Well, I can. Rather vividly. 1948. I was in my senior year in high school. I was sitting at the counter in a restaurant a half-block from school, along with a school friend, Curt Grant. Curt smoked. He talked me into trying one.

It didn't taste very good. I coughed a lot. I turned pea-green. I felt a bit nauseated. I don't know why I stuck with it, but I did. A few months later, I was smoking like a chimney.

But then, old geezer that I am notwithstanding, I have a satisfyingly tenacious memory.

I started singing folk songs in 1952. Once I got to singing here and there, I kept asking myself, "Okay, you sing. Your voice is your instrument. If you played the clarinet, would it make any kind of sense to blow hot smoke through your clarinet thirty or forty times a day!?? It's flamin' idiotic!!"

On June 19th, 1978, my 47th birthday. A warm, sunny day, sitting on John Dwyer's deck in Marysville, Washington, overlooking Puget Sound, I smoked my last three cigarettes. And gave my cigarette lighter to someone else there who smoked.

I haven't smoked since.

It was definitely a matter of choice, first to start smoking, then to quit.

Don Firth

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