Smoking in the Chicken Coop

When I was in high school, I got caught smoking in the boy’s room. This earned a week of detention and a butt burner from the principal who was a good friend of mine. Trouble from smoking followed me from an early age.

I grew up across the street from a family farm that once provided fresh milk, meat, fruit, and vegetables for the owners and a few neighbors. When age and too hard work slowed the pace, the place fell to disarray and the buildings invited and provided adventures and mischief for me. A pack of cigarettes cost 25 cents back then, but they were hard to come by for a penniless nine-year-old and his band of mischief-makers and bad-hats. At one time serving as food and bedding for the livestock, wheat straw that looked a lot like a cigarette was plentiful on the farm, and nowhere more abundant or dry than on the floor of the old chicken coop.