Boomers killed America’s love affair with smoking before it killed more of us.
Skill Note: Most of following was written in July of 2015 as a newspaper column several years after retiring from 39 years as a reporter and editor for three different newspapers. Aside from several edits, addendums and asides, it remains the same.
I know the range of age for retired people grows wider and wider with each passing year. For starters, people retire a lot earlier than they used to and, of course, as a group we live longer. The reign of the domain of the Baby Boomer is pretty much over. Our legions, firstborn in the years following the demise of World War II, began marching beyond the traditional retirement age of 65 in 2011.
Most of our parents didn’t go to college, but it was important to them that their children had that opportunity. We had the draft and a war in Southeast Asia to make going to college even more enticing in the sixties. I got to do both and, surviving a tour in Vietnam, I returned home, completed my military service, married and worked my way through college as a husband and new father with a financial assist from the GI Bill. As for my peers, some served, some protested and some did all they could not to do either.
Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, shared a common culture and a broad span of experiences. It is a bond that unites us still, whatever our politics or religion. We were the youngest of the Civil Rights activists with Martin Luther King, Jr., but we must also ashamedly claim Son of Sam, Ted Bundy and other infamous serial killers as Boomers, too.
Television and advertising were huge for us, and we, as CEOs and entrepreneurs in the 1990’s, helped launch the internet technology on the World Wide Web that is such an omnipresent part of our lives today. Our children were more tech savvy than we were, and our grandchildren emerged from the womb with an uncanny familiarity with computers we were never able to replicate.
As previously referenced, television programming and advertising certainly had its impact on our lives and memories. Today’s marketing influences are more visual. Ad slogans and taglines have been usurped by social media viral videos and memes.
If you are a Boomer or older you will surely remember most of the following:
Let Your Fingers Do the Walking— Of course, we still have Yellow Pages but the role of the telephone has changed drastically. With texting, many of us are letting our fingers do the talking…
“Good Night, Chet” — For those who watched the nightly news on ABC and…
“That’s the Way It Is” if you relied on Walter Cronkite for your news, which was hallowed ground and inconceivable that some day mainstream journalism would be mocked as fake…
Just the Facts, Ma’am—an oft-repeated line on Dragnet, popular before and during the war on radio and for a couple of decades on TV well into the 1960’s, before we started making up alternative facts collected from the extremities of the internet.
War! What Is It Good For! — A bit of musical protest during the Vietnam years (Edwin Starr), and the answer was, “Absolutely nothing!”
Hell No, We Won’t Go— Well, I did, but at least I made it back. Too many young men didn’t return from the war in Vietnam. It didn’t make sense that you could be drafted into a war, return home and still be too young to vote. Anti-war and civil rights demonstrations often went hand in hand …
Black is Beautiful— The seeds of racial pride are planted for coming generations, but the harvest of equality has yet to bear fruit.,
Good to the Last drop— It was a coffee lover’s slogan (Maxwell House) when you made your own for pennies a cup before there was a Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts and their multitude of caffeine- and sugar-laden concoctions…
“The Devil made me do it!”— The catch phrase from Flip Wilson in drag when variety shows ruled TV Land…
“Stifle yourself!”— Archie Bunker showed us how stupid racism is, but not everyone (mostly stupid racists) realized the joke was on them…
Have It Your Way— Well, you could hold the pickle, hold the lettuce at Burger King, and they’d be glad to hold the burger for the same price…
Two All-Beef Patties, Special Sauce, Lettuce, Cheese, Pickles, Onions on a Sesame Seed Bun— the most memorized 15 words in advertising history…
Some of the following slogans and phrases would be politically incorrect today. How about:
“My Wife… I think I’ll keep her.” — Can you remember what product this line promoted in 1972? Let’s just say this iron-rich tonic should have stuck with its “tired blood” commercial…
“Take my wife, please!” — This had the makings of being politically incorrect, but as a self-deprecating one-liner from Henny Youngman it didn’t offend…
‘I’m Susan, fly me!’ — This National Airlines commercial was definitely offensive on the threshold of the women’s liberation movement. The airline went out of business in 1980. So much for flying stewardesses, but at least we had a Flying Nun…
Atsa Spicy Meatball— This would probably be regarded as offensive to Italian Americans today, but it sold a lot of Alka-Seltzer. It was a close second to another Alka-Seltzer tagline, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!”
“We Will Bury You!” It was the Cold War and Nikita Kruschev, now dead and buried, was our archenemy…
Duck and Cover— Speaking of Kruschev, it was the source on many a nightmare for school children in the fifties taught this Civil Defense maneuver in the event a Russian lobbed nuclear bomb was to explode into a mushroom cloud nearby…
A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste— This slogan originated on behalf of the United Negro College Fund (now known as UNCF) more than four decades ago and is still widely quoted when accenting the importance of education…
Don’t Trust Anyone over 30— Remember the Generation Gap? This was popular when I was in my twenties. I believed it then, but came to appreciate the sacrifices those who fought in World War II and Korea made for us…
A Silly Millimeter Longer— Smokers got a bigger bang for their buck with the longer Chesterfield cigarette. I guessed Benson & Hedges was the perpetrator of this slogan until I looked it up. Chesterfield also came up with the more forgettable, “Blow some my way.” Say what?
Speaking of smoking, we were young and sublimely smoking when the Surgeon General issued the dire initial health warnings in 1964 and ultimately banned advertising tobacco products on April Fool’s Day 1970.
Other tobacco slogans included:
Are you smoking more and enjoying it less? This was asked by Camels, which was also a cigarette for which some smokers would walk a mile — if they had enough wind to get there, that is. Another ad also boasted that “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.”
Got a Cold? Switch to Kool— They put menthol in cough drops, don’t they?
I Light a Lucky and Go Light on the Sweets — Let’s see, should I put on a few more pounds or lose a lung? How much does a lung weigh, anyway?
“Gee, Mommy, you sure enjoy your Marlboros!” — Yes, the brand puffed by the rugged cowboy in Marlboro Country was originally marketed for women…
Fresh as Mountain Air — Claimed Old Gold, which also promised, “Not a Cough in a Carload.” Just keep the windows open.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it — That was not an ad slogan but a popular idiom back in the days when most men— and a good number of women— smoked. Tobacco became a popular form of currency in the military and in prison. It means that if you don’t like what I’m saying, too bad.
So I guess you’ll have to put that in your pipe and smoke it. Word of warning. You’ll probably have to do it outside.