Inside Front Cover - John J. Matheson, 95, Some Abundant Wildflowers

ISSUE : Issue 5

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1973/7/1

John J. Matheson, 95 My grandfather' when he died, was 105* And when his wife, my grandmother, died, she was 102. And I remember the night he died. Very fine. My cousin, this night he came to visit grandfather and grand? mother. The old fellow says, I wish you'd take me out of bed for a while. It would do me good. So they got him up and took him out of bed and set him on a chair. Ah, he says, that's enough. I'll be tired enough. Take me back to bed. And not as long as you were out to the machine, and back again • that would be the time he passed away. He taught me to smoke. I was • I don't know • 4 or 5. He was using tobacco • But he had no sight. And he couldn't make a smoke right. And it was MacDonald's Twist. There was a way of cutting it up in small pieces and puttir' it in a pipe. He couldn't do it. He said to me. Did you ever use tobacco? I said. Yes. He said. Did you ever make a smoke? Yeah. I said I made more than one. He said. To? morrow you come down with me. He gave me some matches, and the pipe. He said. There's the pipe. I hate for you to take it from me. It's a good pipe. Ah, I said, I wouldn't spoil it. I cleaned it out to make it free. I said, I want to put them in good so it will be a good smoke. I cut them up small. And I rolled them and rolled them. I got it pret? ty good in the pipe. He wanted to know be? fore he'd t'ake it if it was all right. But the only way I could tell that was for me to try it. I'd have to light it and pull it to see if it was going good. But that's all I wanted, you know, smoke. In the kitchen, the stove was just like that, and he was pretty near the stove, in a chair. And I used to sit down, at his feet, on the floor. And when I'd get the pipe going I could smoke it till he was good and ready. I did that for I don't know how many years. So that's the way I learned to make it, and to smoke. I was probably 5. And I've been smoking for the last 90 years. I never quit. G. c>rr'2' CJSonl:' 5)CeTCVitfTb ON) -These PWiU?' P'A'l'rC,

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