You’ve Come A Long Way Baby

You’ve Come A Long Way Baby!

Man, can you believe that slogan used to apply to women smoking?  Although in NYC, I believe it was as recently as 80 years ago (and longer in other areas) that it was frowned upon for women to smoke in public, even after they had the right to vote (it was actually illegal for two weeks in 1908).  That was the slogan of Virginia Slims starting in 1968 by the Phillip Morris owned company. 

This isn’t an ode to smoking, but I thought the phrase was apt, and then I remembered I actually had a tie to that old slogan.  Bear with me on this one, I started out on one path with this story, but got massively sidetracked.  I actually think that’s a testament to what I started out to write.  Stay with me here, it will come full circle, and I believe even I’m going to learn something about myself on this trip.

I grew up in an ideal suburb located in Upstate New York in the 80’s.  When I say ideal suburb, it really was.  But now I think the better term with hindsight would be ‘idealized”.  I grew up three blocks from my elementary school in one direction (with my dentist helpfully across the street from the school), and three blocks in the other direction was a corner store, the likes of which I’ve never seen since I moved from there.  “Terry Road Market”.  It was much like a modern convenience store in what it carried, but minus the gas pumps and it was mostly family owned and neighborhood employed.  It was one of those places you never hear of anymore where a seven year old could bring a note and two dollars from her Mom or Dad and buy a pack of smokes and a Chunky Bar or Pop Rocks.

When I was under eight or so, I’d walk there with my parents and brother on hot summer nights and get novelty ice cream out of the cooler.  We’d walk the half a block down Meadow hook a right on Clover Road and then the block to Bronson, and then the block to Terry taking another right, saying “Hi” to neighbors as we passed.  We’d wait to cross Terry Road, which was always very busy as a through road off a main street, then even with no cars coming we’d exaggeratedly run across.  I was taught at an early age Terry Road was dangerous.

Those things I remember oh so clearly.  I don’t remember so clearly at what age Jennifer and I met Becky and Rita.  I find that funny now; I know it must have been what we called ‘middle school’ and what now is called junior high.  I was so much closer to them in high school; I just can’t remember how I met them before that. 

In this ideal little world, I went to a school system that started out at Cherry Road, unless you went to St. Charles, the private Catholic school.  But even the majority of kids at Cherry Road made their First Communion; and if you were devout your Confirmation at St. Charles.  And Father Matthews was who you took instruction under.  From Cherry Road, you went to Onondaga Middle School and then Westhill Central High.  Westhill in the 80s had an average graduating class of between 100 and 150 students, and was rated one of the top 40 schools in the U.S. I don’t know what the judging was based on, I just remember being really proud.

In my neighborhood of Westvale; well Westvale covered a fairly large area, but by middle school, my knowledge of it was about six roads parallel to each other running off of a main road that spanned the city and another eight bisecting those.  We all knew each other from before kindergarten to graduation and beyond.  Even the St. Charles kids, the Bishop Ludden kids (high school of St. Charles), we all played together, or fought together, changed alliances, formed new pals, abandoned old, broke up and reformed.  And then in the years after we graduated, we all met up again at the same pub our parents and grandparents had, and laughed about it over Irish folk music and beer.

It was a small city, known best for its university, major manufacturing headquarters and was doing well under the mantle of Reaganomics.  My father worked full time in a printing factory and my mother only occasionally worked part time while my brother and I were young.  Once I was in junior high, Mom took a administrative job in a bank. 

My parents both grew up in nearby villages or suburbs in the post Depression Era.  Both of them were Blue Collar, in the way we used to mean that meant hard working, honorable, loyal, patriotic; not stupid comic low class jokes. 

Dad was the only child of two musicians in practice and heart; one of whom was a veteran, and unfortunately an alcoholic.  The other was torn between being a good mother, and the wife of a frustrated and unhappy man; that never got over scrimping to keep her family together and herself a whole woman.  Her strong Polish heritage and Catholic faith kept her an amazing woman throughout.

Mom was the second child of a second generation Irish man who was so storied he deserves more stories than this one here.  He attended and graduated multiple high schools to play sports, without necessarily spending much time at the books.  He turned an Irishman’s work ethic towards the factory and family, and turned his charm to unions and politics.  His stoic, warm and hard working, hard living second generation Polish wife managed the realities and the respective duties with pride and pragmatism.

Both of my parents learned to work hard, deal with the realities of life and invest well.  Neither went to college.  They met in their early twenties at work.  Mom played hard to get; except it wasn’t playing, she wasn’t interested.  He wore her down.  They like so many couples were disappointed to find out they might not be able to conceive; they proceeded to adopt a boy and then five years later… me.

At that time, in that climate and culture both of my parents smoked; most of my friends had one or both parents that smoked, as well as older brothers and sisters.  By then we all knew the surgeon general’s warning, we just weren’t yet ostracized and criticized for ignoring it.  Again, this is not a treatise on smoking, anti-smoking, or cancer.  I’m getting to tying it back to the title, wait for it. 

So back to Virginia Slims, Terry Road Market and Rita; not a full loop, but I swear we’re getting there.  I know I knew Rita in middle school, because I remember it was with Rita and Jennifer I started smoking.  Despite the fact that neither of my parents ever touched a Virginia Slim, I was somehow able to buy a pack at Terry Road Market I’m guessing when I was twelve or thirsteen.  I kept them in a zippy bag in a zipper compartment in my zippy giant 80s purse inside pocket. 

Two blocks up and parallel from my Meadow Road, was a street called Parsons Avenue.   In that small, insular pocket of the world which didn’t even cover a mile, Parsons was considered the high end.  Parson’s after all was an Avenue.  It had a median, and trees, and bigger houses than most of the neighborhood (which looking back now, they all were enormous two story colonials with huge yards).  Brick houses with white pillared porches, stained glass doors, fan windows above the gleaming doors with their gleaming brass polished handles.  Or at least that’s how I remember them.

Lord.  Rita, Jennifer and I probably made that pack of Virginia Slims 120 Menthols (of course) last two months, while sneaking out to sit in the small low trees of Parsons Ave. 

I didn’t become a smoker because of those Virginia Slims, but boy did we all think we were so chic, and mature, and that we’d “come a long way”.  I didn’t become addicted to cigarettes then.  It wasn’t until the summer after eighth grade that that happened, and I got busted.  I haven’t thought about those days of hiding in trees with those ridiculous lollipop stick cigarettes in ages.  And especially tonight; and only because I started this, with that old chestnut of an advertising line.

Let’s assume, I was eleven or twelve sitting in that tree.  It’s now 22 years later.  And I have come a long way baby.

If we flash back to high school, I was already probably starting to smoke ‘regular’ by then.  Maybe 8 a day.  But that is not what this is about, this is about a thread and tying it to an ad that became a part of pop culture and feminist history.

I was fortunate to be bright, and by the first week of Junior year at Westhill I was ready to speed things up.  Perhaps because it was shortsighted, or perhaps because it wasn’t meant to be, I moved to Florida to become a cocktail waitress instead of going to college.  I like to think it was meant to be. 

In a story for another time, we’ll again flashforward to now.  I skipped the part of my youth where I became obsessed with computers, because at that time I thought I was really obsessed with journalism.  Lucky me, it was the other one that paid off in spades.  Once I moved to Florida, I always seemed to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills.  Of course, there were bumps, ditches, Grand Canyons.  But from what I learned from my parents and their parents, my neighborhood, friends, my teachers, and myself:  I’ve come along way baby.

I am thirty four years old now.  I am a highly respected computer professional in a highly respected financial firm.  And last week I signed a contract to buy myself a gorgeous house.  Not a McMansion, not a dream house by maybe anyone else’s standards.  I bought ‘MY’ perfect house.  And because of the way I was raised, those are the only standards I really have to meet. 

And I have two porches I can smoke on.  Because I still smoke, and I’ve come along way.  But I think maybe starting to only smoke outside might be the path to quitting.  And that?  Would be truly coming a long way.  But right now, I’ll take what I’ve done.