I had the pleasure, and trust me strange as it is, it was a pleasure to see how a large group of people treats a smoker now, in the year 2007. I’m trying to be a non antagonist of smokers. I admit that I was a smoker, but saw the light when my asthma finally caught up with me.

So for all the people that don’t know I’m from West Virginia, you at least (hopefully) know that it’s right next to Ohio. In Ohio, there is a set of smoking laws that are designed to deter even the most hopeful smoker from blowing any in the faces of people who don’t also indulge in the delight.

In Ohio, there is a festival every year that is called the Bob Evans Farm Festival . It’s a fun festival that mostly includes (as you could see) singing, and some various other activities for children like horse riding and hay rides.

One of the many sights to see was a water demonstration with some tree cutting. Some people out there might not know, but the art of lumberjacks in Ohio and West Virginia is not lost on even the youngest of our generations: our slumbering hills are covered with trees.

There is a pond that has a small dock in the middle that some performers cut logs, or do log rolling.
All around the pond is a slope that people can sit on to view the performance, and we chose our spot up at the top so our smallest child (less than a year old) wouldn’t be bothered by all the noise.

Now, for a bit of a reality check. We arrived and saw so many people parked in a field that horses normally graze on that we were shocked. If I had to guess, there was over 5,000 people there, no small fries considering our town in WV only has 25,000 people in it. While we walked pretty much the entire length of the Bob Evans Farm, we didn’t see even one person smoking a cigar, cigarette or even spitting tobacco. This is odd behavior… I noticed there wasn’t even one teenager smoking behind the bathrooms.

Getting back to the water demonstration, we were well into the 30 minute mark when a man and his lady friend sat behind us. I didn’t know they were there until we were covered in smoke from his cigarette. I had wondered why people were leaving all around us, it was the best part of the show!

So here he was, the first person I’ve seen smoking and we just have to move. Why say anything to him about it? I’ve tried to get some people to quit smoking anywhere inside a building where customers are at, and when I’m not there they light up mere feet away from the customers. I get negative feedback, so I’ve quit trying to talk to smokers about how non-smokers feel. An interesting footnote here is that the people at the festival felt the same way, and a large number of them.

Now, we must move, he’s smoking and not noticing he’s blowing it on an infant! My wife threw the baby at me with a blanket on her head since she was the least distance from the smoke. By this time at least 20 people have moved away from him. We got up from our grassy seat and noticed the large gap of people being missing all around him. Hundreds of people were at this slope and he had a disease, nobody wanted to be around him. He had at least a good 30 foot radius around him, and he continued to smoke.

There was a silver lining in all this, he was just ignorant of the fact that people got up and left. He noticed that all these new seats showed up in front of him, he moved forward but nobody returned. His lady friend stayed put, almost in a silent protest of what he’d done, or too ashamed to call him out on it. He had to motion for her to move up at least 2 times, and the last time you saw that look on his face: I am a jackass. Not a single person out of at least 50 said a word, children all around with parents shuffling them upwind from his puffing, said a word.

If you are trying to quit smoking, take heed: the atmosphere is changing. In a tobacco state such as Ohio or West Virginia the attitudes are changing. People know that smoking causes early death and a deterioration of life that is not worth the puff.

If you think that people will complain to you when you smoke, you are wrong. They smell it on you and will just pass you on, just like this group of people did. Some will try to stop a suicide bomber, or someone jumping off a bridge. It seems that now, nobody will stop a smoker: he is on a mission to prove brashness or wants to die and any words you say are lost.