ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 12, 1996 TAG: 9601120015
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: fridaysomething
SOURCE: NANCY GLEINER
Cigarettes are smoked. Cigars are savored.
Men retire to the library and enjoy them with cognac; they puff on them as they contemplate their bets at late-night poker games; they hand them out, pink- or blue-banded, to celebrate a birth.
Groucho Marx said, ``Given the choice between a woman and a cigar, I will always choose the cigar.''
``A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke,'' Rudyard Kipling wrote long ago.
Winston Churchill was a cigarette smoker for years because he couldn't afford cigars. About the middle of World War II, Cuba gave him a gift of 10,000 cigars. He managed to smoke an estimated quarter million of the cheroots during his later years.
A devoted cigar-smoking Dutchman named Mynheer van Klaes left instructions in his will to have as many smokers as possible attend his funeral and smoke throughout the ceremony. Mourners were encouraged to scatter their tobacco on the lid of his coffin.
An exploding cigar allegedly was considered as a means of assassinating Fidel Castro.
Simon Argeritch, a cigar chain-smoker, made his mother proud. He holds the world record of 17 for ``most cigars held in the mouth and smoked simultaneously.'' He can whistle a tune at the same time.
When President Clinton came down hard on tobacco companies last year, he was asked if he would give up his occasional cigar. He said no.
``I try never to do it where people see,'' he said. ``I admitted that I did do it when Captain [Scott] O'Grady was found [in Bosnia] because I was so happy.''
If he followed stogie-smoking etiquette, he didn't inhale.
Source: ``Cigar Chic,'' by Tomima Edmark
LENGTH: Short : 42 linesby CNB