The first pack of cigarettes I ever bought was in the summer of 1965. I was 18 years old and working for a construction company in my hometown of Longview, Washington. My job was to drive a truck carrying two or three men to different jobsites around the area. The pay wasn’t much but it was something after having dropped out of high school and spending a couple of years working odd jobs around town.

One day, one of the guys on the crew came back from lunch with his lunchbox full of cigarettes. He offered me one and I said yes. It was my first cigarette ever! It tasted awful but it made me feel grown up and sophisticated (or so I thought).

I smoked that cigarette all day long, enjoying every minute of it. When we got back to the job site after lunch, I asked him where he got the cigarettes from. He told me they cost a dime apiece at his local convenience store down the street from where he lived just outside town. “That’s all?” I asked him incredulously. He nodded yes and told me that they were twenty-five cents each at places like 7-Eleven or Safeway further away from home but that he didn’t like going there because they.

Last modified: October 4, 2022