Just before Christmas, I said good-bye to a lovely former stewardess, who flew for the Air Force when smoking was permitted on Air Force planes and the cabins were full of smoke.
Her last words to me were "Nicotine begins killing your once-pink lungs."
Then came a phone call came from my brother's wonderful wife, the mother of many Irish children. She said: "Why didn't I listen to you ... when you said 'When you smoke cigarettes or cigars, you are on the nicotine drug ... you are on drugs, just like you are telling your children to stay off drugs.' "
These two precious people are now buried, and their children are devastated.
Yesterday, the 6-foot renter next door, with a boat and big white truck, began smoking up and down the driveway while engaging someone's young daughter in the art of smoking.
When they came over to my driveway, I began coughing profusely from the smoke that was still on their clothes.
I told the young girl he was filling her lungs with secondhand smoke and teaching her that it was cool for her to do the same.
He pulled her away for fear that she would listen to me and learn that intelligent people do not have to smoke to be cool.
Now we have Tristan Piano, owner of Casillas hand-rolled cigars on 333 Merchant St., offering a couch, TV and a room filled with secondhand smoke for young people ("Casillas Cigars offers casual setting to savor a smoke," Feb. 8). Remember, secondhand smoke coming from the leaves of South
America or anywhere else was banned in the cabins of Air Force planes because it was giving people emphysema and other lung diseases.
But now this store has been approved and its owner is happy to be drawing a crowd from those who turn out to hear the rock 'n' roll bands at nearby bars.
I am very proud of our police force and what they are doing for youth and how they patrol the park on Friday nights.
It is an outward disgrace that this owner is a police officer from Sacramento who admits that a cigar contains much more nicotine than a cigarette filled with Dominican, Honduras and Nicaraguan tobacco and wrapped in Cameroon and Maduro leaves.
It is a known fact that the growers try to put more things in cigarettes and cigars to get people addicted so they cannot quit ... like the kid next door.
Anyone who has grieved over deaths caused by secondhand smoke: Please don't just let this happen any longer.