of cunts that need the govt to step in to tell us where, when, how often we could fuck, drink, smoke, eat, think, be... people talk about the younger generations being coddled but what's the excuse for all these old farts

left, right.. always someone screaming for the govt to take away your rights.

Naked or not, smokers stink.

criminalize, penalize, mandatory prancercise.

r140 So does the scent of sex... sweat and cum drenched over your body,

vinegary old people, shitty kids, feminist lack of hygiene, and the musky scent of hard up queens.

live in the city and the pollution will kill you, live in the country and allergies or your neighbors might do the same.

Yes, I was aware of the stench. I never smoked but it was everywhere, allowed in my college classrooms (small private school), restaurants, and in concert halls. We already knew smoking was bad and I wondered even then about the effects of breathing smoky air.

I travelled for several months with a heavy smoker friend and he and his smoke-drenched clothes stank up our rooms.

I'm glad to be in a smoke-free region now. Where I live smokers hide their habits, it's not allowed anywhere in public places. I know people who quit because they felt like lepers.

so, many people act like it's all or nothing, as if everyone else is drowning in excess because of a handful of vocal whiners inability to control their own urges.

smoke of us like a bit of stank

Looking at pictures of naked guys smoking is fine because you can’t smell their stink

[quote]A personal choice made in youthful IGNORANCE by the inexperience young, about one of the most destructive and addictive "habits" there is.

^^lips pursed tighter than a cat's asshole

My grandparents were heavy smokers, and their house reeked of smoke. I spent a lot of time with them, but growing up I never had any respiratory infections, sinus problems etc. Unlike the delicate hothouse flowers of DL who were in physical agony, I guess I was of much stronger stock.

[quote]Take off your shoes if you want to come in, bitch,

That is so very, very common

[quote]Nancy never focused on cigarettes. The Repugs don’t consider them drugs.

Reagan's "Drug Czar" William Bennett was a chain-smoker.

My grandparents were also both heavy smokers and both died from smoking related illnesses. So did both of my grandparents' brothers, who also smoked cigars and were frequently at their house. They had all been smoking since their childhoods in the early 20th century. My mother and I have both had respiratory illnesses our entire lives and my mother has survived cancer multiple times starting in her early 30s, really odd kinds like random cancerous tumors showing up on her body out of nowhere. I'm in my 40s and haven't had cancer yet, but I figure it's only a matter of time. Even with all of this, I still associate the smell of cigar smoke and cigarette smoke with comfort and nice memories of being doted on by loving grandparents and family members. I don't miss coming home from nightclubs in my college years reeking of smoke though.

cigar and pipe smoke is nice, but within reason and in one room.

R142, none of that changes the fact that cigarette smoke stinks and sticks to everything, especially the smoker.

Remember when you walked into a restaurant and asked to be seated in the non-smoking section, only to find that the next table over sat a smoker in the smoking section? In some places there were no clear boundaries.

My father was a chain smoker, and on vacations in the 70’s he insisted that the windows be open so we didn’t have to run the air conditioner, so we would save on gas (his way of thinking). When he wanted to smoke, we would have to roll the windows up tight, and my big brother and I would literally choke on smoke.

When I moved into a dorm room in the 80’s, my roommate and others asked if I smoked because my stuff reeked. I didn’t notice it until I left home and was surrounded by people who limited their smoking to outdoors/bars, etc.