By Art Buchwald
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
It may be hard to believe, but I was a restaurant critic when I worked in Paris for the European edition of the Herald Tribune in the 1950s.
I was there when Paris was burning. That is to say, every Frenchman and woman filled the cafes and dining rooms with smoke all day.
The French Parliament is now discussing whether to ban smoking in restaurants, bars, cafes and the Eiffel Tower.
France could become a smoke-free country.
For all of us, the cigarette or cigar was the best way to end a fantastic meal.
The French have a saying, "A day without tobacco is like a day without sunshine."
The French, being the French, are very contrary about smoking. One branch of the government sold Gauloise, as well as other tobacco products, as a means of collecting tax money.
Another part of the government had an advertising campaign proclaiming that smoking was dangerous to your health.
In the good old days, I smoked cigars -- six to 10 a day.
I thought nothing of lighting up a Havana after a meal in a good restaurant.
Sometimes when I was sitting next to an American tourist, he would say, "Do you mind putting out that cigar?" Or, "Put the damn thing out! You are making my wife sick."
I sized him up. And if he was bigger than I was, I put it out.
Gourmets complained that smoking affected your taste buds.
I found it was true. One evening I was at La Tour d'Argent. I had the pressed duck, and just before that I had smoked a cigar at the Ritz Bar. I couldn't taste the duck. Since I was a restaurant critic, I didn't mention it to my companions.
The smokers in cafes in France needed a cigarette in their lips before they spoke. Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Pablo Picasso and Alexander Calder got all their ideas as they exhaled smoke from their mouths.
My favorite cafe was La Coupole in Montparnasse. You could hardly see the people for the smoke. I have ashtrays from there and other cafes. I guess my trophy is from Maxim's.
If only my ashes could talk.
Frenchmen do not laugh when they are smoking. They take it very seriously. Cafes supply matches. Tourists take them home as souvenirs.
Cigar smokers use lighters. The sexiest thing a woman can do is light a gentleman's cigar.
It is hard to imagine France as a smoke-free country.
Only the old movies will show people smoking. If "Casablanca" were filmed today, Humphrey Bogart's nightclub would have signs all over it saying "Sans Fumee" (No Smoking).
Imagine the hookers in Pigalle standing in doorways, biting their nails.
A French friend, Henri Fouquet, said, "When Americans stopped smoking, their culture went downhill. It will happen in France."
Victor Hugo would never have been able to write "Les Miserables" if he didn't have a pack of fags next to his pen.
The ones taking the big hits are, of course, the tobacco companies -- and also the armed forces. The country will have a sorry lot of soldiers, without Gitanes in their rucksacks.
No civilized Frenchman would be caught having his morning coffee without a cigarette.
Where this all leads, Dieu only knows.
2006Tribune Media Services
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