Where There's Smoke

Strangely, one of my first memories of the early days of teaching high school was directly related to an activity that is illegal in schools today.  In fact, on the very first day of teaching at North Side, I encountered the phenomenon as I went from my classroom to the teacher's lounge to have lunch.  What I found there not only shocked me, but it lead to other discoveries.

I will give you a little background first.  My father was a smoker.  From as far back as I can remember, he had a cigar or pipe in his mouth whenever he could.  That included in the house, at work, when he was watching my brothers and I in sports, and, my most vivid memory was in the car.  On any trip we would take, he would constantly keep his pipe lit or chomp on a cigar.  I remember that I liked the smell of the pipe smoke because he would choose flavored tobaccos, so the smoke was sweeter.  Cigars, on the other hand, were always disgusting, and we would be in the back of the station wagon getting the full brunt of the residue.

I know that Dad never really understood the effect of smoke on the rest of us until later in his life.  When I moved out on my own and would visit my parents' house, I could immediately feel the effect that smoke had on me.  Dad tried to quit often.  One of the times that he tried came right after an incident at one of my baseball games.  I love baseball; I coached it with some success, but I was not very good at playing it.  So that day my father was surprised that I got a hit in a crucial situation.  That happened when he was chomping on a cigar.  He got so excited that he swallowed the lit cigar down whole.

Because of the smoke that I grew up with, I did try a cigar on occasion while I was in college.  I even bought a pipe, but smoking never went further than that.  So, I entered the lounge naively thinking that it was a good place to eat lunch.  After all, that was what I was told.

What the reality was hit me in my nostrils and sent me back to when I worked at my father's gas station.  All of the guys who worked for my Dad smoked - all the time!  I didn't expect that to be the environment of the teacher's lounge.  I remember distinctly that there were seven teachers sitting on the sofas, puffing away.  Another four were eating their lunches and alternately tugging on a cigarette.  Across the room in a chair was an elderly teacher drawing on a pipe.

Later that day, I returned during my plan period to get a pop (soda for the east coast).  There were fewer smokers then, but it was still too much for me to stay.  What I was able to see at this point was that the walls of the room were stained a yellowish brown.   A few years later, when it was decided that it was a bad message to send to the students that teachers were allowed to smoke in school, the lounge was totally redone.  In the most recent renovation, the area was changed into the current Green Room for actors behind the auditorium stage, but sometimes I still get a memory whiff of the old place.

Coinciding with the smoking area for teachers, there was a smoking area for students right outside the building.  It was deemed necessary because so many students were smoking in the restrooms.  In theory, it might have worked, but what happened in reality is students were still smoking in the restrooms, tobacco was not the only substance smoked in the area, and tardies increased because students "lost track of time."

The smoking ban that eventually was enforced in the building and school grounds started a new problem.  Students and staff went across the street to smoke.  That meant that the smokers would be in front of businesses and homes.  Occupants of both were not pleased.  What evolved in time was a decrease in faculty smokers who would sneek out to the their cars or a protected cubbyhole that no one could find.  Student smoking gradually went away as a major problem.

Today's students would probably not believe that this actually happened.  They are so far removed from this that it would seem foreign to them.  All I know is that it has been a long time since I had to smell smoke on a regular basis.  I don't miss it, especially at school.