This is going to make me sound really old but when I was in kindergarten we had pencil boxes.  All the other kids had yellow ones with school supply type things on them; mine was a King Edward’s cigar box.  I was never embarrassed; I loved the smell because it reminded me of my father.  There used to be a pipe store in the mall with the most wonderful aromas that were part of my earliest childhood memories.  They carry with them feelings of love and comfort.  Cigars are a rare indulgence for me but when I enjoy one it brings it all back.  I see big ash trays and remember watching Carol Burnett on Daddy’s lap.  I remember walking in restaurants where the first question was “Smoking or non?” and we always chose non-smoking because my father did not smoke cigarettes.  Interestingly, the word “cigarettes” comes from the French and was derived when peasants used to gather up tobacco discarded from the gentry.  They used to roll the remnants into “little cigars,” or cigarettes.  I love a cigar on a warm summer night but perhaps even more so on a crisp winter one.  Look at that plume of smoke in the background.  I limit myself to robustos these days (a shorter cigar) rather than Churchillls, the very long ones named after Great Britain’s former Prime Minister, who favored them.  Sir Winston Churchill once said:

“Smoking cigars is like falling in love.  First, you are attracted by its shape; you stay for its flavour, and you must always remember never, never to let the flame go out!”

On a primal level I suppose that’s part of why I enjoy them.  They bring back my daddy to me in those quiet moments filled with wreaths of smoke floating in the air and the rich scent of tobacco enveloping me like a warm blanket.  They remind me of huge, dark red hands, jet black hair, and the bluest eyes I have ever seen.  I will never, never let the flame go out; it brings the past present.