I remember whenever you went to a sit down restaurant you had to tell the person seating you if you wanted smoking or non-smoking. As if it mattered lol.
This was my grandma man. She died at 98 smoking until the very end. She used to drive a 1972 Lincon Continental I would ride in the back seat with no chair or seat belt as she chain-smoked filterless Camels and spit dip into a Styrofoam coffee cup.
Edit: I called Camels "cowboy killers" but those were Marlboros and that's what my mom smoked. Grandma didn't dig filters because "that's how you get cancer."
There's all these iconic photos of Walt Disney where he's pointing at stuff with a two finger point. I've heard that some within the company say that this is the example by which their resort employees always use the two finger point to direct guests.
In reality, he was holding a cigarette and the photos have been airbrushed. He died of lung cancer in 1966. Pointing with two fingers is just seen (kind of universally across cultures) as being non-accusatory. Like, say you saw someone talking to someone else and you cannot hear them (or it's in a language you don't understand); they're pointing with one finger in your direction, you may be inclined to think they're talking about you. If they're using the two finger point, you're less likely to think that... it's the same for airliner flight crew.
I don't think we could have made the progress with smoking in the US now like we did back then. Would have turned into a partisan issue about freedoms and all that.
I remember the first time I was at someone's house and they asked a visitor who who was about to light up to take it outside. It seemed so.odd. My mom, grandmother and aunts would sit around the dining room table with a thick haze. Nobody thought nothing of it
My parents ,much of my family, as well as most of their friends smoked indoors, in their cars, and even in restaurants. Despite living in near poverty for parts of my childhood, they chain smoked cartons of cigarettes a week. Must have been expensive.
I wish I could say that they stopped smoking, but no. The worst part for them isn't even the fact that they know that it has taken at least a decade or more off their lives. It's the realization at how much they are missing out on near the end of their lives and how difficult it is living with debilitating health issues from smoking. They simply cannot do what other people their age take for granted.
And to the title of the post: Yes, I was the kid in the car while my parents chain smoked cigarettes. Sometimes they rolled the windows down, though I'm not sure if that was better since it meant the ashes and red hot "cherry" would inevitably come flying back in and smack me in the face.
A friend of mine tells a funny story about how shortly after seatbelts became mandatory, he was jumping around in the front seat of his mom’s car while driving and she asked him several times to belt up.
Being a kid, he refused and finally she tapped the brakes. He does this hilarious impression of eating the dashboard and needles to say he started wearing the seatbelt from then on.
My wife's family used to mop the walls as part of cleaning.
It wasn't until she moved out that she twigged that non-smokers don't have to do that.
We'd all put on our scruffiest clothes before visiting my granddad, because they'd be going straight into the washing machine the second we got back. No wonder he kept giving us money, he probably thought we were poor as dirt.
I remember my mom pushing me into the footwell when we were about to hit the ditch in a snowstorm, of course I wasn't wearing my lap belt, I mean, who did?
I wouldn't ride with her for a week after that, she was quite offended.
My mum's got a great anecdote about how the doctor came around about my cough when I was a newborn, and he came into a room full of local mums all fawning over me in my cot and chugging away.