RE: Boo boo's cigarette
D MacLaughlan (DMAC@mail.law.ucla.edu)
Sat, 30 May 1998 06:42:54 -0700
Someone recently mentioned confusion over a reference
to Boo Boo Tannenbaum's attention to a cigarette ("She
peeled down her cigarette Army style") in "Down at the
Dinghy".
The phrase intrigued me too, though I admit must have read
this phrase hundreds of times in the twenty-five or more years
I've been reading this story.
I thought it had something to do with cheap cigarettes and
peeling the paper back for better airflow. But I checked
with an academic gentleman who was once in the Navy,
and he believes the phrase is analogous to a practice
he knew as "policing your butts"...cigarette butts of course.
The practice was widespread in the military and involved
destroying evidence of troop presence (which might be
revealed by a plethora of cigarette butts left on the ground
by nervous or bored personnel). In those days, he said,
before Surgeon General's warnings, smoking was nearly
ubiquitous in the service.
The "peeling down" involved peeling the cigarette paper
from the used butt-end, rolling it into a compressed and
indistringuishable paper ball, and shredding any remaining
tobacco and scattering it all on the ground, so no intact
traces of the butt would be found.
Rereading the story, this makes sense; Boo Boo performs
this maneuver after lighting and smoking a cigarette in her
kitchen, walking down to the dock, and presumably scatters
the remains of the cold cigarette (still retaining her Army
training, one necessarily gathers) before joining Lionel
in conversation.
It's the best explanation I've heard so far. Any others?
D.