Puttin’ On the Ritz Crackers

I knew I had it coming.

In a spurt of avuncular generosity, I handed the young man a cigar.  It was a pretty good smoke, maybe a Romeo y Julietta or a cheap Maria Mancini I had bought on a half-price sale—I buy all my cigars on sale or do not buy them at all.  The polite young man thanked me, clipped the end with a cigar-cutter I dug up somewhere, and, when I held out the match, he began twiddling the cigar around the flame as if he were putting the last golden touches on a marshmallow.  About to burn my fingers waiting for the tom-foolery to end, I exclaimed, in the gentle tone I usually reserve for sons and editorial assistants, “What in H-ll do you think you are doing?”  

As a smoker who has sometimes been corralled into the concentration camps known as cigar bars, I obviously had a fair idea of what he was doing, and I might even have overlooked the pretentious exaggeration of a practical measure  if  the young man had not been  kind enough to raise my blood pressure even higher by going into a brief though pedantic  explanation of this toasting ritual.  He had smoked perhaps a dozen cigars in his entire life, but he had the technique down pat.

Here, from CigarTrends.Com is a full explanation:

To light your cigar, first strike a match and hold it underneath the foot of the cigar to warm the tobacco. The distance should be great enough that the tip of the flame does not touch the underside of the wrapper. Roll the cigar slowly between your fingers to make sure the entire foot is evenly warmed. This will make the tobacco in the cigar more readily accept a flame.

Once you have warmed the tobacco, put the cigar in your mouth at a 45º angle and use another match to light it. Hold the flame directly in front of the cigar (again, so it is not actually touching the wrapper), and slowly inhale to draw the flame to the foot of the cigar. While lighting your cigar, ensure that you turn the barrel so that all sides of the foot are equally lit. You may wish to lightly blow on the foot of the cigar to even things out and make sure your cigar continues to burn evenly.

You may also wish to politely [sic] kick the prissy ass who wrote these instructions down the stairs.  If I were a first time smoker reading this,  I think I would switch to cigarettes.  Better to face cancer than make a religion out of warming your cigars.

I used to take some care in cutting and lighting my cigars, but the sight of the aficionados at work, many of whom have less taste in cigars than the affected young man, has driven me to biting the end off and snatching a light from a pack of cheap matches or from the kitchen stove.  The performance can excite shock and awe.  Once in a cigar bar, I was accosted by an importunate smoker in short sleeves who wanted to know what I was about to smoke.  I showed him my Macanudo Churchill, and, as I started bite into it, he practically leapt over my table offering a cutter, which I not so politely declined.  I already have a religion, and tobacco is not my frankincense.

Without ever subscribing to Cigar Aficonado or listening to Cigar Dave on the radio, I have been enjoying cigars since I first swiped my old man’s Harvesters and smoked them in the woods.  They were machine made but I still recall the taste as pleasant.  I am afraid the average professional cigar smoker I have encountered does not even enjoy smoking, any more than wine snobs, whose greatest pleasure is in talking to the wine steward, enjoy drinking wine. 

I had a house-mate in graduate school who wanted to set up for a cultivated gentleman.  He took to reading Alexis Lichine and buying expensive wines.  He invited me to dinner, along with a friend who also enjoyed good wine, and asked us to savor one of M. Lichine’s top picks.  “I say, gentleman,” said the connoisseur after swirling a teaspoon or so over his soft palate, “That is something special.”  When the host left the room, my friend looked at me with a crazed smile.  “Corked, isn’t it?” we said almost simultaneously.

It used to be you could take refuge in drinking whiskey.  But now you cannot order a drink without hearing a pedantic discourse on single malts or single barrels.  Even rum and tequila, to say nothing of gin and vodka, have put on airs and moved uptown.  Yes, I have been enjoying single-malt scotches for 40 years and wrote my dissertation on Aeschylus under a known expert on Scotch, who mixed one sherry glass of scotch with one of cool but not cold water. I like the new expensive bourbons (and occasionally mix a martini with Tanqueray), but do not expect to catch me at a Knob Creek tasting.  If the only way to avoid amusing chit-chat about distillation and barrels  is to drink Jim Beam, then Jim Beam it is.  I would have said Evan Williams, but now that the Wine Spectator (or some other set of gumboils) have pronounced it the best value in bourbon, the price has gone up and with it the cachet.

I have nothing against the little rituals that grow up naturally around eating and drinking or hunting and fishing.  I use barbless hooks in catch-and-release zones, even though I know that a trout caught after a good fight in fast water is not likely to revive when put back.  It is just one of the things one does.  I almost always take my salad after dinner, put the bread on the tablecloth and not on the plate, and I have learned from French and Italian friends how to sample a good wine without contorting my face into the expression of a mime pretending to choke on a golf ball.  But one should not have to take a course or study a website in order to partake of a simple pleasure or practice a sport.

As Chesterton sagely observed, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”  Chesterton was obviously not referring to neurosurgery or theology but to skills (such as writing poetry or playing the piano) that might be perfected by a professional but can give pleasure to an amateur.  I would go further, however, and say that there are some things that no sane man will ever wish to do so well that people begin to think of him as the flie-tier or the world’s expert on Slovenian Rizlings.  (Plutarch took this attitude to the extreme, arguing that everyone can enjoy art, though no gentleman would wish to be known as an artist.)

Orvis schools and pretentious tackle shops have ruined fly fishing for me.  I used to listen sympathetically to Ron Mance, a guide on the Brule River, when he waxed eloquent on the subject of “dose guys from da Twins wit dere fancy boron rods and expensive vests from Orvis.  Cheeze.”  They learned in school to cast beautifully and to talk learnedly about reading the stream.  Catching fish was something else.

I ran into a classic case when I was fishing the White River in Arkansas.  My fishing buddy and I were staying in a nice lodge with excellent food.  One night a rich doctor came in.  My friend groaned, having met him years ago in Louisiana, “One of my little brother’s friends,” he said with the contempt one always has for a little brother’s friends.  The doctor regaled—not the right word—us with stories of his fishing exploits around the world, most recently in New Zealand.  When ”Jack,” who was the best guide on the White, took my fishing buddy out on the lawn to improve his casting technique, the doctor had to butt in and give unasked advice, which humiliated my friend, who is an excellent fisherman but not a flycaster.  The uninvited advice seriously annoyed the guide.  Over a drink at the bar in the lodge, I asked him--with just a hint of malice--if he enjoyed the lesson.  Jack, who did not suffer fools at all much less gladly, had a grim look on his face.  “Don’t worry,” he said,   I’m guiding the son-of a b-tch tomorrow.”

The next day about sunset we were sipping Bourbon on the porch when the shaken and demoralized doctor walked in with Jack, who could not wipe the grin from his face.  One look said everything.  I asked Jack how long it took to administer the much-needed come-uppance. “About the first five minutes on the river.”  There is justice in the world after all.

 

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Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina

15 Responses

  1. JamesD says:

    Norm MacDonald observed that it is hard to quit smoking, but with all of the hysterical curbs and bans on tobacco, it is much harder to start smoking.

    I grew up fishing and my father is a fly fisherman. I fly fished for many years, but with all of the pretension and trout snobbery, I have given it up. I would much rather fish for smallmouth or pike, with a spinning rod. In his youth, Tred Barta was an avid fly fisherman. He traveled the world and wrote numerous articles about his fly fishing experiences. In his later years, he completely gave up fly fishing due to the snobbery and trout worship.

  2. Raymond Olson says:

    Thanks for this marvelous example of the higher grousing.

    My dad had no time for smoking, bibbing, or fishing. He also never talked about them. While I have indulged in tobacco and spirits, I’ve done my best to follow his example. The most I’ll say is that I like certain cigarettes and cigars, certain single malts, certain beers and can recommend them. I no longer smoke or drink beer, single malts, and most other spirits, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my taste preferences.

    The only times I indulge in “tasting” was with my friend Scott, who died May 5 this year. We sampled bourbons in Bardstown, Kentucky, and single malts when we could afford more than two. We limited our descriptions to qualities that we understood in the same way, and while acknowledging great liking for particular examples, we kept things light. When he felt we were growing solemn or stuffy, he would “taste” more obviously, perhaps smack his lips, and pronounce, “Ahhh, . . . your uncle’s socks.”

  3. Harry Colin says:

    As a young lieutenant I was sent to a school run by the Bundeswehr, one that invited other NATO officers, and our evenings there along the Rhine included an informal course on German white wines. I was as ignorant as one of your fish about wine, but enjoyed the experience and learned much. Our instructor, however, an otherwise cordial chap, issued grave warnings about becoming a pretentious wine snob, just because we now knew just a little. When asked what the best wine was, he replied, “the best wine is the one you like to drink! “

  4. Robert Reavis says:

    JamesD,
    Ted Williams was a good fisherman too and a helluva baseball hitter. He had eyes for things but like you not very patient with affectation or pretense He is often referenced by old timers for saying “by the time you really know what to do you’re too damned old to do it.” But as I get older I prefer his more encouraging words “ Just keep going. Everybody gets better eventually if they keep at it.”
    I always thought it appropriate that Bob Knight who knew basketball and Ted Williams who knew baseball became real friends through fishing!!

  5. Gregory Fogg says:

    My maternal grandfather died in 1951, two years before I was born. He used to guide float trips on White River back before Table Rock and Beaver dams were built. Mom said he had a lot of well-to-do clients, doctors and lawyers from KC and StL. It seems they were unpretentious and just loved to fish.

  6. Frank DeRienzo says:

    In 2003 there was series on TV called ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ wherein the plot often revolved around a team of supposed cultured queers transforming some brute philistine into something more civilized -dressing and grooming him. Teaching him how to eat, etc. As I recall it only lasted one season. They jumped the shark when they attempted to ‘queerify’ some team members of the Boston Red Sox. The tedious prideful theme is echoed in the prideful antics of cigar-fags, wine -fags, whiskey fags, etc. Screwtape knows the score: “Males are best turned into gluttons with the help of their vanity. “…They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about food, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the town where steaks are really “properly” cooked. What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit. But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence—it matters not which, champagne or tea, sole colbert or cigarettes—”puts him out”, for then his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy….”

  7. Roger McGrath says:

    In the Marine Corps the response to any pretentious or affected behavior was “Well, la-di-fucking-da.”

  8. Ken Rosenberger says:

    I hope you caned this fatuous young cretin a la Brooks v. Sumner, hard oak as opposed to gutta percha. Who was this mindless young specimen of effete affectation? Had he no self-awareness. You should have kicked his arse in a proud rage, as a certain Who guitarist did to Abbie Hoffman at Woodstock. And his parents should have been made to do time in the stock!!

  9. Jerry Brock says:

    Cigar stores, particularly those with a cigar lounge, are notorious havens for jerks and jerks-in-training. From the member who treats the lounge as his private man cave, to the obnoxious poker players who insist on moving furniture around to suit their own tastes and who listen to their cell phones on full volume without earbuds, to cigar smoking fans of Two and a Half Men who cling tightly to the TV remote, cigar lounges are more likely than not to ruin the experience of smoking a good cigar in peace. I have met and made a couple of good friends at a local lounge but the membership fee forced me meet them else where.

  10. Michael Strenk says:

    My grandfather swiped a handful of cigars while no-one was looking at, I believe, his oldest sisters wedding at about the age of ten. He went behind the shed and smoked them. They later found him green and barely conscious so they called in a doctor. The doctor looked, sniffed and declared that he would be alright when the tobacco wore off. Yes, he got whooped.
    I never liked the smell of cigars although I once liked tobacco. I only ventured to smoke one once at a baptism at the persistent urging of some distant relatives. I was already much the worse for alcohol, which is the only reason why I gave in. A few puffs and my head started to spin. I got some air where I recovered and tossed the foul thing away never to repeat the experience.

  11. Avatar photo Thomas Fleming says:

    Michael, next time pretend you are Bill Clinton and don’t inhale!

  12. Dom says:

    Does the series’ title imply that Ritz crackers are for pretentious snobs? I hope not, because I love Ritz.
    If so, would the fact that one generally sticks with merchant-brand knock-offs be considered a valid defense?

  13. Ken Rosenberger says:

    As the late Lonesome Rhodes used to say, “Go-00-d cracker!” But he was just a face in the crowd.

  14. Avatar photo Thomas Fleming says:

    As for Ritz crackers, they are a bit sweet but the malt flavor is pleasant. The implication was that people who “put on the Ritz”, that is chase after the high life, are really enjoying mass-produced commercial experiences. The allusion was to the Fred Astaire performance Irving Berlin’s ditty in Blue Skies, though it was first sung in a film by Clark Gable in Idiots Delight, a wonderfully absurd anti-war film from a play by Robert Sherwood. Haven’t seen it in years but I have fond memories.

  15. Dom says:

    Whew, what a relief…and another movie recommendation to boot!