When I was a lad my cousin Mark and I would sit in the back seat of his parents car parked in their driveway. We would make believe we were fat cats  and smoke giant cigars we made by rolling up  magazines, probably the Weekly Readers we were suppose to be reading. I don’t think we imagined ourselves oil barons or Wall Street tycoons, what we did didn’t matter. It was all about smoking our big fat cigars and tell our imaginary chauffeur—who we unimaginatively called Jeeves— to take us to the airport; it was the 60s and we were jet-setters.

Well, my cousin Mark never became a smoker, but I did. I only smoked a cigar once or twice and it made me horribly sick; I liked to inhale. I liked cigarettes. I quit quite a few years ago, though the cravings have never vanished. I have taken up growing tobacco, not just the ornamental nicotianas, but smoking tobacco: Oneida, Louisiana Pirogue and Hopi. Michael won’t let me grow it in the green house with the tomatoes  because it is a vector for tomato-tobacco mosaic virus .He doesn’t want me to start smoking again, either. But still it try for cryptic homeopathic reasons I grow tobacco.

Now the Snoqualmie Valley is not the best place to grow tobacco. Not enough heat. So last year when my tobacco got a foot tall I got pretty excited.  I cured it under our deck, where it is as shady and drafty as a tobacco shed, put a few crumbs in a pipe and smoked it. It was tobacco, all right, with all bite, cough and buzz of anything I’ve ever bought. And the dangerously addictive message: “smoke more”. I didn’t. Tobacco with all its stinky pleasures and toxic warnings is behind me now.

Still I have a cigar. It’s a 42 year old cigar in a cellophane wrapper with the pink words “It’s a Girl” printed on it. I was 12 when my step-father handed me that celebratory cigar, my youngest sister had just been born. I can’t imagine anyone acting like a fat cat and giving out cigars at the birth of a child anymore, seems quaintly uninformed in these health vigilant times. Remember when the cigarettes were behind the cashier at the local grocery store?

Last week I was in the grocery store when the September/October issue of Fine Gardening magazine hit the news stands. I bought a stack. As I checked out the clerk asked, ‘ Why are you buying so many of the same magazine?”

“That garden on the cover, I designed it, and I’m going to hand these out to all my friends,” I said, new-father-proud.

I hope they don’t smoke them.