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I wasn’t one of the cool guys, but I knew who they were.

All us uncool kids did.

They hung out at the pool hall, took shop and consumer math. Not one of ‘em ever held office in the Luther League, was an altar boy or aspired to Eagle Scout-hood. They skipped out on the school cafeteria to grab a burger and a smoke downtown, not caring one whit if they made it back for the fifth-period bell. With their leather jackets and Elvis hair, they kept James Dean alive right through the ‘60s, swaggered like the young Brando while the rest of us could barely make like Monkees.

They were cool. We weren’t. But if we didn’t dare stay out late, talk smack to the village cop, and do more than pretend we had first-hand knowledge of whiskey and women, there was at least one thing the cool guys did that we could do — we could smoke.

Oh, not around Mom or Dad, of course. And not where a teacher, the preacher or some nosy neighbor might catch a glimpse or a whiff. But behind the garage, in Smitty’s basement or on the courthouse steps late on a summer night, all it took was a Pepsi and a pack of Old Golds to make us the most sophisticated 15-year-olds in Houston County — save for the guys at the pool hall who lit up without a care as to who might be watching.