3.16 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes 1960s

Early 1960s • La Habra ~ Sequestered by the murky outline of the San Gabriel Mountains, Orange County had constant smog alerts, sometimes the air so awful they closed the schools. Everyone was told to stay inside; outside was smothered in a pea soup of haze so dense that not even a Santa Ana wind could blow it away.

The cigarette smoke enveloping our card games was worse than the pall outside. Carleen inhaled Pall Malls and Claudia smoked Salems.

Betty

Betty preferred Parliaments, or when she was feeling la de dah, Vogues, slim colored menthols at 75 cents a pack, a normal 25-cent pack considered beneath her. Her hair in brush rollers covered with a scarf tied around her chin and her black-lined eyes squinting to avoid the constant spiraling plume, she often had two lit at a time, one hanging from her Coty Red lips, the other burning away in the ashtray overflowing with lipstick-stained butts. She smoked two, three, sometimes four packs a day, blowing me perfect smoke rings whenever I asked.

In those days, everyone smoked: Mamie Eisenhower, Ricky and Lucy, John Wayne, Grace Kelly, Liberace, my sixth-grade teacher Mrs. Wilcox (she kept a bottle in her desk drawer, too), my mother, and my three sisters.

Cathy, June 1960

I was happiest playing cards with my sisters. The four of us sat at the dining table for hours, the little kids locked outside the front screen door to play in the neighborhood, the babies in playpens napping while we shuffled, cut, and dealt. Eyes rolling in unison, they drew to see who had to be my partner. When it was my turn to deal, they cursed every time they had to throw in their cards for a re-deal, not realizing until halfway through a hand I’d misdealt again. If they’d just let me deal slower, and not three at a time, it would have worked better. The only reason I got to play was that they needed a fourth for partner hearts, canasta, or pinochle. I didn’t interfere with their conversations, I laughed at their jokes (which were over my head), and ingratiated myself by serving Danola ham sandwiches on Melmac, refilling their coffee, and emptying their ashtrays.

Sometimes on weekends we’d be at it all day and all night, only taking breaks to feed the kids. Betty lost a babysitter once because she didn’t make it home until dawn.

“One more hand,” we’d say, “just one more hand.”

6th grade, Washington Jr. High, La Habra

To be continued…

© 2018. Catherine Sevenau.
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