Smokers 1
- Miguel Fernández
- Jul 2
- 5 min read
1988jan, coast-to-coast
It was Dec 1987 and he went to spend the end of the year at his brother’s house in El Cerrito, next to Berkeley, California, where his brother was doing a “post-doc” in thermodynamics. Christmas was spent in Lake Tahoe. Remember the Bonanza film series? It was set there.
On Dec 23, he watched, with his brother and their wives, a live performance by the masterful Ray Charles. With the women, that is a figure of speech. His sister-in-law decided to feel sick during Ray Charles’s performance, claiming emotion and the thin air of the altitude, and ended up in the infirmary, in the underground levels of the casino theater, without anyone being willing to keep her company, a matter that is still a reason for mockery to this day. In fact, his sister-in-law made quite an effort to draw attention there; she was also stopped by the police and fined for driving below the minimum speed limit allowed. We had never heard of that possibility. Live and learn.
Shortly before that time, the campaigns against smoking began.
In casinos it was allowed, in restaurants it depended on the state and on the restaurant, on airplanes it depended on the companies’ policy, and so on.
It was then that he learned he had obtained a professional meeting for Jan 08, 1988, in New Jersey, on the other side of the USA, and needed to book his ticket for Jan 07. These coast-to-coast flights (Pacific-Atlantic), in this case San Francisco – Newark, are long, about 7 hours. From what he remembers, he flew AA (American Airlines) and chose a smoking flight, that is, one on which smoking was allowed on board.
There were 4 systems at that time of transition:
01_ the flight was entirely smoking and one smoked throughout the whole airplane, all the time after takeoff and after reaching cruising altitude.
02_ the flight was half-and-half, smokers were allocated in the rear part of the airplane and the front was for non-smokers,
03_ there was a smoking area on board (an option that was only seen for Europe), opened after the service was over, and so many people went to smoke in the permitted places that it ended up causing problems and disappeared, but smokers appreciated it very much because it seemed that all smokers had known one another for a long time.
04_ non-smoking flight
He received the ticket with the reservation, clearly indicating: “smoking flight, aisle seat, in the first row of smokers, on the starboard side of the aircraft”, all as requested and agreed.
Upon boarding, on the morning of a Monday, surprise: a sign informing that the flight was “non-smoking”. He noticed some complaints from other passengers, all Americans, but understood that the flight would be of the half-and-half type.
The airplane took off, reached cruising altitude and speed, the flight attendants were about to begin serving the snack, and nothing of the no-smoking lights being turned off.
Since they were in the USA, where individual rights and duties are very much demanded and respected, many complaints began from the smokers, and the tone started rising. And our friend there, thinking to himself, as a tourist, was not going to get involved and challenge the local crowd, especially he, who only smoked socially, since he was 16, with a pack lasting 3 days on average; it would not be a great sacrifice to remain that flight without smoking.
A sad mistake of his; the fellow smokers embarrassed him into putting a cigarette in his mouth, still unlit. Immediately afterwards, a “leader of the smokers” stood up, instantly followed by another passenger who placed himself as leader of the non-smokers, the two face-to-face, in the aisle, exactly where he was seated. Very unlucky; even the saliva that came out of the exalted mouths was already reaching him, when the airplane captain came to see what was happening and the situation became complicated.
The captain informed them that the instructions he had said that the flight was non-smoking. And the smokers showed the tickets saying the opposite, our friend already worried about the mutiny.
_ That is all that was missing, to leave Brazil and come die here, in an air accident, for a reason like this.
The discussion grew harsher and went from bad to worse, when the leader of the smokers said something that made everyone laugh and lit the cigarette in the captain’s face, followed instantly by all the smokers, except the Brazilian.
The captain retreated to the cockpit and the leader of the non-smokers, following him, went back to sit in his place, from where he should not have left, with a humiliated face.
The Brazilian’s English did not know, until then, that “to fart” was “peidar”, but no one needed to explain it to him; everyone had smelled the horrible odor, certainly coming from the leader of the non-smokers (what had he eaten?!), and the “leader of the smokers” had said to the captain:
_ If you forbid farting, we will not smoke.
And he lit the cigarette in his face.
For about 15 to 20 seconds, the Brazilian did not smoke, but all the smokers, still laughing, wanted to light his cigarette. It was inevitable and less dangerous to light the cigarette at once. It seems that never had so much been smoked on an airplane. Much less with the no-smoking lights on.
Arriving at Newark airport, upon docking at the “jet bridge”, the police entered, came down the aisle to the dividing line between smokers and non-smokers and said something like:
_ From here back, no one leaves.
That’s it, thought the Brazilian, I am going to lose the trip. But he did not need to open his mouth; all the smokers, about 40, or more, people who had never seen one another before, vehemently interceded for the Brazilian:
_ He did not want to smoke, he is a tourist, we were the ones who forced him.
That was moving; he had never had such a strong feeling of belonging to a group. People he barely knew, who had only in common with him the fact that they smoked and, suddenly, saw themselves jointly as criminals, in a certain way risking themselves to defend a foreign tourist. A lesson in psychology.
However, everyone had already noticed that the two police officers had packs of cigarettes in their pockets and did not say another word. They waited for the crew and the non-smokers to leave, counted about 5 to 10 minutes (what an eternity) and, without saying anything, made a sign that they could go, in silence.
How much good sense from the police officers. He remembered to go back and leave a whole pack of “Hollywood Souza-Cruz” for the men of the law, who did not want to accept it, but his smile must have been so radiant that it would have been mean not to accept the “Brazilian cigarette”. And so it was.
He arrived at baggage claim and, before the incredulous and disappointed-frustrated gaze of the non-smokers who were still at the luggage carousel, picked up his small suitcase and went to meet the engineer and colleague Goldblatt, who was waiting for him at the exit, as agreed.
Comments