Just curious.

Odd, how cigarette smoking has fallen out of favor, but now pitching marijuana smoking approval is rising. Wonder if there will be any billboards on this for those that model present day.

Seriously, I remember working for a huge Petro Chemical firm, and over the years receiving calls that there was to much smoke coming from our plant and polluting the air. I would try to explain what they were seeing was our cooling towers during the old harsh mid-west winters.  LOL

I remember the '60s very well, Russ.  I was in sunny Southeast Asia and the wonderful world of the mid-Pacific on several all-expense-paid tours, enjoying exotic food and meeting new peoples from a number of different cultures, while all the while fighting Godless communism.  Many times I was greeted by multiple gun salutes and colorful fireworks.  

Why do you think I started drinking?  I never got into MJ or other recreational drugs.  Never saw the need. Jack Daniels and Black Flag Jamaican rum were legal and did the job.

The time period of my layout is in the 1950's.  So, on the station platform, I do have a cigarette machine.

And how about the folks that whenever they see a large power station cooling tower automatically assume it's a nuclear plant and it's spewing radioactive stuff into the air. People are very poorly informed about lots of things. Little do they know that those big cooling towers keep the rivers from overheating and killing all the fish. Right now MJ is purported to have less negative health effects than cigarettes. We'll see in 20 years...

I remember that ad.  I was working in a large chemical plant at Deepwater, NJ.  I never smoked, but most of the men did.  When that magazine was passed around quite a few guys quit smoking.  In fact, for a short time the picture was posted on a company bulletin board in our shop.  

I enjoy old movies.  There's plenty of smoking in them, and why not, that's the way it was back then.  For the last five years I mainly run a year round holiday layout.  I have penguins and Dept 56 and other figures on it.  None of those have taken up smoking to this date.    A fantasy world far removed from anything slightly annoying, depressing, or thought provoking.  At least until the track gets dirty.

Ah, Geez - I have met the master!  I don't even do that with Veranda Turbine!!!

Fantastic.  

That's right, it seemed every hand had to have a cigarette, a gun, or a racing news (Roscoe).  I'm going to add two or three cigarette machines to my layout.  

My two favorite "cigarette stories" of the fifties:

- the 1950s: In the original The Day the Earth Stood Still - the only one that counts - there is a scene where a Dr. has just examined Klatu and comes out of the room astonished that he is 87 or some age like that while he looks about 35.  As he shakes his head in wonder and talks to another doctor, there in the out room next to patient care in the hospital, he takes out a cigarete pack, lights up, and offers one to his buddy.

- the 2050s.  In Arthur C. Clark's Ghost of the Grand Banks, his protagonists are a young husband wife team of cyber experts who have made their fortune "cleaning up" old movies, by which we learn they mean removing smoking from them: by the mid 21st century smoking is not just frowned upon, but viewed as really not nice.  These young lovers have developed software that will remove the cigarette from Bogey's hand in Casablanca, etc., and the smoke in the air, and the haze hanging below the ceiling, and put something else in/do something else with the hand. For some reason I was always impressed by that.

I'm sorry I had failed to come back and look at this thread in the last two days - my excuse is my 'Streets cars preoccupied me.  This is very interesting thread.  I am moving up making a few cigarette machines to the top of my project list: this afternoon.

EDit: I was looking for photos of 1950s cigarette machines and found this billboard.  Too good: I'm going to put it, a bit weathered, on the side of a building downtown where Joe Friday and Frank Smith are investigating the Eskimo porn ring run out of the Polar XXX Press magazine shop. 

Very interesting thread...by the way, Jack Webb was a heavy smoker and died at the age of 62....just say'in....

Alan

Yes he did leavingtracks, and I thought of that as I decided not to put the billboard up.  He was a talented and intelligent man and I wonder if he would have smoked two packs a day, as he says in the ad, had he known what we know today.  See the very last comments below, by the way.

 I decided to make them with photos on foam-board to give them realistic depth.  Hard to do better with tiny details like that than a miniaturized photo.  I did several Google image searches and found these two among five 1950's style cigarette machine I downloaded.  I sized them properly and printed them out, then rubber cemented them to foam-board, cut and painted the sides, etc.   Yes, its cheap and fast - but they look good, certain good enough considering the closed is about 28 inches from the layout edge.

I ran into a dilemma.  Where do I put these.  They have to be outside, so you can see them, but they must be under a porch or other awning: I don't think folks put cigarette machine out in the rain, did they?  It turned out to be a challenge to find places to put them.  I wanted one outside my diner - that seems a natural place so I had to make this awning over the entrance: previously it had one that barely covered the door.

The porch of the Indian Trails Motel, which is all foamboard itself, seemed a natural place, too.  This working girl is asking that nice gentleman if he can spare the change for a pack of cigarettes.

The general store might have one machine.  It looks really natural here, like it belongs. It took me fifteen minutes to think of this.

I had one more and could not figure out where to put it.  I ended up putting it on the loading dock of the brewery.  Not sure anyone will ever notice.  And no!!!! I never noticed before I looked at this photo that that guy in it looks like he's p-ing into the water, but I assure you he is not: he's a dedicated brewery employee and he would never pollute that rocky mountain spring water they use to make beer!

My wife looked at these and remarked that Freud had been at work.  Maybe so, I wasn't conscious of it but Freud works that way doesn't he?  Anyway, all three people buying cigarettes are women: my Mom, a two-pack-a-day smoker, died of lung cancer at age 54.  

Lee, your stuff is very cool or should I say "Kool".

In the 50s and 60s, they thought that heart disease and dying from heart attacks was a male phenomenon. That was until women started smoking at the same rate as men and finding their way into the same stress jobs as men. They've caught up. It's one of the "We've come a long way baby" issues that folks don't like to talk about too much.

Jack Webb may or may not have stopped smoking. There's still plenty of folks doing it today with all the knowledge we now have. I stopped when my son was born in 1975. It took me seven years, starting in '68 to finally and forever stop smoking. I went from about a pack a day down to 1–2/day and then finally zero. I haven't smoked anything since then, and know that if I just took one I'd be hooked all over again. Nicotine is a very strong narcotic.

I know that some folks are ready to be done with this thread. To satisfy their wishes, I'm done commenting too.

Jack died of a Heart attack. We knew Jack personally, and heart ailments ran in the family. He was always highly stressed when working, usually had several things going, planning. He would sometimes only take a nap, rather then sleep the night. Dad and Jack went fishing one time, dad said he didn't sleep, rather going over scripts at night. Seems Jack couldn't relax.

I understand he was famous for that trait.  Great guy.  I have all of the Dragnet TV series and love it, even cheesy as some of the early shows were

One of the themes running through this thread is the "I wouldn't model cigarette machines because they are bad for you, etc." I made the decision to go ahead and do so since that is how I remember the '50s.

But on reflection, that has made me realize I am a bit of a hypocrite in a minor way.  Cigarette machines were a common fixture in the '50s, and so with that excuse I do model them.  But separate restroom for "white only" and "colored" were too, as was a side entrance to the balcony for minorities at a local movie theater.  I've never even thought of modeling those aspect of my childhood.  

The only good thing about the '60s was the "Twist". That was the dance that made men over 30 look like total clowns.

Uhhh . . . some of us seem to attain that distinction without dancing.

..where's the line form?