We had a ‘smoking section’ at one of my high schools. But the occupants were mostly the undercover NARCs. lol
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We had one until we didn’t. Then I went off school property and had a Camel… came back on the property and got read the riot act. WTF? I left to have a fag.
“But you came back.”
So fucking what?
“You’ll get detention next time.”
So we smoked on the roof of the auditorium after that. That fat bastard was never going to climb a ladder.
Late 60’s, across the street from the High School in Shawnee Park.
The west parking lot in the woods just off school grounds.
As long as you weren’t standing on the asphalt you were good.
Deeper into the woods was even better.
Yep, we had a smoking area. Two of them, actually. And we didn’t know what a narc was because the illicit drug of choice back then was beer.
In my DC suburban Northern Virginia HS, I never saw any weed, never smelled any, never even heard it talked about. Beer was big, though. I was getting served in DC before I even had a driver license.
JFTR, my HS finally got rid of me in 1966 (by giving me a diploma).
There was a cabal of druggies that campaigned for a smoking area throughout the entire time I was in high school. I went to my 40th High School reunion… and they are all dead.
Yep. By the back gate of the athletic field. We refereed to them as “Back Gaters”
Yes. It wasn’t far from the lunchroom, unfortunately. With 99.5% being under 18 and 100% under 21, thank God it can’t happen today.
Since I was badly affected by cig smoke, I avoided the area like it was a lava pool. Still can’t stand to smell the smoke on anyone near me. Gives me a headache.
Read a sign at my local 7-11 today that a fed law required Phillip Morris to inform everyone that secondhand smoke kills 38,000 people a year.
Oh NOW they say that. Could have told you how bad it was back in the 60s and every decade I lived with a smoker until 1996. Had to go to the doctor 2-4 times a year with sinus and lung problems because of it.
“Oh, secondhand smoke isn’t harmful!” F**k if it ain’t, b***h.
If anyone needs some kind of compensation from these f***ers, it’s people like me that never even used their products but suffered greatly from them.
Yes. I wish tobacco use had never started. Ever. Nothing good from it at all.
HOLY CRAP you guys are old!
Graduated in 1975. My high school had one in he middle of the courtyard. If you walked thru it, you smelled like smoke all day. Hated it!! But, it was shocking when we saw a jock smoking. Y
We were your typical Catholic all-girl-school sluts. Smoked and fooled around off grounds and out of site like nobody’s business but no smoking area at school for sure. I’ve reformed in my old age and would be horrified if my granddaughters hung around with someone like grandma.
My high school had a smoking area, AND a narc. Who was known to me, but not recognized by me.
Let me explain.
…it was the late ’70s. The HS I was sentenced to be a freshman in was heavily integrated thanks to the then-contraversial bussing program, and many of the less light students seemed to come from backgrounds where hand-rolled cigarettes with a different smoke were popular. Proctering over this was a young, hip, Naturaled Black teacher known universally as “Mr. J”. Mr. J was not much older than his students and quite proud of his rapport with the older ones, who he cultivated.
One way he demontrated he was “down” with them was by ignoring the various smells and the merchantile activity around the hand-rolled cigarettes. Typically, the students would simply say “Hey Mr. J, turn around” on his approach, whereby he would obligingly walk sideways by them with his back to the open-air smoke shop on display. This gave him what we could now refer to as plausible deniability as he could say he didnt actually SEE the transactions.
One outfit that did NOT turn their back was the local constabulary, which shared a parking lot with the high school. They had a problem, however; how to get evidence?
The answer to that was in the form of a new young-looking female officer (which at the time was itself a rarity), to go undercover as a student to make deals and gather evidence to break it up.
She found she had a problem, though.
ME.
…you see, she was relatively young, so it wasnt that long before she had done some work for the accross-the-street neighbor lady as a babysitter for her youngest son.
Your humble narrator SNS, to be clear.
She had seen me smoking (Marlboro Red ONLY, thank God), and was concerned I would recognize her and tell people she was too old to be there.
She neednt have worried. My mom was a career woman who had a number of babysitters come and go, all YEARS before this event, so I absolutely wouldnt recognize her. Add to that the fact that I was quite zit-faced and painfully shy about it at the time and so avoiding female contact, plus I was not part of the drug scene anyway (I was a nerd to boot), so she was in no danger from ME.
So she settled in, did her work, and in due tine a number of upper classmen no longer graced the smoking area, taking young Mr. J and his Leisure Suit Larry attire with them.
I escaped after my sophmore year to vocational school, which had its own smoking area that there was NO dope at because we all were there to learn dangerous occupations, so I never knew if Mr. J or his coterie of dealers returned.
But I DID meet my erstwhile babysitter again.
…When I went to work on the FD, she was still working for the same city PD, but now as a detective. From her I got the story of their concerns and how they allayed them, complete with some apparently unofficial comms with my mother.
We had a good laugh about it.
Im not there any more, havent been for decades, but the last time I looked, she still is.
So’s the high school, but I cant imagine they still run raids there.
No smoking area now,for one thing, but the demographic has changed for another.
They dont need to integrate by bus any more, not to put too fine a point on it, and pot is all OVER Ohio now for another, so Im pretty sure they lost that particular war.
I dont know anything about smoking areas in general now. I gave it up in my 26 yo son’s first year, when he took a cigarette out of the pack in my breast pocket and mouthed it just like Dad. I went from 3-4 packs a day to 0 just like THAT.
…but I ken from the smells coming from the cars in the lot and on my young co-workers that pot in general is still quite popular, though it smells MUCH worse than my High School memories report it. So as far as I can tell, Mr. J has been quite vindicated.
Cigarettes have been supplanted by Mary Jane.
In whatever smoking area he occupies these days, he must be well-pleased…
Yeah, my HS had a smoking area, outside one of the doors but out of sight from the street. Before that students would pile in the lavatories between classes to smoke. They tried taking the doors off but kids would pack the bathrooms so tight that teachers couldn’t get in to bust anyone. That was when they finally relented.
Uncle Al,
Mine had two too.
AM and PM.
Different Wings.
AM was the Automotive Wing Smokers Court. 2 Honeybuns and a Chocolate Milk.
PM was under Honeybuns 2nd Floor classroom next to the student parking lot where I parked at 16. Her last class ended at 2:30 in the afternoon and I would drove her home to her house. Her parents worked in DC and would never get home before 6PM. DC I-95 traffic and all that. I usually drove home to my house at 5:45 PM and would sometimes see her dad driving his car home at the intersection where the gas station was. Those were some great afternoons for a Junior Senior couple of years.
Uncle Al, it was there. You just thought it was wood smoke.
My high school was so badass we had a drinking section.
Yeah, at the loading dock where deliveries were made. Didn’t go there often as i didn’t smoke, but it was a fun group of people.
I never smoked but my dad and 2 of younger brothers did as well and they all have had had cardiac problems. My late wife also smoked the first 17 years that we were married quitting cold turkey in Feb. 1994. After she quit smoking, she couldn’t stand the smell of cigarettes and one time she won a weekend stay at the CDA Casino, hotel and golf course in Worley, Idaho in a raffle at her work at Sacred Heart Med. Ctr. in Spokane, we went for the weekend, and the smell of all the smoke made her ill and she had to shower and change her clothes every time we returned to our hotel room. My son also smokes although he’s trying to quit. Cigarettes were tax free at 0.16 cents a pack on board the Kitty Hawk 50 years ago and a carton would cost a $1.60. And all the smokers chain smoked like no tomorrow (especially the CPO’s) whenever the smoking lamp was lit in their shops and in our shared living quarters. I tried smoking when I was a teenager, and it made me sick, so I never picked up that nasty habit.
TheMule,
We (Me and a Bunch) made a couple senior trips to various houses that housed those 1960s-70s wooden bars and yes, there was shag carpets and even a much admired pot plant that was maybe 2 feet tall that was hidden in the dudes closet that was lined with aluminum foil. Smoking was not only allowed.
Dude named chris was over 18 with a real id and we had some regular keggers too. October of 80, 81 and 82 are legendary memories.
As was back then so it is again, the anti-smokers are a real drag and black pill the groups.
Probably a narc
Our public high school had a smoking section in the courtyard across the hall from the cafeteria.
I only went there one year.
My high school, a Catholic girls’ school had no smoking area but those who smoked managed to get outside
Redgrandma, you crack me up!
” I’ve reformed in my old age and would be horrified if my granddaughters hung around with someone like grandma.”
My high school had one, and it was a welcome addition considering the insanity of ever trying to pee between classes. The smoke-filled restrooms were so crowded with smokers that you practically had to duck down below the smoke cloud to see where you were going.
Redgrandma has the best spot for looking after her grand daughters. Experience and it sounds like, a sense of humor about things. Grandmas are more important than just about everyone to the little ones.
My first (of 3) high school’s French teacher had such a bad accent and could barely speak English. LOL. And judging by her voice, she was smoking between classes IN her class. The entire school was low rent. I left within a month and went to a less shitty school. Their smoking section was more discrete.
Smoke Courtship-
Honeybuns! They used to be huge.
Now they are like cupcake size. Ugh.
@MJA
Yep. They were big and only a quarter or .35
The Dollar for Lunch budget left on the table funded it.
Today I prefer the big apple fritters at my bakery.
Can’t buy just one.
They are what Coffee was made to go with.
Those and a couple of bavarian creme filled donuts that have real powdered sugar sprinkled over the tops.
Morning Bread
Smoked across the street beside the gas station in high school.
Got into college and you could smoke in class.