Coffin Nails

I’m now almost ten years older than my father was when he died from a heart attack and emphysema caused by 50 years of smoking Camel cigarettes.

He was one of those guys who always looked debonair with a cigarette in his hand. There was something about the way he held the cigarette between his fingers with his wrist at a jaunty angle. Some other men and a few women could pull off that casual but elegant pose, but most of them died young like my father.

Because I wanted to be like him, I started smoking Camels at fifteen. Full of teenage bravado,I called them coffin nails.

My children shamed me into quitting after learning in school about the dangers of smoking. “Stop smoking, Daddy. We don’t want you to die,” they pleaded. And it worked.

That’s probably why I’m almost ten years older than my father was when he died.