Ten Years In The Cigar Box

To restart posts I had planned to revisit the first post once again.  Ukraine gave me pause, and still does, but here we go now.

 

On March 18, 2012, I posted a story “In The Cigar Box” for the first time.  The post recounted a long ago memory that gave rise to this blog’s odd name.  Ten years have passed - seems longer; feels like yesterday.  

 

The people and places in that first post are nearly all gone now.  Grandpa, Dad and Uncle Forest (we called him Dick) had passed before the post was published.  In 2012, 45 rpm vinyl records could be found in undisturbed attics, vintage music stores or on eBay.  The juke boxes that played those records were still around but most were converted to CDs and you sure couldn’t play a song for a nickel.  

Saying that all the juke boxes are gone makes me want to add a new verse to the song from that era, Where Have All The Flowers Gone.  It might start, “Where have all the juke boxes gone, gone to iPhones one and all.”  Everyone has a juke box in their pocket or purse now.  Headphones make the malt shop and a shared diner booth relics of the middle decades of the Twentieth Century.  Time and technology are relentless.

 

Cigarettes haven’t completely gone away but users have gone underground or at least to the back porch.  The decline of public smoking is one example of hope that in some ways we are an evolving species who have learned some lessons from centuries of error.  With cigarettes sold as a somewhat controlled substance, cigarette machines have all but disappeared.  Smokers still smoke but instead of the iconic Marlboro Man, smokers huddle in alleys or are banished to a place out by the dumpsters or loading docks. 

The need for a business like grandpa's C & F Music passed away with the ordinary rhythms of the 1950s and 1960s.

 

Gas stations aren’t gone.  They are evolving from full service auto care to an additional product sold at convenience stores.  Electric vehicles appear to be the future – maybe gas stations will become charging stations.  Service Stations will be even rarer.  Tires will still need repair or replacement but radiators, thermostats, distributors, alternators and dozens of other parts will take their place beside buggy whips, starter cranks, and rotary dial phones.  Makes you wonder what might fill the junk yards hiding on backroads behind broken down fences or hidden deep in the fields of persistent weeds and wild grasses.  

 

Amid all of those things being lost to history, cigar boxes have survived.  They aren’t as prevalent as they once were but there are still ways to buy cigars.  Now there are cigar speak-easies that cater to a narrow clientele.  Here in Kansas City, Fred Diebel's has a walk-in humidor in each of its locations and a cigar club room as part of its Plaza store.  And Fidel’s, in Westport, has a well-ventilated smoking room with leather chairs where a patron can sit and savor his twenty-dollar cigar.  Cigars are sold individually but they arrive at a tobacconist’s shop packed in a gilded wooden or pasteboard box.  A cigar box. 

 

Before I ceded one lung to cancer, I enjoyed the occasional cigar.  You might have found me in Fidel’s back room but usually it would just be me and a wee dram of scotch or a glass of wine on the porch behind my house.  Those days are gone but my connection to cigar boxes persists.

 

I have several cigar boxes here beside my desk.  Some hold pens or pencils, some keep clippers, staple pullers, and paper clips.  One has cables and chargers for devices I never really understood but I have learned to fear discarding any of these old pieces or parts.  

Of course, there is at least one cigar box with its lid down.  No, it doesn’t have a lock but it is a quiet sort of place to put things that are meant to be saved or kept to remember.  

The posts you’ll find in this blog are, as I originally planned, snippets of time from somewhere in my memory bank.  The stories are simple fun or nostalgic or a sly way for this old grandpa to teach a grandson to do better or be smarter than I was.  

Looking back though, I think that most every story or essay was a search to understand; each post was part of a quest to learn something useful from everything.  This blog is like the last box.  It is a place where questions are asked, answered or found unanswerable.   It is the repository of inexplicable events and serendipitous coincidences.  What’s recorded here is meant to be shared.  Each story or essay is a glimpse from “In The Cigar Box”.  

                                                                                                                    --td

 

(PS: An aside about the song, Where Have All The Flowers Gone.  It was mostly written by Pete Seeger in 1955.  Seeger attributes inspiration for the lyrics to notes he had made while reading the novel And Quiet Flows The Don.  The book was partially about the Cossacks who lived along the Don River riding off to join the Russian Czar’s army.  The song leads to a stanza asking, “Where have all the soldiers gone?  They’ve gone to graveyards every one.  When will we ever learn…”. 

 

The Don River flows just a few miles east of the Ukrainian border with Russia.  The river ends at the Black Sea very close to Crimea.  Russian soldiers spent weeks amassed between the Don and the Ukrainian border before the current invasion began.  I promised not to make every post about Ukraine.  I will keep that promise but this aside is one more example of the connectedness I sense engulfing America.  The war has reconnected Americans to each other better than faith in our own democracy has been able to do.  Pete Seeger wrote another song that has another line that you can almost hear every American voice share.  “If I had a hammer, I’d hammer out justice, for all of my brothers and sisters, all over the world!”

I plan for one of my future posts to explore the lyrics of old songs and a search for lyricists writing today who capture a sense of the times and prescriptions for healing.  Stay tuned.)