The Land of Pleasant Living is Nevermore

(Firecured) It looks like Maryland really has banned the internet purchase of all tobacco products. No more affordable cigars, no more exotic pipe tobaccos, no more cheap rolling shag.

You know, it wasn't always this way. Not that long ago, Maryland liked to think of itself as "The Land of Pleasant Living," a slogan which, despite the fact that it came off a beer can, had more than a little truth to it.

There was a time when the Chesapeake Bay boiled with seafood, the Orioles and Colts were powerhouse organizations, Johnny Unitas was immortal, and Boog Powell still fleet of foot. And there were good jobs for everybody, good union jobs. Out in the far-flung suburbs people lived more-or-less happily in modest homes and were very polite, even patiently taking turns driving across the one lane bridges that dotted the countryside. Almost everyone smoked, drank, and went to church.

Baltimore city was a working class paradise filled with enough factories and mills to last forever, or so we thought. There was a tavern on every corner and the tobacco flowed as freely as the beer. People complained at Memorial Stadium, not because they couldn't smoke, but because the place only sold four brands of cigarettes. The old men smoked cigars (Uncle Willie's come to mind), the parents smoked Winston's, Bel Air's, Chesterfields, and a host of other fallen flags, while the young people, most of whom had never even seen a horse up close, flocked to Marlboros in droves. Out in the countryside, smoking still competed with the likes of Scotch snuff, and for the hippies, there were clove cigarettes, and anything else they could get away with - marijuana consumption being not much of a crime. You could name your poison and almost nobody blinked an eye.

The food was just as insidious, Polish Sausage, Italian sausage, fried hominy, fried clams, fried ham, fried bluefish, fried scrapple with King Syrup, fried crab cakes, fried eggs at The Buttery, fried oysters, fried rockfish, fried everything. The spicy, salt encrusted steamed crabs were bigger than my head and Corned Beef Row served up sandwiches twice the size. The pricier eateries, like Hausner's, competed with German food that was as heavy, and as pleasing, as the art covering its walls. Often, the food was all mixed up, coming from the kitchens of people not long from Europe, adding to the long established Southern American, African American, and just plain old white trash American traditions - it was not thanksgiving without turkey, but it wasn't Thanksgiving without sauerkraut either. Don't even get me started on the candied yams, swimming in Karo syrup, butter, and marshmallows. Crab feasts and bull & oyster roasts filled our bellies, clogged our arteries (nobody lives forever), and funded our benevolent organizations. Then there was the beer, the beer; oh you haughty microbrew loving connoisseurs can cram it with walnuts because you've never tasted anything as good as an ice cold vintage National Boh - and you never will.

Locals wishing to get exotic would trot up to Lancaster County for some hogmaw, filling, shoofly pie, and a host of other Pennsylvania Dutch treats. It was like a whole 'nother country up there with its strange food and innumerable red brick boroughs. Lush, toothsome tobacco fields lined the Susquehanna, not to mention much of the lower bay.

The grease, the smoke, the trans-fats! Yes, we were horribly ignorant people, always eating, always drinking, smoking our brains out, and, well, living pleasantly. Can you imagine a people so stupid that we didn't know the difference between brie and Chablis? Our bellies were full, our arteries were clogged, and our checking accounts, while modest, were balanced - this, we thought, was happiness. I'm so glad the scales were lifted from our eyes and our benevolent government cleansed our souls with nourishing margarine, enlightening Paxil, cheap credit, and yummy nicotine patches. Thank God they saved us from the perils of toiling in a smoke belching factory in favor of the ever-so-lucrative McWalmart job. And Saints be praised that our heroic state legislature has turned us all away from the sin of affordable cigars. Thank you Maryland, I'll hate you 'till I die, but it wasn't always that way.