Smoking: Cold-Turkey Month

“I’m talking to all of you who smoke,” thundered the Rev. Clayton Brooks, addressing the townsfolk of Eagle Rock, gathered on the courthouse lawn. “You have the opportunity to fail an Almighty call, and you also have the opportunity to fail your own person, your own life, your own body, your own family, your own self. I ask you once more, those of you who smoke, to get up here and sign that pledge to stop now!” Perspiring, Reverend Brooks stepped down from his green gazebo pulpit. Somebody held out a lighted cigarette; he accepted it gratefully and took a long, deep drag.

For “Eagle Rock,” read Greenfield, Iowa. For “Reverend Brooks,” read Actor Dick Van Dyke—filming a scene for a forthcoming United Artists movie, Cold Turkey, a whimsical story of a town whose citizens decide en masse to kick the smoking habit. The whimsy became reality a month ago when—on the promise of a $6,000 reward from U.A. —Greenfield smokers formally signed a pledge to quit puffing for 30 days and incinerated hundreds of cartons of cigarettes on the town square. Last week the month of official abstinence ended, and with allowances for the veracity of the people involved, it seems to have been a surprising success.

Merchants, including supermarket and drugstore owners, report that cigarette sales in Greenfield are off 30%. Out of the 363 smokers who vowed to quit, 134 claim to have gone the full 30 days without. Another 21 insist that they “almost stopped,” limiting themselves to “snitching” an occasional quick drag; 50 say that they cut their consumption of cigarettes by more than half. With several dozen Greenfielders still on vacation and therefore unpolled, only 69 admit to promiscuously violating the no-smoking pledge.

The most conspicuous backslider is Actor Van Dyke, a chain smoker who joined the townsfolk in signing the pledge and says: “I really made an honest effort, but I was climbing the walls. It was terrible, terrible,” Others include Bill Marshall, a Greenfield insurance agent who resisted temptation for only one day. That night, he was awakened by a telephone call from a farmer whose barn had just been blown down in a fierce storm. Marshall reached for a cigarette—and kept on reaching, Jim McCutchan, manager of Greenfield’s I.G.A. grocery store, was hooked again after three days. “I kept reaching in my shirt pocket,” he says. “Almost tore a couple of pockets off. Now I’m back smoking more than ever.”

Backsliders’ alibis sometimes verge on the exotic. Keith Gray, a hospital technician, swears that he would certainly have lasted out the 30 days if it hadn’t been for “that lousy golf game last Sunday.” A Greenfield housewife insists that she resumed smoking only to relieve mysterious nighttime stomach pains, which disappeared as soon as she broke her vow.

For those who have stuck it out, the effort has required true grit. “I couldn’t have made it without snuff,” says Darrell Chiles, manager of a Greenfield manufacturing plant. “It smells like horse manure, but a little pinch in the side of the cheek really helps.” Other sufferers swear by such substitutes as plastic cigarettes, chewing gum, Life Savers, unlighted stogies and tranquilizers. Many of them simply eat more. That will mean diets—next year.