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It was just a joke

 

What I’m getting ready to tell you happened to me! Really! It’s a strange little story, but true!

During the years of 1958-1962, I served in the United States Air Force. I was stationed in New Jersey and my parents lived in Louisiana. Somewhere around 1959, I got 2-weeks leave to go home and visit my family. I caught a train (people actually traveled by train back then) connected with a Trailways bus (also viable transportation back then that didn’t cost much) and was making my way home. I smoked Marlboro cigarettes at the time, a lot of us young servicemen did back then. It made us feel like cool adults…at 19 appearing cool and grown-up was pretty important!

Somewhere along the way, while on the train, I needed a “smoke.” Smoking while in the passenger cars was not permitted. Trains back then had “smoking-allowed” cars towards the back of the train. Standing between the cars was another option if you wanted to light up a cigarette. Doing so was a bit scary though – it was real, noisy and the cars rocked back and forth a lot under your feet! The doors between cars usually had a window that was the top half of the heavy-steel door, and it would be swung open and latched to stay open. It was loud, windy and a little scary to stand in between the train cars, but you could smoke there if you wanted to.

At this time, between the cars, I had braced myself against the door with the opened window, dragging on my newly improved, filtered Marlboro cigarette, when a young sailor, also in his service uniform, joined me in this hazardous, smoking-allowed, crazy place. We said hello and discussed where we were based and where we were headed. The young sailor was without smokes so he asked if I had one. I told him sure and pumped up one from my pack and he took it. “I don’t have a light either.” He revealed. I got my shiny metal Ronson lighter out of my pocket and offered it to him. He flipped it open and struck up the ever-reliable flame lighting his smoke. Then he did something I’ll never forget or have any explanation for! He closed the lighter’s lid and tossed it out the open window, just as we were crossing a big steel bridge over the mighty Mississippi! I don’t remember which state we were in. But, WHAT? Why did this sailor punk throw MY shiny, Ronson-lighter out the window of this jostling, screaming, fast train? I will never know! Really weird!

Stunned and not knowing if I should throw him out the window too or just accept this weird moment in my life. I did ask him why he did it. He just said, “It was just a joke man, can’t you take a joke?”

Oh well, life has its moments, doesn’t it? I have learned over the years, some of these moments, we just let them go, and find something about them we can laugh about. We'll have something odd to tell our family and friends about. I am telling you now.

By the way, I quit smoking not long after that!

 

 

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