I’m sitting here smoking a big ole Padron Cigar, and lovin’ every second of it.  Padron is a Nicaraguan brand.  The family left Cuba in the 60s, took what they knew, and a bunch of seed, and set up shop making a great cigar elsewhere.  But make no mistake, they hold to the Cuban tradition and, I would guess, go back in a second if they could.  On the paper ring of each Padron cigar is a little map of Cuba.  What’s that tell you?

I’m a Tampa boy; I grew up loving cigars.  Some of the best cigars in the world were made in Tampa between 1885 and 1950 or so, not so much after that.  My old man was a cigar smoker; good enough for me.  He would smoke them driving in the car with the windows rolled up.  That’ll get you acclimated; or addicted.  Take your pick.  That’s me up there, 1967, or so, in my grandfather’s house in Tampa, getting ready to stick my head out the window with this beautiful stogie in my teeth.  I used to smoke cigars under the table at Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City when I was seven or eight; and later played Canasta with Baby Siconi and the Trafficanti boys (sore losers.)  Cuban coffee all night and hit fifth grade in the morning with a butt still in my teeth.

I laid off in high school to run track for a while, but picked it up again in college, along with Camels, an admittedly poor substitute, but a good buzz, until something better came along. I became a musician, sticking the cigarette when I played, up in the gears above the nut.  Very cool.  A smoke would last about a song and a half that way, then you’d light another, puff it a little between tunes, then stick it up in the strings again.  No great harm.

Here’s the point: and I will hold to this tooth and nail as long as I live– the greatest feeling in the world, better than food, sex, sunsets, sunrises, babies, puppies, drinking, not drinking– is finding a cigarette in the corner of a pack you were certain was empty.  Say what you will, you don’t have anything to compare with that, but that.  If you don’t have that, you’ve missed something big.

But I’ve given that up, and I miss it.  Siding with caution for years now, it’s just the occasional cigar in the open so as not to offend the sensitive.  Padron, Fuente, Cohiba; tropical breezes and the sound of surf; a little gin and tonic to hold off the malaria; cigar smoke runs deep and sweet; generations of images.  It goes with the territory.  No apologies.