Purse Lint

You know what purse lint is--that stuff that collects in the bottom of your handbag, just sticking around until you have to scoop out all your nickels and dimes from its depths when you are desperate for a coke and nary a dollar bill is in your wallet.  Darn those ATM cards, I never have cash on hand anymore.

Sometimes things that I think about could be categorized as "purse lint".  It's things that aren't really worth much in the grand scheme of life but at the same time it's the stuff that has hung on relentlessly in the gray matter of my cognitive filing cabinet just waiting to be cleaned out on a nickel-hunting expedition.

I know cigarettes are bad for us; statistics have proven this over and over.  I'm glad that there are laws on the books now so that I don't have to eat, shop or fly on a plane next to someone with a jones for a Kool.  My lungs and the lungs of both those I know and love as well as the lungs of those I don't know but love still (gotta love, don't have to like) thank the people who created those laws and those that keep them.  Cigarettes are bad for us, I am in total agreement.  But, at the same time, there's this tiny place in my heart that feels a slight pang of wistfulness every time I pass by a Waffle House late at night when all of the "regular people" are home in bed safe from the smoke rings of an unfiltered-Camel- crowd and it looks, well, so "sanitized" in there as if all the life had been sucked out of the place by one huge smoke-clearing vacuum cleaner.  Every time I've frequented my own neighborhood Waffle House establishment over the past several years there has been a dearth of Steinbeck-esque characters lounging around the corner booths wearing their world-weary aires as close as a Texas Ranger's duster.  They can't smoke there any more so they've taken their lounging ways somewhere else, and the where is a mystery to me.

Cowboys and drifters and good-time Charlies will always be with us but where they are gathering now eludes me because we took away their last bastion of comfort in the middle of the night when we took away their smoking rights at the Waffle House.  One of the most interesting evenings that I ever spent was in a 24-hour sandwich shop akin to a waffle place many more years further back than I care to think about. It was back in my single days when 3:00 am meant nothing to me when I didn't have to be to work until 10:30 am (youth is wasted on the young you know) and I found myself sitting in a corner booth with a friend listening to two old drifters saddled up with back packs, guitars and Marlboro's.  As they sat there and ate and smoked they played their guitars for us as long as we cared to listen.  And even as young as I was that night I had sense enough to realize that I would probably never pass that way again and that what I was experiencing in that small capsule of time was to be savored along with the ketchup and french fries on my plate.  It's not often that you get free concerts at 3:00 am with a hamburger steak special. I don't know if the old guys were heading out by bus or foot after they ate I just know they were headed somewhere along with the rest of the pack of Marlboro's to a tune only they knew how to play.

Would it be so wrong if we allowed 24-7 places to allow smoking between midnight and 5:00 am for those that wanted it?  I know we'd have to put warning signs up for those who can't stand to be around smoke (normally me but at a Waffle House I'd make an exception) And of course the people who worked there would have to understand the dangers and that they too would be around second hand smoke.  Heck, they might even be smokers too.  I miss the old ladies who used to work at the Waffle House who probably had a smoke on their break or when no one was looking; the ones whose faces practically screamed of a thousand stories just looking at the lines around their eyes; the ones whose hairdo was a hair-don't at least from this decade and the ones who treated you nice whether you looked like a big tipper or not.  I miss the smoke and the ash and the crud and the interesting people that the Waffle House drew in like a magnet.  If I wanted a 4-star meal served on a white tablecloth I'd go to a restaurant where crud gets Lysoled daily and "characters" get a table near the kitchen.  Sometimes I'd just like to hear the tread of a worn-out pair of boots and the sunny sigh of a waitress (not a "server") named something like Darlene welcoming in a person of interest and showing him to a corner booth at the all night Waffle House.