My parents were smokers, most likely beginning their long partnership with the tobacco industry when they were teens.

            Dad quit cold turkey in 1964 when the first Surgeon General warning was aired on prime-time TV. He’d spend the next year sucking on hard candies as suggested by all in the know.

            Ma quit some years later. Dad smoked Kents, Ma Winstons. When they opened a new pack about mid-afternoon (pack-and-a-half champs), the smell was a bit intoxicating. I hated the smoke itself, but that smell of fresh tobacco was equal to mimeographed worksheets from school – oh man, and who can forget the boxes of candy cigarettes? The packaging looked so real.

            It seems upon reflection that everyone smoked. Aunts and uncles, adult cousins – shoot – everyone 16 and older smoked. The art of holding a cigarette is a lasting memory. Ladies would take a drag, tap the ciggie on the edge of an ashtray (one placed strategically beside every chair in the house) and then smooth out the ash so it wasn’t raggedy looking.

            Men generally held their butts in a cupped hand to keep it smoldering, then bringing the fingers up to the lips. Flicking a spent ciggie to the curb was a special talent reserved for those emitting a tough-guy persona. But most housewives patrolled their groomed yards for offending butts and admonishing anyone, man, woman, or child, if they dared to fling one. “Pick that up! Who raised you?!”

            Given all we know today about the harmfulness of smoking, I still find numerous cigarette filters along the grass line of my yard. I guess the careless way people fling a butt out their car window as they speed down North Street means their upbringing is suspect. “Who raised you?!”

            Cigarette smoking looked so glamourous on the big screen. Actresses used them like sexual objects with thick red lipstick accentuating the mouth as a sensuous curl of white smoke disappeared and reappeared down their smooth throats. Betty Davis was an expert. And in keeping with the macho fingering of a cigarette, Cary Grant was brilliant.

            I was talking to my friend, and we got on the topic of our cigarette-smoking days. She recalled holding a cocktail glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other and being very sophisticated. She went on to say that doctor visits always concluded with the doc and she going over her medical exam while enjoying a butt together.

            That reminds me, in 1971 while recuperating in Tobey Hospital after a medical procedure, smoking was allowed in the rooms. As a gift, my mother gave me a carton of Silver Thins to help me convalesce. Yes, we came a long way baby.

            As a little kid, I was the gofer. “Run uptown and get me …,” was an oft-heard refrain from Ma as she sat in her command central seat in the living room. I’d be dispatched quite often to buy cigarettes. With a note requesting that the grocer give me a pack of Winstons and signed with her signature ensuring the purchase was for her and not me, the cigs were passed over the countertop that I could barely see over. But the best part was I could keep the change as payment for my service. I consumed my body weight in Hershey chocolate during my salad days.

            Cigarettes had a whole culture in and onto itself. Roaming through antique shops, you’ll find ashtrays in rock crystal, animal horn, copper, jewel-incrusted, and plain old ordinary glass and pottery. These household items were even styled into smoking cabinets or ashtray stands. My mother even had my baby shoes bronzed with an ashtray in the center. My brother got a picture frame that I always envied.

            While reminiscing with my son recently, I asked if he was ever sent to the store at the top of the street where my parents lived, now known as the “Onset House.” Yes, it was a multi-generational carcinogenic errand family industry – he, too, was sent to the store for cigarettes purchased on the certification of a signature. And he, too, got to keep the change.

            You’d think my parents would have succumbed to a disease attributable to smoking. No. They both lived into their nineties and basically passed from old-age complications. They spent their long lives free from lung cancer, COPD, or other smoking-related illnesses.

            Luck of the draw, I guess.

This Mattapoisett Life

By Marilou Newell

            For the last 10,000 to 12,000 years, humans have relied on agriculture for most of their food cultivation and consumption. Starting off with small homebound gardens, this process eventually evolved into estate-driven farming and then feudal/serf farming. In the modern era, we have vast fields that stretch to the horizon in all directions. Much of the work and planning has been automated and is GPS-assisted. According to the Department of Agriculture, 53% of all US land is used in agriculture (crops, pastures, forestry), with 390 million acres used for cropland.

            In recent years, especially following the beginning of the pandemic, many took to their land and cultivated their own food. There have always been home gardens, but now, people seem to have become more infatuated with experimenting and growing at least some of their own harvest every year. Even with no yard, many grow herbs in window boxes or even use small hydroponics systems in their apartments. With the prevalence of home gardens and the democratization of crop growing, different people are experimenting with their own ways of growing. No farmer is the same. A key difference in the home garden versus the large-scale commercialized farm is: variety. In the large American field, monoculture is king.

            Monoculture (mono=one) is the growing of one plant to yield a single crop whereas polyculture (poly=many) is the growing of many different plants in one area or plot. Typically, for home gardens, no one dedicates their entire garden to just green beans. While we diversify primarily to increase the number of different goods in our harvest, there is also an immense benefit to doing so, if done right. Enter the title of this article, “Companion Plants and Permaculture.”

            Companion plants are fairly self-explanatory. They are plants that do well when planted next to one another. Whether it be for warding away pests, soil nitrogenization, and pollination or attracting good bugs, thoughtfully choosing your plant’s neighbors can lead to better harvests! In pre-colonial North America, the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica developed the “Three Sisters” method for farming. Corn, beans, and squash were planted together. The corn is at the center of each sister-unit, acting as a trellis for the beans to climb up. The beans, in turn, better anchor the corn while the large, low leaves of the squash shade the soil, keeping it damp, preventing weeds, and maintaining steady nitrogen levels. This ingenious method was perfected over thousands of years of trial and error and spread across the continent.

            Other examples of companion plants would be basil and tomatoes, where the smell of basil detracts aphids and other harmful insects from attacking tomato vines. Carrots and most onions have this same bond. My kale and lettuce would get eviscerated every year, but its proximity to marigold flowers now allows me to eat these veggies without fear of worms getting there first. There are countless examples like this, and it can be done in a checkered pattern across a garden with plants neighboring others in a beneficial network. There has been a lot of research and experiments done on this, so I highly recommend you look around the numerous guides and examples before planting.

            Away from small-scale gardens and back to endless farm fields, permaculture is this process but on a huge scale. Rather than extracting value and nutrients from the soil, “permanent agriculture” allows for a balanced system of give and take. By planting crops that grow naturally in the area in a co-habitation manor, as they would in the wild, the soil is protected and strengthened as well as yields greatly improving. If one watched last year’s Season 3 of Amazon Prime’s “Clarkson’s Farm,” you’d have seen Jeremy dedicate one field to both beans and wheat and withheld himself from using any pesticides. Nearby, marigolds and other smelly flowers are often in the area around cranberry bogs.

            With the ever-changing climate and unpredictable weather, farmers of land both large and small are looking for better ways to preserve the nutrients they have and increase harvest yields without detriment. Permaculture and companion plants could be a way of the future. As far as I know, at least it is a fun and interesting experiment to do in your own garden.

By Sam Bishop