Father's Day

I have a part-time job. I sell fine imported, handmade cigars and cheap cigarettes at a little tobacco shop in Collinsville. Actually, I simply ring up the sales of the cigarettes, (our customers generally know exactly what they want), only the cigars require a small amount of salesmanship.

Today was Father's Day, so I did do quite a bit of cigar selling. It occurred to me at some point during the day that today was very much different from Mother's Day. Today we sold a bunch of fine imported handmade cigars. No chewing tobacco, though. Not a single pouch.

Mother's day surprised me. Over and over on Mother's Day folks would come in to buy mom a box or more of chewing tobacco. And snuff. Not the modern Copenhagen type preferred by baseball pitchers and rodeo riders, the old fashioned kind my Dadaw used. Brands like Dental, Navy, and Bruton that comes in the old style can that could never fit into a back pocket of a pair of Wranglers.

We sold completely out of chewing tobacco and snuff that weekend.

One, or more accurately, a pair, of my customers on Mother's Day was a couple of sisters buying a treat for their 98 year old mom who lived in a local nursing home that no longer allowed smoking anywhere on the premises. Of course they nervously tried to justify their purchase by explaining mom's situation.

As I told those two ladies; "If mom wants chewing tobacco at 98 years of age, give her chewing tobacco. If mom wants a couple of 25 year old twin guys at 98 years of age, let's see if we can find some volunteers."

Happy Father's Day and a belated happy Mother's Day.