The News & Observer’s Barry Saunders writes here about the outdoor smoking ban he’s now subjected to in Durham. Saunders, a cigar smoker, hits on my pet peeve about what’s still deemed acceptable by the oh-so-enlightened ones in society, and what’s not.
How did I find out that the outdoor ban was more than an anti-smoker’s fantasy? After a rare win on the Rock Quarry Park city tennis courts recently, I lit up a cigar to take a couple of victory puffs while walking to my truck.
“You know you can’t smoke that here,” the voice behind me said. “Don’t you read your own newspaper?”
It was the same woman who’d been on an adjacent court, befouling the air with curse words every time she missed a shot. To my way of thinking, the smoke from my cigar was less harmful in that setting than the putrid blue haze she sent into the atmosphere and which is probably just now assaulting the ears of some impressionable Martian child.
