A Tribute to the Cigar Box, Cigars, and the Men Who Smoked Them Sara Etgen-Baker   © Copyright 2023 by Sara Etgen-Baker

Photo from the author.

A cigar box was equally useful in its parts for construction projects. The sides suggested airplane wings and often became such. The top and bottom could be split, useful for making aircraft cabins, hulls of boats, bodies of cars, and miniature dollhouses.

Before going back to school in August, we kids received our free cigar box from our local grocer who always saved his empty cigar boxes for us. I used mine for my storing my school supplies: pencils, erasers, ruler, compass, crayons, glue, and that tiny package of tissues for my nose.

As for the cigars that came in those boxes, it seems that those of us of my generation remember our fathers, strong and lean, those young survivors of the Depression and World War II, work-stained in overalls or khakis who, after a long day of farming, refining oil, fixing cars, carpentering houses, or repairing someone’s plumbing, celebrated their daily lives as well as the birth of their child with a gasper, happy at the joy of simply being alive, of being able to raise a family, and being able to feed their children.

As for the cigars that came in those boxes, it seems that those of us of my generation remember our fathers, strong and lean, those young survivors of the Depression and World War II, work-stained in overalls or khakis who, after a long day of farming, refining oil, fixing cars, carpentering houses, or repairing someone’s plumbing, celebrated their daily lives as well as the birth of their child with a gasper, happy at the joy of simply being alive, of being able to raise a family, and being able to feed their children. These men, no longer rationed by desperate poverty and who’d survived the battlefront, splurged on a box of cigars. Sure. Those cigars weren’t very good, but that wasn’t important. Smoking cigars was the hard-won celebration for men who’d not known much in the way of food, clothes, or shoes in boyhood. They lost themselves in it; everything faded away—their worries, their problems, their thoughts—all faded into the smoke, and they were at peace. To these men, every cigar was a victory cigar and a statement of their courage.

Dad, Edwin Richard Etgen, and his buddy, Frank, after WW II smoking a cigar together..