Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Trendy Appetite Suppressant

Week in and week out, you just know this column would be much livelier if I smoked cigars. That is, if I were the type of guy who already smoked cigars.

See, it’s not that stogies would improve my writing--it’s just that, were I the type who smoked cigars in the first place, I’d be more interesting. I’d have been more places, done more things and would spin better yarns. That’s why it would do me no good to start smoking them now. That would just be a contrivance. No, my lot was cast long ago. You either are a cigar man or you’re not.

I had my chance while in college and away from home for the first time. My roommate laid some Swisher Sweets on the table, and we tee-heed our way through a few of them. It was the closest we came to contraband. I puffed away, equating speed with finesse, and proceeded only to lose my appetite for several days. I never smoked another one, seemingly content with my ordinariness.

My uncle, on the other hand, was a cigar man way back when, and he hung out at a south Omaha bar called the Brown Derby. These were the days before guys went into bars to watch sports highlights. In those days, they went there to drink, smoke and see who could tell the funniest stories.

In an extended family that was pretty mainstream, my uncle was a character. He was the kind of guy who told jokes but began weeping with laughter just this side of the punch line. He became so unintelligible you sort of guessed at the gag and laughed, just to make him feel good. He sold sporting goods for a living, so being a raconteur was a job skill.

But the tip-off that something different was cooking at his house was that his three teen-age kids always called him by his first name. That always seemed bizarre, but I never had the nerve to ask my cousins why they did it.

Through it all, though, was his cigar. He always had one, but I didn’t see much of him because I don’t think my mother allowed cigars in the house. Which only added to my uncle’s mystery.

Thoughts of Swisher Sweets and my uncle come back today after seeing that Newsweek magazine has discovered a cigar trend. According to the magazine, cigar-smoking is on the rise--a trend spotted by other publications quite some time ago.

Still, there seems little doubt that cigars are smokin’ in the public’s eye. That leads me to believe there must be a lot of pretenders out there, a lot of people who are smoking cigars who shouldn’t be. To me, nothing looks dumber than someone smoking a cigar who doesn’t look the part.

I wanted Marc Barton to agree with me, but he wouldn’t. He sells cigars out of the Smoke Shack at Hi-Time Cellars in Costa Mesa, but he refused to say that it takes a special savoir-faire to smoke cigars.

He did say, though, that the cigar-smoking trend of the last couple years is holding its own.

“There’s probably not as many new people picking it up, but those that did are still smoking,” Barton said Tuesday afternoon when I talked to him at work. “We’ve got people who are coming in now just because they enjoy it. They may have started because of the trend, but now they’re really starting to enjoy smoking and are finding out what type of cigar they like.”

There’s nothing like a cigar to separate the men from the boys or the women from the girls. The cheapest cigar in Barton’s store goes for 95 cents--right in my price range. The most expensive, a Davidoff Aniversario, will set you back $25. I suppose it’s the difference between Kentucky Fried Chicken and lobster, but I probably couldn’t tell the difference between a world-class stogie and a wet White Owl.

Not that it matters, I guess. I know what I am, and a cigar-smoker I am not. I’ve smoked a few over the years, usually when friends had babies. Still an excellent appetite suppressant for me. Maybe I’ll light one up on Jan. 1, 2000, just to get the century off to a good start.

As for everyone else, I’m hoping the cigar trend dissipates. Cigars shouldn’t be trendy. They shouldn’t be available to every pretender who thinks that a cigar makes him or her chic. Maybe it should be like trying on clothes; you try on a cigar in the presence of a professional and if you look like an idiot with one in your mouth, you don’t get to buy it. Here, have a cigarette instead.

Now, my uncle. There was a guy who could smoke one. There was a guy who was born with one in his mouth.

In the best real-man tradition, he didn’t need no stinkin’ trend: He had his cigar.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.