Marlboro Men
In Honor of Father’s Day: June 19, 2022 By Don Beaudreau wbeaudreau@aol.com
The Marlboro Man is dead. Long live the Marlboro Man! In our dreams he remains the hero of a thousand billboards. The ultimate salesman. (opening lyrics to the song “Marlboro Man, Jr” by the American funk rock band World Entertainment War) Where there’s a man…there’s a Marlboro. (Philip Morris advertising slogan) ***** Death and Some Blueberry Pie, 1970s Mr. Ziegler was lost. Not something a driver of a hearse was supposed to be. Lost children and dogs, certainly; lost fortunes; lost virginity. But not lost undertakers. It became his excuse to stop at a diner advertising fresh pies. “I’ll have apple . . . a la mode,” the dapper, little man told our waitress who looked like a walrus. “I’ll have blueberry,” I said, looking out the picture window. “Naked?” the walrus honked at me. I took my eyes off the hearse in plain view of the restaurant patrons and employees, and looked at her, wondering what she meant. “You want a scoop or not?” Her tone of voice showed more than frustration at my lack of understanding. She did not look at me, but her Bic was poised over her note pad, ready to write down my answer to her lifealtering question. “Oh,” I said, thinking of my father fully dressed, lying in this parking lot somewhere in rural Maryland. “No,” I answered. “Thank you, though.” The left corner of the woman’s upper lip rose ever so slightly and began to tremble. I could tell she was pissed. She knew that the clown man hiding behind a mortician’s mask and I had been the ones to bring death into her parking lot. It was ironic. Dad, the traveling salesman, never got lost. But there he was – or what was left of him – waiting to continue on his way while we had dessert. At least he wasn’t strug-
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El Ojo del Lago / June 2022
gling now. The tubes and machines that had become part of his body for the seven weeks it took him to die from a stroke were gone. He just couldn’t give up smoking five packs a day. Marlboro cigarettes. Mr. Ziegler brought me back to the present. “You know, it’s my birthday,” he said jubilantly. “I’m 67 today!” How strange, I thought. Dad had turned 67 only 12 days before he died. And here was this odd little man the same age, but so healthy. I felt a great unfairness sweeping over me. Still, I liked the man’s optimism. Especially so, considering what he did for a living. “Dad was 67,” I said. “The Marlboros killed him.” “You don’t say,” Mr. Ziegler replied, getting out a map and adding, “I never smoked.” I wondered what it would have been like to have had a happy mortician for a father. But I thought about this until the blueberry pie came. I gobbled it up, realizing that, after all, life must go on. The pie was so good that I ordered another one from the Walrus and asked if I could have it clothed this time. She looked at me as if I were crazy, and then started to laugh. “You mean dressed?” I looked at her as if she were crazy. Then I began to laugh. The first time I had laughed in many weeks. It was healing. Sometimes, getting lost can be a very good thing. ***** A Hollywood Funeral, 1990s He had been one of the original Marlboro Men, appearing in those old cigarette ads in magazines and on billboards. You know, tough guys dressed like cowboys, lassoing wild horses, and stuff like that. And always with a dangling cigarette. But that’s not all he had lassoed, for he was quite a ladies man. The reality is that “Fred” (not his Continued on page 14
