Who Smokes Tiparillos? A Mystery in My Midst

 Early in the course of the Covid pandemic, I squeezed into my knee-high muck boots, donned a pair of latex gloves, snatched a trash bag and the pooper scooper (nicknamed Baby Jaws) and headed down to Dry Branch Creek.  The small stream runs through the middle of our neighborhood across a designated preserve jointly owned by the homeowners whose property backs up to said creek.  Many days I walk my dogs down the road built over the creek.  To the left is a thickly wooded area.  I hear the tinkle of water before I ever spot the rocks and ripples in the creek.  To the right is the envy of every kid who lives just outside the modest, yet highly desired subdivision of homes aptly named Sycamore Hills; a deep pool of water with a built in slate platform.  On these hot summer days, groups of four to six kids walk past my house with towels slung across their backs in varying states of undress.  They don’t live in the neighborhood, but I don’t want to spoil their fun, so I say nothing. I’ve thought about offering to pay their way into the community pool and tell them about the evils of run-off water into the seemingly clean creek.  The chlorine at Milligan Park Pool may burn your eyes, but the ingestion of water from Dry Branch could kill you.  I leave them be and pray no one gets sick or drowns.

So on this day of gear-donning, I set out to clean up the litter from trespassing teens and tykes as it accumulates in and around the creek.  I stomp around the shallow part and reach in as far as I can to grab paper cups and plastic wrappers with the black, metal claw.  By the time I finished, a 13 gallon trash bag was full of debris.  Good deed accomplished.  Now when I walk by, I look at the creek with pride and relief.  Littering is not cool, very unsightly and bad for the environment.

But alas; my joy is short-lived!  That same evening while walking my Boxer-mix ,Chloe, I spy a bevy of Tiparillo cigar butts lining the road.  This is directly across from where I picked the trash out of the creek.  I had many questions.  Who smokes, then litters the ground with the nasty butts?   Which house do they live in?  Are they all from the same person?  I was truly puzzled. As some things tend to move to the back of the train in my brain, I forgot about the butt collection, but later that week as I was walking in the opposite direction, I came upon several more of the white-tipped brown butts. Most likely the same culprit/culprits,  but a different location to throw off any ongoing investigations. 

This leads me to think someone is hiding the fact they smoke.  It might be a teenager not wanting to get caught.  Or could it be the businessman whose wife won’t let him smoke in the house? Or perhaps his kids would never let him live it down if they caught him puffing away. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a woman trying to hide her secret habit. Women and smoking have a tangled history. Back in the 1920s and ‘30s “Cigarette Girls”  in standard-issue skimpy garb wore boxes on ribbons tied around their necks and walked around bars and nightclubs selling cigarettes. Then in 1961, the Pinkerton Tobacco Company out of Kentucky developed the Tiparillo, a thin cigar designed to attract women. Who could forget the whispery voice of Edie Adams in the 1963 commercial swaying her way through a nightclub offering, “Cigars, cigarettes, Tiparillos?”  I was a pre-adolescent and still remember the black and white commercial glamorizing smoking. My best friend, Suzanne, and I even stole a cigarette from her dad on our last day of 8th grade (We choked on the inhale behind her garage.)  Then there were the magazine advertisements asking, Should a gentleman offer a Tiparillo to a lady? I blanch at the thought of how the ads sexualized women to sell these tiny death sticks to millions.

I have yet to see anyone smoking while walking in the neighborhood. I deduce it must happen after dark and they are possibly chain smoking.  How long does it take to smoke a Tiparillo down to the plastic white filter? The cost of one Tiparillo is about 80 cents but add in tobacco tax and state tax and we’re looking at roughly a dollar per.  They typically come in a pack of five or you can buy a box of 50 (10 packs with five each) online.  Getting closer . . . must be an adult who smokes these.  Or maybe a kid who pilfers from their parents’ stash.  OK, so it’s an adult; or maybe more than one adult.

Now the question becomes – why would an adult choose to chain smoke Tiparillos outside in two distinct areas at night?  Are they pacing as they smoke?  Is this where they go to think about things because their house is too noisy?  Why don’t they go into the woods where no one can see them?  Maybe they are afraid they will set the woods on fire.  Better yet, is there a stranger lurking in the neighborhood? 

Why does any of this matter?  Two years have gone by.  It is 2022 and a world I could not have imagined has become a reality.   I have so many questions.  How did we, as a people become so divided?  Why are children shooting into crowds and killing fellow humans? Why is the world so hot and on fire like the population that resides in it?  I ponder so many things.  SO many puzzles into the nature of people I thought I knew, now I’m not even sure I like.  Trying to figure out who smokes Tiparillos seems like a mystery I might be able to solve. 

Gwynn Wills is a former speech therapist, certified Amherst Writers and Artists workshop Affiliate and Leader and founder of The Calliope Writers Group. After growing up in Crawfordsville, her and her husband returned several years ago.