Everything Old is New Again
How strange, I thought, I never would have expected to see that again….
I’ll explain.
When we first came to London in 1965, I saw something I had never seen before. It wasn’t uncommon to see someone sit down, maybe at a park bench or a cafe table, and pull out a pouch of loose tobacco. They would sprinkle the tobacco onto rolling paper that had been folded in a neat little packet, then roll it lengthwise, lick and seal it closed, and then proceed to smoke their cigarette.
The pouches of tobacco had names like Players or Cutters. I remember Players Navy Cut had an image of an old-time sailor on the pouch. I also remember that the best brands boasted that they came from the finest Virginia tobacco.
It seemed that the people doing this were almost exclusively older males. To me at that time, older males would have been around 40 and over. I now realize this would have been the generation that had lived through, and perhaps fought in WWII. They would have had rationing, and many “luxuries” may have been in short supply. Or, some of them certainly may have marched their way across the front lines of European battlefield, where they learned to make do with what was available. Still older folks likely came from an era before pre-rolled cigarettes were readily available. Some, I’m sure preferred their old habits.
I can still see them in their tweed jackets and wool herringbone caps, hunched over against the weather, rolling their smokes. Or perhaps a laborer with his v neck string tee shirt and bad teeth with his cup of tea. Even the posh professional with his bowler hat and velvet-collared overcoat could be seen doing the same.
By the 1960’s most of the younger generation and seemingly most women had adopted pre-rolled factory cigarettes. But not the vets, laborers and pensioners. They still persisted in their habits.
In 2019 those 40+ year old males have become 90+. Probably not too many smoking any more, so you would expect to see self-rolled cigarettes as a thing of the past. And sure enough, today’s older smokers all seem to smoke pre-rolled cigarettes. So I was astonished sitting in a pub one night to look down the bar and see a 20-something year-old woman, pull out a pouch, meticulously pour tobacco into a neatly folder paper, then roll lick and seal a cigarette. Then she proceeded to make one for her companion. So, yes, I thought, how very strange, I never would have expected to see that again.
The very next day on a street corner saw a 20 or 30 something year old man do the same. I’ve spotted it a time or two since. Always young, always hip. I haven’t gotten a look at their tobacco pouches. I’ll wager there’s no longer old time sailors on the pack. It’s probably some organically grown artisinal tobacco, especially curated for the trendy crowd.
It does show if you wait around long enough, things really do come back around.
“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9