My mother is 100 years old and for some weeks before her October 31 birthday loomed, she was thinking through what she would say when asked her longevity secret.
And it came out when she celebrated with her friends at Cole Manor. "I never smoked. Not ever. Not even cornsilk"
And just like that, little Janie prowls around the shanty in the backyard, looking for the corncob pipe she remembered one of her brothers poking down between the floor boards.
Corn silk - harvested from the stand of sweet corn in the Bradley's back yard or carried away from corn husking on newspapers on the drooping back porch.
Corn silk, packed into the bowl of the pipe, lit with an Ohio blue tip - multiple blue tips. Curls of sweet smelling smoke. Neighbor boy David and Janie, taking smoke into our mouths, eyes watering, blowing it out. Pretending to send smoke rings into the summer air like my father makes as he lights a cigarette with a click of his Zippo at the dinner table.
