I had just turned 25 years old and was working at a garage business in Connecticut that my father and I had started jointly when I was 21. I had given him a six-month notice in March of that year and was planning on leaving in September to go to Florida. I had been married to my first wife for a year at the time and planned on leaving her, too. Things were not going very well between us. I was pretty much done with all of it, work and home, and ready to move on with my life.
When I look back on this period, it amazes me that this was when I decided that I would quit smoking. I remember thinking something along the lines of needing a new beginning and not wanting to take that habit with me. Friends cautioned me that with as many issues as I was dealing with, quitting smoking might not be the best idea until things had settled down and I was calmer or in a better state of mind. I had not yet gotten to the point in my life where I had started learning to be honest with myself, so naturally I had no idea what they were talking about. I thought things were just fine.
Me at Secondino’s Gulf in Connecticut.
One Friday evening that summer, it was getting near time to close up and go home and I was out of cigarettes. One of the high school kids that worked at the station offered me one and I turned it down. I had reasoned out that I did not smoke that much at home and if I went home with no cigarettes on a Friday night, by Monday I would have a three day run at not smoking and probably have a good shot at quitting. “No,” I told him, “Friday night is a great time to quit smoking. I’m done.”
Well, I made the weekend without thinking much about smoking and when I got in to work Monday morning, I had been right, it was easier to keep the momentum going after not smoking all weekend. When I had gotten past three weeks I was pretty sure that I could see this continuing, even though every time I had a cup of coffee or sat down to take a break I would pat my shirt pocket, looking for a cigarette. The urge to smoke never stopped, it just became easier to ignore those urges.
September came and went. I bought a camper shell for my pickup truck from my brother Joe, rounded up my clothes from home and my tools from the garage, and with everything I owned (or wasn’t leaving behind) in the truck I was off to Florida. By the time September was over I was living in an apartment by the water with a girlfriend and working at a gas station. I had started a new life. Several months later, after my attorney had mailed me my divorce decree from my first marriage, my girlfriend and I moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Me with our dog Samantha in the living room of our apartment in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
It was in Cheyenne, at 27 years old, that I was saved (became a Christian) in the living room of our apartment by the grace of God and the prayer of the humble pastor of the Southern Baptist church which we had attended twice.
We were married that year and attended church regularly until a member of the congregation informed my wife and me that they (the congregation) were voting the pastor out with a vote of no confidence. The reason was that the church was not growing. My opinion of course after the experience that we had in joining the church ourselves was that the pastor was the only person who was growing the church. I honestly thought these people were lunatics and we were pretty much done with church. Shortly after that, the pastor left to begin pastoring a church somewhere in Texas.
We were both working and bought a house in Cheyenne. My wife got pregnant the following year and we put the house up for sale and moved back to Connecticut. We agreed that we should really be around family if we were going to have kids.
My brother John and me at the house in Connecticut that we all rented together.
In Connecticut, we rented a house with my brother John and another friend of ours. This arrangement only lasted a year. In October of the year that I was 28, our first daughter was born. The following spring my wife took her down to Florida to visit her mother. Four weeks later she let me know that she wasn’t coming back to Connecticut. I began making arrangements to close out the lease on the house we were renting when the year was up. One evening after work, I met John at his favorite watering hole for a beer or two. He was a people watcher and since I was not familiar with the place, he pretty much kept up a running dialog. It was quite entertaining and I found myself patting my pocket looking for a cigarette more than once. After a couple of beers, I asked John for one of his and he had no problem giving me one. And later another.
A few days later, as I bought a pack of cigarettes on my way home from work, I thought about how far I had actually gone without a cigarette. I was 29 and I had quit when I was 25. In that four year period I had moved from Connecticut to Florida for a year, then to Wyoming for two years, and back to Connecticut for a year. In all the time that I had worked at different jobs and lived in different places, I had always had an urge to reach for a cigarette when I was doing something like sitting down with a cup of coffee or having a conversation with someone during a break in some activity or other. I had always managed to get past it until I sat down and had a few beers with my brother. We had pretty much grown up smoking together and the familiar urge to have a cigarette that night was pretty strong. Not to mention that I was pretty bored now that my family was in Florida and I had too much time on my hands. I knew I was going to have to quit again before I moved back to Florida.
To be continued…
