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Hell, Fire, and Stumpy Cigars
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2015/12 - December
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My granddad had a trademark – a half-smoked cigar dangling from the corner of his mouth. It was always there, a stubby thumb of a thing. It was rarely lit, though ash burns in his ties and suits told the real tale.
He was superintendent of the Piedmont and Northern Railroad in the Carolinas. A bear of a man, he was not to be messed with. But he also had a compassionate side.
Whenever there was a train wreck, they’d call Gramps. He’d drive to the boonies, sometimes in the middle of the night to sort things out. More often than not, there’d be a bonanza of damaged consumables such as canned food, paper products, etc. For practically nothing he could load some of the so-called bad-order into the trunk of his car to bring home to his family. Our toilet paper always had a kink in it.
He kept a few items to give to the needy. I watched him pull over many a time, open up his trunk, and let the poor take what they could use.
He lived in Greenville, South Carolina, home of a famous conservative Christian university. One day a college student was walking along the road in the rain. Gramps pulled over and offered him a ride. This was one of the times the stogie was lit. With the windows rolled up the car was a smoke-filled cavern. The student climbed in, fanned at the miasma, and launched into a sermonette on the evils of smoking. Gramps listened a mile or two, puffing away. The student summed up his hellfire oration with this line, “And if God had meant you to smoke, He’d have put that cigar in your mouth when you were born!”
That did it. Even though it was now a downpour, Gramps pulled over to the shoulder, exhaled a billowing cloud of smoke enveloping the student as he reached across him and opened the passenger door. He leaned back, stuck the stogie between his lips, and said, “Yep. Well, I reckon if God had meant you to ride, He’d have put wheels on you.”
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