Much Ado about NOTHING

Secondhand Smoke

No one in my household smokes. But when my wyfe's aunt died, we acquired all of her smoking paraphernalia. Included in the inheritance is a collection of mid-20th-century souvenir ashtrays from places like "Reno's Horseshoe Club", the Sahara and Aladdin Hotels in Las Vegas, and the La Sierra Motel in Tijuana. Yes, Aunt Betty lived out West and apparently made some pilgrimages to Sin City. She also left us a collection of matchbooks from the Stockyard Steak House, the Safeway Driving School, a place called Small World in Hollywood that sold both sandwiches and "color coordinated home accessories", and the Hotel Dupont Plaza in Washington, DC. It's not clear what she was doing in Washington, but she did get around. We've displayed most of this smoking impedimenta in our living room, so a casual visitor might think we smoke like chimneys. Not so. We just like to pretend it's 1965 and life is a little simpler sometimes.