Tales of the Renegade Smoker
Where There's a Will, There's a Way
I had to take her out to dinner. After all, it was her birthday and a trip to town with a fancy dinner would make our date one of the best we've had in years. So, we put on our fancy duds and headed for Fort Collins Colorado.
Now, there are a couple of things which make Ft. Collins unique. It has more automobiles and restaurants per-capita than any other city in the United States. And it has some of the strictest smoking laws in the country. I could handle the traffic. Could the restaurants and their no-smoking rules handle me?
I went from one restaurant to another. I was looking for a place which served food and didn't care if we smoked or not. Annie was in her dress and I too "had the bag on". We looked like a cosmopolitan couple out for the evening. Our pangs of hunger were betrayed by growling stomachs.
After about an hour of this, our choices were limited to truck stops off the Interstate highway and a gay bar in the middle of the Pawnee National Grasslands. It was getting late at night. Things didn't look good for a birthday dinner that night. We decided to head back into the mountains.
As we headed back home, we had to leave the Great Plains and pass through Ft. Collins once again. Annie noted a warehouse with a FOR RENT sign in faded paint on the front door. A single light was on the side with the loading dock. But, there were several score of cars parked out back. We were puzzled.
True Mountain Men don't leave questions unanswered. They have a way of piling up on you and, when you have enough questions, you then get a job as a university professor or something similar. I had to find out. I parked the car on the side and both of us went to the back of the building. A narrow stair led to a door.
The door had a four inch square window at eye level. I knocked several times and the window opened enough for me to see a waiter. I was flabbergasted! I was also speechless, a novel concept for me. I finally blurted out, "Joe sent me!". I remembered that from an old Charlie Chan movie.
The little window closed. I thought that the person on the other side of the door took me to be a complete idiot and went back to whatever he was doing, but I was wrong. The sound of metal sliding on metal was followed by the opening of the door. We stepped inside and the door closed.
We were in a small, dimly-lit hallway. Another door was in front of us. The man who let us in opened the other door and we stepped into another world. Lights, action and hot food were attending the hundred or so revelers. People were dancing, smiling, sampling food and smoking. Smoking? Yes, that's right. There were actually people enjoying a smoke in a nightclub atmosphere.
There were ash receivers strategically placed on the floor and one at each table. A lady wearing the tightest fitting garb I had ever seen was selling cigarettes and cigars from her tray. I could plainly read the mint mark on the 1993 dime she had in her pocket. Her breasts billowed almost out of the top of her costume to increase her tips. You can take that to mean anything you want. Ed. She wore the tallest high heels ever produced by Thom McAnn over a pair of sequinned stockings. Even though I had smokes, I purchased a pack of Balkan Sobraine's to go with the night.
We ordered prime rib and danced while the meal was prepared. It arrived, followed by a tall fellow who carried what appeared to be a small log. "Fresh ground pepper?" he asked. I looked askew at the pepper next to the salt on the table, wondering if it had come from King Tut's tomb or something.
Needless to say the dinner was superb. With jacks and cranes we were pried from our seats and pointed in the direction of the dance floor. A live orchestra stood behind velvet-covered podia. We wallowed for a few minutes, unsuccessfully trying to match the tempo, then returned to our table. I offered Annie a cigarette and we took a break. It was at that point that I realized what was happening.
I was in a SmokeEasy. All of a sudden it made sense. I had been checked out at the door. I was joking when I said, "Joe sent me", but, apparently, that was the password. I had stumbled into the lair of the smoker, that underground haunt of the tobacco connoisseur. By merely trying to have a good time, I had inadvertently joined a hundred other patrons in an illegal activity which could have landed the lot of us in jail. I smoked. I broke the law.
Now, I'm really not Al Capone. I'm just a consumer of goods who happens to enjoy smoking. But, because of a stupid law, I had inadvertently done something I normally wouldn't do. In fact, I wasn't genuinely aware of what was happening until I had been there for a couple of hours. It wasn't until I noticed that there was no tax on my bill that I figured it out.
If you're ever in this neck of the woods, get in touch with me. I've got a great place to go where the food is decent and smokers are not discriminated against. Oh, it's illegal as hell, but it happens behind locked doors and involves consenting adults. It's not sex, it's smoking. Another Renegade Smoker has made a name for himself.