Once Upon a Time in the West

Jesse Sensibar

I’m leaned up against the old cigarette machine that hulks in the shadows to the right of the main entrance and exit door to the bar of the Monte Vista Lounge almost underground in the bottom of the old hotel. I’m up against the big machine because it’s about the only place left to stand in the crowded smoky bar. 

The machine and me are the only two things not moving in the place. The music is hard and fast and the crowd moves pogo style with it. 

I’ve got a lot of love for this cigarette machine. My grandfather was one of the first Marlboro Men. 

An angry midget named Joe Munch driving a blue delivery van modified with hand controls comes every week with his beat-up step stool and cardboard cartons of cigarettes to fight and feed the beast, climbing around slamming and cussing it ‘till it gives up its box heavy with silver coins, then re-loading it with full stacks of fresh packs of tobacco. It jams every once and a while but it mostly works pretty flawlessly. It’s so old it is mechanical instead of being electronic.

You pick your brand of smoke from the pictures on the face of the machine and put your quarters in the slot. Below each picture is a small round chrome knob decorated and edged with tiny scallops.

You grab the knob and pull, the knob comes out towards you a full ten or twelve inches on a steel slide with a sound like working a long action on a 12-gauge pump shotgun, making the same resounding chunk when your pack of cigarettes falls out of the machine and into the tray below as a shotgun does when it chambers another shell.