THE CAMEL CARAVAN

Like many people, I have an affection for Camel Cigarettes, an iconic brand with a long history. Imagine a long train of pack animals trekking through the desert wastes, past the storied ruins in Wadi Bogororitsh all the way to the outskirts of Alexandria, where Kyriazi Frères were making cigarettes in their beautiful Art Decco factory building, happy little Arab children singing as they rolled fags on their dusky thighs for long hours and miserable recomponse to pay for their daddy's pennicilin ......

Well, actually, not quite that way. At all.

Besides, that's more like cigars.

Also, like the Seville Cigarette Factory which imployed wayward Spanish slatterns before everything got destroyed in raucous bull fights. Pennicilin was still required, though.
Because everyone had loose morals back in the day. You know, Spaniards.

HARMLESS CIGARETTE FACTORY

That's probably the main reason so many British tourists visit Iberia, carted around in busses, surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Dublin and Glasgow in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors complaining about the tea, "Oh they don't make it properly here, not like at home" stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in cotton sun frocks squirting Timothy White suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh.

Once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman ruins where you can buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleedin' Watney's Red Barrel, and then one night they take you to a local restaurant with local color and coloring and they show you there and you sit next to a party of people from Manchester who keep singing 'Torremolinos, Torremolinos', and complaining about the food.

Best avoid Spanish cigarettes.

Wouldn't you rather have a Camel?

Sadly, the non-filter version is getting harder to find. In the Fifties they were everywhere, tucked into rolled-up tee shirt sleeves a la Marlon Brando and The Wild One. Coffee shops, shoe shop arm rests, bookstore end caps, clinic waiting rooms, and many more places of a commercial or medical nature. More doctors smoked Camels than any other cigarette. Yes, in a repeated national survey, doctors in all branches of medicine, in ALL parts of the country, were asked "what cigarette do you smoke, doctor?" Not surprisingly, more doctors preferred the taste of Camels. Why don't you try Camels for a month, to see what a smooth, rich tasting cigarette can mean for your tobacco enjoyment?


Sometimes I like a cigarette with my coffee. Ah, the romance!

The non-filters are becoming harder to find.

Might have to switch to Luckies.



Sorry, my beasts of burden were derailed at the station.



AFTER THOUGHT

Young Mr. Cohen, whom I haven't seen in several months because he's only marginally employed most of the time, prefers State Express 555. Filter Kings. Those too have a golden glow of the old days -- that elusive Epsilon 5 Tobacco, which is the key to a distinctive taste rich in hidden pleasures -- but if you remember the straights in the yellow tin, happily enjoyed after lunch at a Vietnamese noodle shop late on summer afternoons, ah that was the life!
We were younger, the sun wasn't as hot, and women were more beautiful!
Yeah no, the filters don't cut it.



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