By Samuel Cushman
Around two years ago, I found myself sitting on the back porch of a very lovely, and large, home. It overlooked a back yard with green, manicured grass and beyond the backyard, there was a lake. The water was placid and a pleasant hue of blue. The sun was falling in the west, and in a few hours it would have set beyond the tree-covered hills in the horizon. It was a balmy summer evening that brought to mind thoughts of sweet tea, church potlucks, summer fish fries and southern cookouts. I was feeling good. I had just eaten a great meal, it wasn’t too hot and to top it all off, I had a cigar in my hand.
I brought the cigar to my mouth. The leaf it was wrapped in was oily and a deep, smooth brown – a testament to its sun-grown past. The cigar had been aging for a long time, over twenty years, if memory serves. I inhaled a rich, complex set of flavors that made my taste buds sing of coffee and cocoa but also of something more exotic, something that echoed with the musical earthiness of Cuban soil. Even to this day it was without a doubt the best cigar I’ve ever had. And since then I’ve smoked everything from Cohibas to Rocky Patels and Casa Magnas to Opus X, the jewel of the Arturo Fuente franchise and nothing yet compares to the sweet and earthy flavors of that cigar.
A curious thought fleeted through my head. The cigar I held in my hands had been aged for at least 20 years. When it was made, I wouldn’t have been born for another two years at the very least. And now that it had been cut, lit and smoked halfway through it seemed almost a waste. I looked at it more closely. This time I examined the veins in the brown leaf and the embossed red and gold wrapper that read “Cuban Parejo.” I felt a sense of loss similar to what one feels when breaking the seal on a time capsule, or eating a wonderful dinner that one spent hours cooking or like finishing the final book in great series.
For two decades that cigar would have been sitting in a humidor, oblivious to the events of the world, waiting for the moment when it would be picked up by its owner, handed to me, cut, lit up and smoked. Almost needless to say, I resolved myself to commit every detail of that evening to memory.
The man who gave me the cigar, and who owned the house – we couldn’t have been more different. I was only a few months into being 18 years old and he was in his fifties. I was about to go off to Ouachita to study mass communications and he was a seasoned doctor of medicine. I was a middle class white kid who had been raised in the states and him? Well, he was born in Cuba, the son of two (formerly) very wealthy parents who personally knew Fidel Castro but were forced to come to the U.S. as refugees when things got rough over there.
Heck, this was the first time I met him and he gave me one of the most treasured pieces of his cigar collection. And I wouldn’t have met the guy were it not for my close friend. He was just at their home, cleaning their carpets one day for a summer job he was working. He happened to notice his huge cigar collection, and being a cigar smoker himself, mentioned it to the guy’s wife and she invited him over to smoke with her husband. He brought me along about the second or third time he went to visit.
But this guy didn’t even know me, and I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting him that one time, almost two years ago. I was a complete stranger, almost completely different. But for all our differences there was something that we did have in common, he, my buddy, and I. We were cigar smokers. Aficionado’s, if you will. And it is these experiences that we live for: discovery, meeting fascinating people who share the same passion that we do and exploring a centuries old fraternal bond that every connoisseur of fine cigars shares with one another.
We cigar aficionado’s are a certain breed of men. Despite our differences, we are men of class. We are refined and have tastes tempered for the highest quality; cigar aficionados don’t settle for anything less than the best. We are adventurers; we savor new challenges and the reward that comes with new discoveries. We won’t just smoke a cigar because it’s there or because we crave the nicotine that any petty cigarette smoker craves. When we smoke a cigar, it becomes something more than mere casual indulgence. It becomes a celebration. For each cigar contains so much history, tradition and attention to detail that the men who smoke them are not just smoking a roll of tobacco manufactured in a Havana sweatshop. You see, when we smoke a cigar, we are participating in something far greater. We are participating in a centuries old, fraternal celebration of artisanship and the deep pleasures of life.
Cigar smoking, as trivial, as it might seem at first, serves as a bridge between cultures. It offers the opportunity, as I said earlier, to explore a bond that transcends those same cultures and backgrounds.
I cannot count the number of times I’ve gone into my favorite tobacconist up in Bentonville. It’s called Romeo’s Uptown Pipes and Cigars. There is always someone, a complete stranger, in there that I‘ll spark a conversation with. And we’ll talk about all kinds of things. Usually they’re much older than I am so they have a lot more to share. But there’s always something fascinating that I get to take with me and I never leave disappointed. And that makes all the difference and it makes your cigar that much better.
If you ever become interested in smoking cigars, just go into your local tobacconist shop and I’m sure there will be someone in there who is worth talking to. Even if you never see them again, if you just chat with them while you smoke -– and just talk about life or about anything, really – you will take the pleasure of that experience with you forever.
Samuel Cushman 