I’m not sure how long I smoked cigarettes. Probably since the 8th grade, however old I might have been at that point. Maybe cousins from Michigan smoked. Certainly John Deaver, a new kid at school that eighth-grade year smoked. I got into it somehow.

Like most, I guess, I got caught after a fairly short period of sneaking cigarettes. I remember sitting on the front porch with Mom, who basically said that, since your dad smokes, we can’t really tell you not to, but we’ll never by cigarettes for you.

Perhaps one of the stupidest things I ever did was related to smoking. Our JV basketball team played one winter night at another school — could have been Erwin High or Pisgah High. After our game, while the girl’s were playing, I went outside and walked around the parking lot, testing the doors of cars and trucks, looking for one that was unlocked so I could sneak the use if its cigarette lighter. I think I eventually found one and had my smoke, but somebody saw and reported me to my coach — Johnny Fisher, I think. I had to run a bunch of laps. Thinking back on it, I see now that was many worse things could have happened as a result of such stupidity.

I remember smoking in restaurants. I even remember smoking in the classroom at Mars Hill College in the late ’70s. I remember smoking on airplanes. We smoked about anywhere we decided to back then, except church — I don’t remember ever smoking in church.

Smoking seemed to be part of my writing process. I often sat somewhere — a kitchen table, perhaps — with my guitar in my arms, my pencil in one hand and a burning cigarette in the other. When smoking outside became a thing, a requirement, I spent valuable writing time, telling myself I was thinking, standing outside in rain or shine or heat or cold or day or night, smoking.

I never was really that fond of smoking. I wasn’t crazy about the taste, which lots of smokers claim to like. I didn’t like the smell of it — on me or in ashtrays. I grew to hate the litter of butts that was everywhere. At a certain point, I refused ever to throw down a cigarette or toss one from the car. Wherever I was, I flipped the burning tip off and put the butt in the trash or in my car’s ashtray.

Seventeen years ago, in 2001, June 30 also fell on a Saturday. Leesa, Raleigh, and I had spent the year in Murray, Kentucky, where I had my first tenure-track job at Murray State University. In late May or early June, we moved back to Asheville in preparation for moving to Johnson City, Tennessee, where I would begin my second tenure-track job at ETSU in August. But first, I had to leave the family and return to Murray for five weeks, where I was to teach a summer course.

On that Saturday morning, I left our house in Arden, North Carolina, south of Asheville. I drove out Airport Road and stopped at a convenience store just to buy a pack of cigarettes before I got on I-26 to begin the long drive to Murray. I smoked on 1-26. I smoked on I-40 in North Carolina and Tennessee. I smoked with my friends Mark Chesshir and jb during a stopover in Nashville. I smoked on I-24 in Tennessee and Kentucky. I smoked through the Land Between the Lakes.

I smoked the last of the pack — a yellow box of American Spirits — as I drove into Murray late that night. I would be staying the first few nights at the home of my MSU colleague Warren Edminster, who, along with Laurie and his three daughters, would be out of town for a few days. Because of the girls, it was a no smoking house. (I remember Warren and Laurie saying that they were going to start smoking again when they turned 70.) Add to that, no place in Murray sold those yellow boxes of American Spirits.

So, I quit smoking. Just like that.