[Speed Gibson,
Friday March 21, 2008 at 11:04pm]
Smokes if ya got'm
It's been a busy week, and I'm relaxing watching the 1948 "Berlin Express" that I had recorded last Saturday. "The neo-Nazi underground tries to kidnap a diplomat" it said. It's nothing great, but it is historically interesting, what with the various armies of occupation running everything.
What's really interesting are the cigarettes. They're as valuable as the military scrip issued as currency. Toss a half-finished cigarette on the ground and others dive for it. They smoke them with the rounded finger hold, not the casual pointer-index American way.
In this picture, almost every man smokes and maybe half the women, a cultural universal of sorts. It was one of the few pleasures they had amid the bombed out buildings. How stupid they were, right? We're so much smarter now, right?
And yet sixty years later, a GI who crawled up Omaha Beach can't light up at his VFW. Yes, we're so much more intelligent and caring these days.
What's really interesting are the cigarettes. They're as valuable as the military scrip issued as currency. Toss a half-finished cigarette on the ground and others dive for it. They smoke them with the rounded finger hold, not the casual pointer-index American way.
In this picture, almost every man smokes and maybe half the women, a cultural universal of sorts. It was one of the few pleasures they had amid the bombed out buildings. How stupid they were, right? We're so much smarter now, right?
And yet sixty years later, a GI who crawled up Omaha Beach can't light up at his VFW. Yes, we're so much more intelligent and caring these days.