I remember the ads, the hard sell. I remember my father, so addicted to nicotine he kept smoking after having a lung removed. I remember the hard sell and shilling by the actors in a show; product placement today has nothing on Fred and Wilma touting cigarettes.

The people bitching about loss of rights because we dump on cigarettes? Most of them can’t believe cigarette smoke is that dangerous, the rest hate the fact they were stupid enough to believe the tobacco companies.

And amen on the education issue, Russ. We may part ways on a few issues, but not that one.

Francine, great story. What did you do next?

My accounts were Chase and Sanborn coffee, Preparation H and Singer Sewing Machine, and my account exec actually WAS a woman, who was given those accounts because she was female and they were the worst accounts in the office.. She had yellow fingers from nicotine stains and had to wear gloves to meetings because of her nervous excsema.

I quit that job on the day Kennedy was assassinated, when I found myself at the top of 30 Rock delivering a package (yes, I was also a messenger) to a Singer Sewing Machine exec.

I knew that something was wrong with the entire structure on that day.

Separately, I notice that we’ve mostly gotten rid of all the bullet-ed idiocies except the last two. Who in their right mind ever thought it would be a good idea to trust our children’s education to the government?

I wonder where I can get a tattoo this time of the morning?

Doc’s right, “Smoking and drinking were standard back then. “Widespread” doesn’t cover it. They were nearly universal.”

I came of age in the 1950s, before Doc, and for many years had a fond association with the smell of cigarette smoke because it reminded me of my gentle and loving father. But I fortunately never became addicted to tobacco because my now husband, who became the major force in my life 55 years ago, hated the nastiness of stale ashtrays, etc., that permeated his home as he grew up. He never smoked a single cigarette in a time when everybody did, and his influence saved me. Both his parents died of smoking related illnesses, as did my father. There is a history of debilitating alcoholism in both my own and my husband’s family that caused us to avoid drinking in our youth and partake moderately since.