He started with homegrown tobacco and at the ripe old age of five, he was allowed to smoke in the house. When I was a young child he smoked Lucky Strike; a brand nearly forgotten now. Later I remember Pall Mall, and last of all L & M.
After his heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery, he quit smoking, but not long after he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Doctors removed the lower portion of one lung and with it the entire tumor. They gave him the good news and told him he’d be fine. Hooray!
However, the cancer reared its ugly head with a vengeance about a year later in the form of a tumor in the center of his chest where the lungs join. In that area it’s inoperable and because he’d had heart problems, chemo wasn’t an option. He was given radiation treatments and eighteen months to three years to live. He lived three years and died in 1990. It was a horrific sight during the last week as he bit his own mouth from the waves of pain until his mouth bled.
He was my Daddy. Our two oldest children barely remember him. Our youngest never met him. None of his great-grandchildren ever met him. He was young enough to still be living today. It wasn’t at all “kool”.
Paul MacCready, Jr. said, “Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible or even sinful that you burned up a gallon of gasoline to fetch a pack of cigarettes.”, but they won’t. They won’t even know who you were.
— filed under sagegrass because i said that