Riding with Ghosts, Angels, and the Spirits of the Dead

When I was a young man I smoked.  I loved it.  I loved everything about striking a match and lighting my cigarette, or pipe, or cigar.  I loved the aroma of the burning tobacco.  I loved the flavor of the smoke as it rushed across my tongue on its way into my lungs.  I had asthma since I was a kid, and the tobacco smoke acted as a narcotic on my inflamed lungs and helped to numb their pain.  That’s what my doctor told me after I had stopped smoking in my twenties.  After I stopped smoking my lungs hurt and the doctor told me that the tobacco smoke had literally acted as a narcotic to soothe my aching lungs, but that in time the pain would lessen or go away entirely.  Mostly, it did. But anyway, before I stopped smoking, I would wake up in the middle of the night and crave a cigarette.  I would get out of bed, turn my radio on low volume, light up a smoke, and enjoy it while I sat in the dark and listened to music.   One Christmas morning in the early a.m. (it couldn’t have been muc