Stogies

Yesterday I wrote about pipe smoking and how pipe tobacco smelled good as opposed to the smoke of the cigarette and cigar. Well my father was a cigar smoker as well. Any character he built with his pipe was completely removed when he lit a stogie.

I know that the word stogie is associated with all cigars, but its true meaning describes only one type of cigar, the short Italian smoke the goes by the name of DeNobli. There are a few other brands as seen in the photo above. One which was his favorite, Polumbo, is not pictured above.

These cigars aren’t those big fat round mouth turds that you would associate Bill Clinton or Winston Churchill. Instead they look more like round beef jerky sticks, like small Slim Jims, but bumpier and more wiggly. I think it’s the same type that Clint Eastwood chewed on in his Western films.

Anyway these stogies really smelled bad. They had a pungent yet more so acrid punch to them. They were really bad if you smelled them in a house or in a car. Somehow they didn’t smell that bad when smoked outside.

My memories of my father smoking his Polumbos come best to mind when I remember fishing on a mosquito ridden Canadian lake. It was always nice to be down wind of him because the mosquitoes would avoid that smoke like it meant instant death to them.

Ironically my father lived the last fifteen years of his life in a wheel chair due to a bout of encephalitis which was more than likely caused by a mosquito bite on that Canadian lake. He couldn't smoke those damn things all the time.

My brother and I once tried to relive our youth by visiting that lake in Canada. It was mid summer yet the mosquitoes were still very abundant like they usually were in the spring. We were fishing behind this island as evening approached. Suddenly we could hear the sound of mosquitoes on the wing and a cloud formed over a swampy area near by. They were coming our way.

I opened my tackle box and my brother watched in amazement when I pulled out a red and white box of Polumbos. We lit them and continued fishing until it got dark. We toasted our father who would have been delighted by the tribute. Not one mosquito bothered us that evening.