Duane and I shared a lot of common interests: among those, perhaps the strongest of those, were cigarettes. I had already been smoking for at least a year by the time I met Duane. My first pack was duMaurier (68 cents) but mostly I smoked Benson & Hedges Menthol, influenced by my parents, who smoked Cameo, with the idea that B&H, being 100 mm's were simply more smoke for your money. I had shifted to non-mentholated B&H by the time I met Duane, and he slowly weaned me away from them with the argument that Player's were the better brand due to the higher nicotine and tar content. Export filter were okay too, and we tried pretty much every brand in pursuit of the perfect nicotine fix. One day I used our pooled resources to buy Matinee, which he despised as too light, and never let me buy cigarettes for him again. One of our favourites was Players #6, which were actually about a 1/4 inch shorter than the regular length, but the nicotine potency was much higher, and therefore our preference, when we could get them, which wasn't often. Only Shop Easy ever got them in, and even then only sporadically, maybe a carton or two at a time, and I'm pretty sure that Duane and I bought up the majority of these whenever they were available.
As I mentioned above, we often used to pool our money to buy cigarettes. We never had much money until we started working, so cash was tight, and, in addition to cigarettes, we had coffee to pay for as well, so this solution made the most sense. A pack of cigarettes would be under a buck, and of course we'd have to split the deck, which came in 25's at the time, which meant one "half" consisted of 13 cigarettes while the other consisted of 12. We'd always bicker about who would get the larger half: "You got it the last time," and so forth until we finally agreed on the split, which, come to think of it, usually went in Duane's favour. I won a few of those arguments, but not many. When it came to cigarettes, Duane was the Alpha, although in his defense, he never hesitated to share when I was out (& vice versa) but when it came to our little cigarette co-op, he typically managed to get the larger portion.
As I mentioned above, we often used to pool our money to buy cigarettes. We never had much money until we started working, so cash was tight, and, in addition to cigarettes, we had coffee to pay for as well, so this solution made the most sense. A pack of cigarettes would be under a buck, and of course we'd have to split the deck, which came in 25's at the time, which meant one "half" consisted of 13 cigarettes while the other consisted of 12. We'd always bicker about who would get the larger half: "You got it the last time," and so forth until we finally agreed on the split, which, come to think of it, usually went in Duane's favour. I won a few of those arguments, but not many. When it came to cigarettes, Duane was the Alpha, although in his defense, he never hesitated to share when I was out (& vice versa) but when it came to our little cigarette co-op, he typically managed to get the larger portion.
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