Tobacco

I hate cigarettes. However, tobacco has become an integral part of my retail business (this is the post in which I once again shamelessly try to rationalize my ugly hypocrisy). Back when I bought this wee little fledgling store and I foolishly believed that it would be easy to own TWO stores 300 miles apart (my original store was alive and well in south Georgia) AND
raise two daughters with a minimum of effort - hahahahahaha - well, anyway, the newly-purchased shop sold cigarettes. And I've sold them ever since.

I bought the second store way back in my thirties, when everything seemed possible. I think that there's something about having small children which amps up the adrenaline 24/7 and the delusions of grandeur only grind to a halt when one day you're fortysomething and feel like lying down on the couch for, say, about six months. And suddenly - well, in my case, anyway - the idea of sitting on one's ass for two hours a day and daring to call one's self A WRITER becomes the perfect excuse to practice one's true passion. Not writing, of course, but SITTING ON ONE'S ASS. I suspect this is why many people become meditators or barflies too - just to sit still and not feel guilty about it. Devote a few years to sitting, and before you know it, you have a column in a newspaper. Or you're a meditation instructor. Or an alcoholic. Sitting still can be a beautiful thing which can become A Way.

But that's all a digression which maybe I'll one day turn into a book like The Secret and get a piece of that self-help action. I was meaning to focus on cigarettes here.

So every year the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company holds a display contest, aka their Retailer of the Year Contest. The first year I was looking for something to amuse my children and employees with, so we taped a whole bunch of cigarette packs onto a board and made - ta dah! - a flag out of American Spirit packs. Then we made a bikini out of cartons and we photographed my friend Heather wearing it next to the flag and, next thing you know, we took second place and were sent a big prize.

We were hooked. The next year we staged an elaborate Wizard of Oz photoshoot featuring a bunch of Dragon Con friends, a flying sock monkey, an evil cigarette additive Witch and a good Glinda who represented additive-free American Spirits, a garden trellis disguised as the American Spirit rainbow, a yellow brick road going into the store....

... surprisingly, this overbloated thing only took third place. But we cashed our check and decided that maybe the tobacco company considered the Wiz to be a little too child-friendly for a product which can, after all, give a person lung cancer.

The next year I created a giant Mona Lisa, a smaller Scream a la Edvard Munch, Picasso's Dove of Peace, and called our little gallery The Art of Smoking. I knew we had a winner - we took the Grand Prize and collected our five grand.

After that there was a South American theme with Spirit rolling tobacco tumbling out of Heather's Carmen Miranda headscarf. A Hurray for Hollywood wall piece with Heather as a tapdancing giant cigarette carton. A giant dreadie head, smiling and juggling cigarettes. And last year my friend Tadd mugged in black leather holding a guitar made of American Spirit cartons in front of a collage featuring a homemade Spirit indie band. All were runners-up, and along with the money the shop has collected a CD player, an iPod, a jacket, a television, two digital cameras - almost twelve grand in cash and prizes over the years.

Last night I downloaded the photos of this year's entry. And - ladies and gentlemen - I think that we have a winner. We'll know in September. They've doubled the grand prize to ten thousand dollars - and that's a lot of college tuition for my kids. Or several vacations, Mexican food, a bunch of concerts and a hot tub. Or a nice retirement fund (just kidding!!!).

I wish that there were other kinds of competitions - I'm not really proud of shilling for tobacco. But I appreciate the opportunity to be creative and to get paid for it. This part-time writing gig has not even hit the $5000 mark after dozens and dozens of political columns, interviews, music reviews and the occasional cover story. So I do the pragmatic mom thing, which is to provide for my children and myself the best way that I know how - running a shop, entering annual display contests, and writing (aka sitting on my ass).

Keeping my fingers crossed -
NTD