The Last Cigarette
No civilization worth preserving was built on vape pens and Nicorette gum
Manly habit that helps protect against Alzheimer’s and dementia is also key to finding love, solving America’s spiritual crisis, and winning wins.
If you’ve got ’em, smoke ’em
1989 was a foreign country; I go there often. A magical land where cell phones were still a distant threat, where McDonald’s still fried their hot apple pies in honest-to-God grease, and where every hamlet in America still had at least one conversation factory like LaGrone’s Drugstore.
Among my fondest memories are those in which I am crawling headfirst onto the bench seat of my papaw's 88 Ford, blue with a white stripe, savoring its rich masculine bouquet accented with notes of leather, Old Spice, and Lucky Strikes. When the last bell rang, he would be waiting for me in the parking lot of Portis Elementary with his windows rolled down, blaring Hank Williams’s “Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used to Do” and puffing on what must have been his 60th cigarette of the day. Then we would cruise the quarter-mile down Main Street over to LaGrone’s.
Though Fred LaGrone had been our town’s lone pharmacist …
The Hemingway Lecture
Following in the great man’s footsteps and nearly driving my date off a cliff.
On stage with a bag of old clothes, I touch the spirit of the man himself
Did Papa pass a kidney stone in Ketchum?
I took the pills in the car, and when they hit, they wiped out my memory of having taken them, so I took another two. I knew this because Amanda, my new then-girlfriend, said to me, “You already took some, Walt!” I believe the pills were Valium — I don’t remember now. My mother, a registered nurse, had recommended them to ease the misery of a kidney stone lodged in my left ureter, one of the pair of delicate, thin tubes that drain urine to the bladder. The pain when one is obstructed can range from a dull ache to how it might feel to give birth to a hacksaw.
It was September of 2010, a cool, clear morning, the trees along the freeway already golden. We were driving from our home in Montana to Ketchum, Idaho, where I was set to speak the following day at a Hemingway festival at the public library. Ketchum is the idyllic mountain town where the stoic, troubled writer, fresh off a series of treatments for …
Top Fast-Food Secret Menu Items in All 50 States
Alabama — Sweet Home Alaburrito – Fried chicken, black-eyed peas, and Velveeta cheese wrapped in a taco topped with a tiny Confederate flag make this Del Taco item a local favorite.
Alaska — Grizzly Tacos – Healthy helpings of ground meat explain why Taco Bell workers ring a bell in the kitchen for every order, before running like hell.
Arizona — “Senior Moment!” – Say this phrase and the staff at Wendy’s will double your order for free so you don’t hold up the line, and then escort you to the bathroom. Over 65 only.
Arkansas — “Possum in the Hole” – This confection of bubbly chunks of vinegar-stewed possum meat in a boat of instant mashed potatoes is an off-menu favorite for Roy Rogers fans from the holler.
California — Stoner’s Burrito – Pretty much the official state food of stoned people in the …
