A tribute to the cigar box

[El Presidente]

A tribute to the cigar box

by Mack Hall Jaspernewsboy.com

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/jasper/o...box-1596147.php

Cigar boxes are no longer a part of childhood. In an office supply store last week I saw a display of plastic boxes for children for use in school, for storing pens and pencils and glue and scissors and all the other easily-misplaced little impedimenta of very young artists.

Once upon a time, children employed wooden cigars boxes for such purposes; if one's father didn't smoke cigars then someone else's did, and so nice little wooden boxes were as common as 1943 steel pennies. I suppose that if now a child were to carry his art supplies to school in a cigar box he would be sent for therapy and his parents filed on with some state agency for Not Thinking Correctly.

The plastic boxes for sale now contain only air, and to a father that's disappointing; wooden cigar boxes came filled with, well, cigars, so everyone was happy. Contemporary boxes are filled with nothing more than the chemical aromas of Shanghai, and no one ever celebrated an accomplishment or a birth by lighting up a victory Chinese air molecule.

In another time-space dimension, the birth of a child was celebrated by the proud father handing out cigars to his pals. Upon retrospect one realizes that the young mother probably needed a cigar more than anyone, but such an image would not make an appropriately-sentimental greeting card. One wonders if somewhere there is at least one mother who smokes cigars while holding her infant, in Newton County, perhaps.

For children, though, a cigar box was not about stinky rolls of vegetation being ignited, but rather about creativity. The good old wooden cigar box had two purposes: (1) storage of treasures and (2) as a quarry for building projects.

Childhood is even now manifested in little treasures: a Christmas pocket knife, a rock from the beach, a few illicit firecrackers, coins, marbles, an old watch that doesn't work. The best pirate's treasure chest for these valuables is a cigar box, carefully hidden under the bed or in the back of a closet, away from snoopy siblings.

A wooden cigar box was equally useful in its parts for construction projects - wood and those tiny little brass nails. The sides suggested airplane wings, and often became such. The top and bottom could, with care, be split into spans useful for the cabins of aircraft, hulls of boats, or the bodies of cars. With glue and rubber bands and the tiny nails a child could cobble together something that, well, it looked like an airplane to the kid, and no other audience got a voice in the matter.

Children now carry bottled water and little plastic thingies that light up and make noise. If they want to make an airplane they call up a program on one of their little plastic thingies that light up and make noise, tap on its screen, and look passively at a flat image of an airplane. The computer program will even make the "Zoom! Zoom!" noises for them. Oh, well, at least they won't prick their little fingers with little brass nails.

And as for the cigars that came in little wooden boxes in the long ago: those of us of a certain generation remember our fathers, strong and lean, young survivors of the Depression and World War II, work-stained in overalls or khakis after a long day on the farm or in the refinery, leaning on the pasture fence and looking over the cows grazing, celebrating life with a gasper, far happier than we can imagine at the joy of simply being alive, of being able to raise a family, of being able to feed their children.

No longer rationed by desperate poverty or by whatever supplies survived the trip to the battlefront, they could enjoy more than three cigarettes a week; they could even splurge on that glorious, for-the-silk-hat-set-only luxury, a box of cigars. The cigars weren't very good, but that wasn't important. That there were cigars at all was the hard-won celebration for men who had not known much in the way of food or clothes or shoes in boyhood. To them, every cigar was a victory cigar.

They were men - may their eternities include their cigars; God knows they deserve them.

Mack Hall is a resident of Kirbyville

[OZCUBAN]

Ah those were the days

For me I have always found that Cigar boxes were always useful long after the CIgars were gone

OZ

[randomhero1090]

It's deeper than just cigar boxes. It society constant overreaction to...well...just about everything.

My children use them as picture boxes, crayon boxes...and yes, they have even taken them to school. Not a word has been said to any of my children, my wife or I. Now, I live in PA, we've had some laws passed about smoking in public, but nothing along the lines of other states. PA is pretty smoke friendly.

What cracks me up is the looks I get at bars, the local casino, couple other places that have smoking sections... I get these disgusting looks from people for smoking IN the smoking section. Ugh...

[Rogers72]

Great read! My children are lucky enough to have all of their goodies stored in gorgeous cigar boxes. All of my wife's friends fight over my cigar boxes for their children too. It's a great feeling to see this tradition carried on in my home and in my friends homes as it is certainly a rarity...i just have to remember to remove the little nails and the pictures of the little girl on the ventilator before I hand them over!

[bc8436]

i just have to remember to remove the little nails and the pictures of the little girl on the ventilator before I hand them over!

The cancer pictures gives me nightmares LOL. Time to invest in a hairdryer!

What cracks me up is the looks I get at bars, the local casino, couple other places that have smoking sections... I get these disgusting looks from people for smoking IN the smoking section. Ugh...

+1

Next time I'm at the local cigar lounge, I'll be sure to throw cigarette smokers dirty looks!

[PigFish]

One of my grandkids loves to play Risk. It is a warmongering board game! We use a RyJ Coronas box for the 80's and an Upmann box to roll the dice in. It keeps him from rolling the dice all over the board and rearranging the "men" in the process.

He insists on the Upmann box! I told him Churchill smoked Upmanns and he likes to side with a winner. No bullshit! -Piggy