Butch Will Not Walk A Mile For A Camel!!

By: John “Butch” Dale

I sure did a lot of stupid things when I was growing up. At the age of four, I decided to shave and ran a razor blade through my cheek. When I was six, I loaded up Dad’s shotgun and fired off a round. When I was seven, I started up our truck, drove down a lane, and sheared off a running board and fender. At nine, I pretended I was Superman and jumped off the roof of the house and broke my foot. When I was eleven, I drank from a creek and became deathly ill. At twelve, I hit a golf ball into the back of my sister’s head and also knocked out the front window of our house. When I was thirteen, I shot my brother with my B-B gun. I could go on, but you get the idea…Ah yes, life’s little troubles.

However, the dumbest thing I ever did was smoking my first cigarette at age 17. I want to point out that I had tried chewing tobacco when I was fourteen…when some men left a pouch of Red Man in a hog barn they were building at our farm. Talk about dizzy…Whew! Also, as most of you baby boomers realize, it seemed like almost everybody smoked in the 1950s and ’60s. Dad smoked. Mom smoked. Aunts and uncles smoked. Teachers smoked. Doctors smoked. Men smoked at the elevator, in the drug store, restaurant, service station, and Legion hall. They smoked at the halftime of basketball games. While driving, discussing politics, working…you name it. In the Darlington pool hall, the smoke was so thick it was like a fog had settled in. Many women also smoked. A few teenagers…”the hoods”…smoked. A boy in my 5th grade class smoked. In fact, his nickname was “Smokey.”

I did listen to my coaches, however, and never smoked when I was a student at Darlington high school. I was tempted. One time I, along with two others, rode with another boy who had his own car to a track meet at Waynetown. On the way back, the driver, who had been smoking since he was 13, lit up a Winston cigarette, and held the pack out to us. My two buddies took him up on the offer. I considered it, but declined. Just as the three of them were puffing away, our track coach passed us in his car and glanced over…OOPS! He was waiting for us when we arrived back at the school. My three friends admitted they had been smoking, and they vouched that I had not. All three lost their letters in track that spring!

I graduated in May of 1966. School and athletics were over. Time to light up! Better start out with something mild. I bought a pack of Lark cigarettes, which had a charcoal filter…supposedly to cut down on tar and nicotine. Coughs, dizziness, light-headed feeling, burning lungs…I made it through…I’m a man! When I started Purdue, I soon progressed to Tareytons, whose slogan was “I’d rather fight than switch.” But Marlboros said “Come to where the flavor is.” So I switched, and by the time I reached my senior year in college, I was smoking a pack a day.

As a junior high teacher and coach, however, I cut way back, as the only time I could light up during school hours was during morning break in the teacher’s lounge. Then in 1977, I switched occupations and became a deputy sheriff. It is surprising what police work and stress will do to a person. I became a daily pack and a half smoker in no time. Sometimes more if there was a tense situation, fatality, or overtime duty. My Dad died at the age of 66 in 1991…a heart attack from smoking. But that didn’t stop me. I was addicted.

When I began working a second job at the library in addition to my police job, it soon became two packs a day. And after being elected Sheriff in 1994, it progressed to nearly three packs a day. Not good. I tried switching to cigars…no luck. On a trip to Utah to pick up a person wanted on a warrant, I drove 42 hours non-stop there and back. During the trip I smoked seven packs of cigarettes. When I returned that afternoon, I started coughing up blood while conducting a Sheriff’s sale. Even that didn’t stop me from smoking! On three occasions, while sitting next to a person who had a gun to their head and was threatening suicide, each time I smoked almost an entire pack before they handed over the gun. But when I retired from the Sheriff’s department, the stress was off. By that time I looked terrible. I was constantly out of breath. It took me about a year to recover my health. On September 18, 2000…I decided to quit for good…cold turkey. Thirty-five years of smoking was enough. I have not smoked since then. I feel better now at age 74 than when I did at age 51. Just like the Virginia Slims slogan…”I’ve come a long way, baby.”

What human being thought that inhaling the smoke of burning tobacco leaves would be a good thing? Maybe it was, as historians point out, the Mayan Indians, followed by Native American Indians. We gave them cholera and smallpox…so they gave us Lucky Strikes. They’ve got to be smiling and thinking “Revenge is sweet!”

– John “Butch” Dale is a retired teacher and County Sheriff. He has also been the librarian at Darlington the past 32 years, and is a well-known artist and author of local history.