My father paused to take a long draw on his cigarette. It was 1982, the “Just Say No” campaign hadn’t yet come on full-force, and fathers like mine smoked without guilt or shame or brain-washed children nagging at them to quit. They smoked in front of their children and their children’s friends, they smoked in the station wagon with children bouncing around in the backseat, the baby sitting on somebody’s lap and all the windows rolled up. A sixth-grader could walk to the corner convenience store to play the Daily Number and buy a pack of smokes; no one questioned it. My father played 0-2-6, a dollar straight and a dollar boxed. He smoked Lucky Strikes, unfiltered. I walked the eight blocks from my house to the Fast and Friendly to play his number and buy his Luckies just about every day. My father was talking, he was explaining something. There was something important that I needed to know, and he was telling me about it. I needed to listen. He wanted me to pay attention. “Now, look,”
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