Let's step back in time and step inside a typical home of the 1960's.
We'll use my modest Miami, Oklahoma dwelling, of course. It was a 1950's era tract home sitting on a modestly traveled street. Very typical of what WWII veterans were raising families in.
If you have time-traveled from the 21st century, the first thing you will notice when you step through my front door (three small staggered vertical windows placed at adult-viewing level) is a pervading odor of stale cigarette smoke.
If you see me sitting on the carpet, playing with a pile of toys, please note that I am completely oblivious to the odor. Second-hand smoke was a fact of life for a kid of the 60's, completely unnoticed.
You will also spot a variety of smoker's accessories. These include ash trays of various shapes and sizes, as well as desktop cigarette lighters. No properly-furnished 1960's dwelling would be complete without them. Even if it turned out that the owners didn't smoke, odds are that any guests who came over would. It would be an ungracious host indeed who didn't provide an ashtray for a visitor.
Ashtrays and desktop lighters were ubiquitous home furnishings that could be found in an amazing variety of shapes and sizes. Some gadgets, such as the depicted hand grenade model, consisted of both a lighter and ashtray when separated. The image of the brass, hand-decorated Indian ashtrays seen to the right spurred childhood memories for me. We had one of the "sultan's shoes" sitting on the coffee table, and it was transformed into a speedboat when pushed across the carpeted floor. I must have spent hours sliding that little shoe around making appropriate motorboat noises.
Mom tolerated me playing with ornamental ashtrays, but desktop lighters were strictly hands-off, of course.
Naturally, that didn't stop me from playing with them when mom wasn't around.
It's difficult to effectively stress to today's younger generations just how deeply smoking was embedded into 1960's society. Every restaurant had an ashtray at every table. Hotel and motel rooms featured cheap ones, the assumption being that guests would likely make off with them. Grocery stores would feature a free-standing ashtray at each front door, placed there in the hope that you would finish your cigarette before grabbing a cart.
Cars had ashtrays on back seat armrests, and perhaps another one that pulled out of the back of the front bench seat.
Floor-standing ashtrays were found in banks, hospitals, churches, school gymnasiums, stores, and office buildings. Sitting before the desk of a doctor, lawyer, or insurance salesman would mean that there was an ashtray or ashtray/lighter combo within your reach.
Mom's weekly visit to the beauty shop would mean that she would grab a small ashtray from a collection on a desk and carry it with her as she went from shampooing to sitting under a huge hair dryer. My own visits to the barber shop would be accompanied by the patrons in line using a couple of community trays, and the barber having his own personal model, right next to the jar full of blue Barbacide.
Mom gave up the habit about 1970, and got rid of all of the smoking paraphernalia around the house. That meant that Aunt Marjorie and Uncle Russell would have to use a small saucer during their visits.
Nowadays, of course, smoking is looked upon as a vice. No self-respecting smoker would dream of lighting up in someone's home without express permission from the host. Isn't it interesting that forty years ago, the shoe was on the other foot? It would have been considered the height of ill-mannerliness to fail to provide the smoking guest with all of the appropriate accessories for his/her use.
Comments (8)
My parents both used to smoke and they had several large glass ashtrays which were inserted as liners in wooden holders one was a ship’s wheel with spokes and another with a carved scene of Duke University Chapel visible underneath the glass. There also was a garish oval pearlized (ersatz not nacre) felt based Ronson table lighter which must have weighed close to a pound (the business end of the lighter was this tiny round removable reservoir which held less fluid than a Zippo and whose diameter was about an inch and about a half inch deep. I also was forbidden to light it, but would attempt to operate it while unattended (the hinged lever mechanism which lifted the snuffer and rotated the flint striker was unreliable and difficult to ignite the wick.)
As smoking was the norm in my house, I started pinching Lucky Strikes from my mother at 8 years old – she would leave them out on the table so they were easier to pilfer than my father’s Camels which I preferred but were mostly kept in his shirt pocket. (I used to be sent with a quarter when I was barely 5 or 6 to the corner store and purchase a pack for either parent – I don’t know if tobacco sales to minors were proscribed by statute at the time but no questions were asked.)
My mother smoked during both her pregnancies while carrying me and my sister and continued this nasty habit until I was about 9. My father smoked 2 packs a day and quit when he was 45 and I was 16 (he’s now 89 and with the exception of a sextuple bypass – none the worse for it, my mother now 85 lost a lung to cancer in 1982.)
I smoked until I was 20 and gave it up when it became apparent that my lung capacity and stamina were diminishing but during my bohemian wanderings, I was grateful for those tall sand filled public ashtrays in hotel lobbies and other venues, as they provided nearly perfect butts (no stubbing necessary to extinguish the coal) which assuaged my addiction for the paltry price of a pack of papers (Zig-Zag, 78 leaves for a quarter.) I would break off the dottle (burnt tip) and shred a couple of butts into the paper and roll a satisfying thin smoke which was often mistaken for a joint.
Today, I find smoking a noxious and filthy pastime but my libertarian streak recoils at the thought of controlling others predilections except to ask politely that my personal airspace be not violated by their puffed penumbrae of poisonous polluting products.
Posted by Burt | March 5, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted on March 5, 2009 19:00
What memories. I can still remember my mom's hair all done up and frosted and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. I will be 50 next month and remember trying it when I was 18 but it never appealed to me, thank goodness. Here is my 72 year old dad not even trying to kick the habit he is so hooked. Mom did cold turkey years ago. Now dad goes out to smoke when my kids are there. Not so back when I was a kid in the 60s! Thanks for some memories.........
Posted by Deborah Larkin | March 6, 2009 9:23 AM
Posted on March 6, 2009 09:23
My head is still spinning because I just got back from a trip in a time machine. I took one look at that little brass shoe and was transported back to 1962 when I would watch you play with that shoe. I was just about to get my driver's license and life was good. Good article!
Posted by Terry Enderland | March 6, 2009 9:40 AM
Posted on March 6, 2009 09:40
I remember those little brass shoes! And in crafts classes, one of your projects would always be making an ashtray to take home (ceramic, or mosaic, or whatever the craft of the moment happened to be.)
Posted by Kitty | March 7, 2009 8:04 PM
Posted on March 7, 2009 20:04
Ah yes! Dad was a two pack a day smoker! And yes, we had the pedestal ashtray and the glass ash trays too! And can't forget the paper match books laying all around. Of course as kids, we enjoyed lighting a match book off in flames. One of the glass ash trays was on the coffee table next to the Black panther ceramic figurine. Another 60s item! Dad was a Marlboro and a Kool smoker! Smoke didn't bother me back then? Never really thought about it. One In an age that smoking was accepted, my dad and mom threatened us not to try smoking. It worked! We might get paddled by one of those old Paddles with the rubber Ball? For a while, dad took up the pipe in the 60s. Cigars were a non issue. Little sister as a very young child would try and eat the ashes in the tray! Yuck oooh! I do remember the occassional metal refillable lighter, but dad used matches mostly. One of my Halloween costumes in the 60s was of a Box of KOOL cigerettes!
Posted by Riversend | March 10, 2009 6:47 PM
Posted on March 10, 2009 18:47
I remember a certain ashtray that may have been invented in the 1950s but was prevalent in the 1960s— the beanbag ashtray! It was a metal ashtray with tabs to rest the butt, and the bottom was clamped into a cloth bag filled with "beans." They were so handy as they could be perched on any manner of non-flat chair arms, etc. During my childhood, we and other families had many kinds of standing ashtrays. The coolest for me were the black and chrome Art-Deco ones from the 1930s. Touristy souvenir shops abounded in a variety of ashtrays for purchase. When the tablecloth and fine china came out, so did the little silver urns used for displaying cigarettes along with decorative match boxes and small glass silver-edged ashtrays. I remember the dinner parties at home with people smoking at the table between courses and sitting around the table after the meal talking. Even the Woman's Home Companion Cookbook edition of the 1950s featured color photos of formal table settings complete with all the smoking equipment on the table— each item in its proper location, of course! As a smoker myself, I get nostalgic for the times when smoking was a glittering, accepted part of social life. Nowadays, a wobbly smoking-bench parked outside the door in the rain is not nearly so glamorous.
Posted by NCeddie | March 13, 2009 5:43 AM
Posted on March 13, 2009 05:43
I saw about a million of those bean bag ashtrays myself! haven't spotted one in quite a while recently...
Posted by Ron Enderland
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March 13, 2009 7:10 AM
Posted on March 13, 2009 07:10
I'm trapped in this website and I can't get out! This stuff is hilarious!
Memories of gigantic ashtrays are flooding back as we speak...
My sisters and I have saved one of our parents' most hideous ashtrays - an avocado green ceramic model with space for 12, count 'em, 12 cigarettes! Imagine 12 people sitting around one ashtray blowing smoke at each other. The image just cracks me up!
We now use that ceramic ashtray to hold assorted nuts when we get together to play Canasta! HA!
Posted by Patti | January 19, 2010 7:21 AM
Posted on January 19, 2010 07:21