A HOMELAND FOR TOBACCO ADDICTS

HEY THERE, nicotine addict!

Still fuming over being 86'd from your favorite bar or restaurant by
California's new smoke-free environment law?

Tired of heading outdoors every time you want a quick cigarette at work?
Sick of dealing with hostile comments whenever you light up in public?

If the glow has worn off your Golden State, let me tell you about a place
where smokers are welcome to puff just about anywhere. Where the folks who
adjourn to the front porch at parties are the nonsmokers. Where tobacco has
its own museum, and even the mountains are Smokey. A place called
Tennessee.

A nonsmoker, I stumbled onto this tobacco paradise when I visited my cousin
Mary, a Chicagoan who moved south when her husband got a job in Winchester,
Tenn.

On the first day of my week-long visit, Mary took me sightseeing in
Nashville. Outside, it was a clear day; inside, it was often hard to see
through the smoke.

At a tiny cafe on Broadway where we had lunch, our sandwiches were served
with a side order of tobacco smoke from both the cook and the waitress.

Down on Music Row at the Hank Williams Jr. Museum and Gift Shop, the sales
clerk put down her cigarette just long enough to ring up my postcards of
Hanks 1 and 2.

At Tootsies Orchid Lounge, behind the original Grand Ole Opry, the
smokehouse atmosphere had turned the photos of Opry stars into a gallery of
yellow jaundice victims.

After 15 minutes, I got dizzy from lack of oxygen.

As my cousin and I stood on the sidewalk sucking in fresh air, I gasped,
"Haven't any of these people heard of the surgeon general's report on
smoking?"

That's when Mary explained to me that in Tennessee, smoking isn't a matter
of health. It's a matter of economics. In that hard-scrabble little state,
it's one of the few ways a family farmer can still make a living without a
lot of acres.

Tennessee is the fourth-largest tobacco-producing state after North
Carolina, Kentucky and Georgia.

"It's simple," said Mary. "You don't bite the hand the feeds you."

Although the majority of Tennesseans no longer live on farms, just about
every native has an Uncle Jim Bob or Cousin Alphus trying to keep the
family farm going.

Smoking helps keep kinfolk in business.

Wanting my visit to go smoothly, Mary saw to it that I learned and followed
the Rules for Nonsmokers in Tennessee:

* Do not bring up in public the health hazards of smoking and second-hand
smoke, anti-tobacco lawsuits or the surgeon general. Such topics will
convince your listeners that you are (a) someone reared without manners
(i.e., trash) or (b) a damnyankee.

* When entering a restaurant that seats fewer than 100 people, do not ask
for the nonsmoking section. They don't have one, and the other patrons will
mutter "damnyankee" at you.

* If you are at a social gathering and feel overcome by cigarette smoke, do
not be so ungracious as to ask for windows to be opened or for people to
stop smoking.

Just quietly stagger out the front door and join the other asthmatics and
damnyankees on the porch.

In travels throughout the state, we discovered just two tourist sites that
were emphatically nonsmoking: the highly flammable whiskey-aging warehouses
at the Jack Daniel's distillery and inside the holy halls of Graceland, the
Vatican of the Church of Elvis.

One smoker's attraction we skipped was the Museum of Tobacco Art and
History, a Nashville cultural spot that is funded by (surprise) one of the
tobacco companies.

The museum, with its displays of cigar store Indians and other
smoking-related objects of art, used to be a popular field trip destination
for Tennessee's school children.

However, complaints that the field trips might be interpreted as promoting
tobacco use led to the children's tours being discontinued a few years ago.

Not to fear: Youngsters under 14 can still visit the museum if accompanied
by a parent.

So, if you're fed up with smoking restrictions, try Tennessee, where the
world is your ashtray and nobody believes what the surgeon general declared
in 1964 - and since - about dangers of smoking.

After all, he was a damnyankee.

Examiner contributor Pauline Scholten is an editor with a San Francisco
software company.

)1998 San Francisco Examiner Page A 23