Three on a Match Part Four

By Larry Cohen c 2026

Since the theme of these pieces is smoke, tobacco, and tobacco smoke, I had better get back on topic or my dear readers will be stuck on the South Side of Binghamton, NY. wondering if the Art Movie Theatre is still there (the theater is there; these types of movies are gone.)

Smoking tobacco, in any form, cannot be a healthy habit to which most can agree.  It has recently been reported, however, that nicotine can have some beneficial effects on warding off early-onset dementia.  The jury is out on that concept.  I don’t think any health professional in their right mind would suggest anyone start using tobacco to ward off dementia.  And anyone who would recommend the use of tobacco for that reason may want to be examined for early-onset dementia himself.

Ironically, many of the health professionals I met after leaving Binghamton did, in fact, use tobacco products, all along telling their own patients not to use them or quit if they had begun. For example, the Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery, who operated on many a smoker with a bad heart or a tumorous lung, surprised us all when he told us he used to smoke.  He was an Army surgeon in Vietnam and told us that when there was nothing else to do, they all would sit around and smoke. Of interest is that nurses, as well as those in all of the health professions, smoke in higher numbers than the general population.  The Harvard-educated medical doctor who was instrumental in founding the heart research lab here in my area used to smoke FDR style using a cigarette holder. And, his mentor, who would eventually take his place, smoked cigarettes sin holder as well.

Most of my friends were and still are non-smokers.  When one long-time friend introduced us to his new girlfriend one day, the assumption was that she, too, was a non-smoker.  One night when only the “boys” were out at a local tavern, someone asked how (the reader may insert any girl’s name here) was doing.  He answered that he no longer went out with her, adding, “When I kissed her, it was like kissing an ashtray.”  I guess smoking ended that relationship, but I’ll never know for sure.

One night, on the way back to Santo Domingo, a very late flight indeed, I sat next to a Dominican fellow who claimed he had been living in New York City for 20 years. Incredibly, his English was terrible, probably as bad as my Spanish, but we managed to have a conversation about his wish to leave New York to begin a tobacco plantation on his parents’ farm, a farm that was primarily a poultry and egg farm.  He seemed like an affable and honest fellow and asked me if I would like to share a cab from the airport back to Santo Domingo.  I immediately agreed since just getting to the city from the airport was about $40 USD, around $100 dollars in today’s money.

After clearing immigration and customs, we found a cab.  The driver loaded all of our suitcases into the trunk of his cab. My bed and breakfast was the first stop, so I exited the cab and relied on the cabbie to pull out the rest of my luggage. I thanked him, gave him my half of the fare, and asked for his business card (ALWAYS ask for your driver’s business card!!!)

The next morning, I realized that my camcorder bag was missing.  Sure enough, I left it in the cab, and since all of the bags were black in color, at night it was easy to miss.  But I had the driver’s business card!  I telephoned him. He told me the camcorder was with my “friend”. “Friend? He’s not my friend,” I screamed.  But my so-called friend had also given me his phone number since he saw me as a potential investor in his tobacco farm venture.

Naturally, I called him.  He was in La Vega, a 2-hour bus ride away.  I needed my camcorder so I took an inter-city bus and met this fellow at the bus stop in La Vega.  I thought I would retrieve my camcorder and head right back to the Capital.  But, noooo….I had to tour his fledgling tobacco farm, his neighbors’ farms, and spend the entire day in the tobacco-growing region of the Dominican Republic.  I guess one could call it an “education,” and it was.  Not only did I learn about tobacco farming, i.e, how tobacco plants are begun as seed and transplanted several times, harvested and dried, but an education in checking to make sure you have retrieved all of your belongings from your driver’s car.  In retrospect, I am not sure which education was the more important of the two. Nonetheless, it was a true and unexpected adventure as it concerned tobacco.