Smoking Grape Leaves

I was just six in this first grade picture, but it gives you an idea of what I looked like when I still had healthy lungs (Click for larger photograph).

In 1944, when I was ten years old, I smoked grape leaves in a corn cob pipe. I was just beginning to learn about smoking. When it was ready we also smoked corn silk.

A Navy Sea Bee, just back from Guam rented one room in our house. Bob smoked Lucky Strikes cigarettes and was an imposing figure in uniform, fresh the islands. His wife, Peggy, was the daughter of the town grocer, Frank B. Pinkerton.

One day when they were gone I swiped a pack of his Lucky Strikes and headed for our old chicken house to smoke.

The smoke was filtering through cracks and Esta Flory, our neighbor lady, thought it was on fire. She ran to our house and told my mother that our chicken house was burning.

Followed by the neighbor lady, mother ran to the chicken house with a couple of buckets of water and opened the chicken house door. Mom, expecting to see a blaze, saw her son sicker than a dog, and to this day I don't remember what she did with the water.

She made me take the leftover cigarettes back and apologize to Bob Clark and Peggy for stealing their cigarettes. She whipped me with a peach tree switch.

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