Secondhand memories

It looks like our state just passed the strictest no-smoking policy in the country. No smoking in any public place (including bars, bowling alleys, taverns, clubs, restaurants). No one in my family ever smoked so I've never had to live with it and I hate cigarette smoke and can't stand to have my clothes or hair smell like it. But, although I'll thoroughly enjoy not having to smell other people's smoke, until smoking is illegal I think a bar owner should be able to decide if his customers and his employees will be allowed to smoke in his establishment.

In Spain Chloe spent a lot of time in smoky bars at night with her friends. For many of us that sounds like she, a 16-year-old high school student, spent all of her free time hanging out and drinking in unsavory places. But that's what they do there. Friends don't hang out at each other's houses and so at night they meet at different establishments to socialize and dance. And lots of them smoke. That social part of her year and the evening activity is something she still misses (in this rural area there is nothing to do and no where to go at night) and every time she passes by a place where smoke is wafting out she experiences a melancholy twinge of other-homesickness. Although Chloe doesn't like cigarette smoke either, the obnoxious smell of second-hand smoke now evokes fond memories. It looks like that source of memories, dubious though it may be, is disappearing.

Comments

[Teresa]

I can relate, even now if I walk past a bar and smell smoke mixed with booze I think of all the great music I heard in such smokey, sometimes divey, establishments, during my college years. Or I think of my grandfather who was both a heavy smoker and drinker; that's a sad and sweet memory all wrapped into one.