Considering that the original premise of this series of columns was the relative scarcity of postcards showing people indulging in tobacco, compared to movies and TV shows of the same era, we have been showing off examples for a while now. But I maintain my original opinion. Joe Friday or Paul Drake probably lit up more times in one episode of their respective shows than I have postcards showing a similar scene. If we had studied, say, drinking during the same era, the number of postcards might well have rivaled the examples on screen. (My earliest cocktail joke on a postcard, for example, goes back to about 1907, and the…no, we will not start what would probably develop into a twenty-part series.)
Smoking, in these scenes from bygone days, was a part of other experiences. Men enjoyed a cigar after a meal, for example. (Hey, remember when people smoked in restaurants? How about when you could eat lunch in a joint with waiters and tablecloths and satisfy the waiter afterward with a single silver coin? Yeah, me neither.)
Even at home, a man might settle in after dinner with tobacco and something to read. This was before we had phones where you could scroll to a saucy picture without your spouse noticing.
And there is one part of the daily routine even more associated with a quick smoke.
Maybe this was a remnant of places and times when smoking in public was outlawed. Or perhaps it deals with what was sometimes the only moment of peace during a long workday.
Certainly, a fellow could smoke all the time while on vacation. (Hey, are these the same two chaps who were second and third in line at the outhouse, after they retired and headed for the beach?)
Children did not have the same nine to five jobs, so one is a little startled to find them pausing for a puff. In this case, of course, it’s a cultural thing, as mentioned hereintofore. The Dutch (and/or Germans; American didn’t always distinguish) had to have their pipes.
The cultural disposition to tobacco might even apply in this case, where the protagonist is much younger. A cigar just went with a top hat in the minds of many cartoonists.
But, as we shall see in our next (and possibly final) column on the subject, not everybody was a supporter of the “Nicotine Fiends”. Why does this postcard demonstrate our point? Well, you remember the old joke about the locomotive who denied up and down that HE smoked tobacco. “I choo,” he insisted.
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