My brother is dying. He lives
in a small town in the West, a village really, and he moves from
room to room with an air hose in his nostrils constantly filling
his lungs with a steady stream of oxygen. The sun warms the south
side of the house and tulips bloom in the flowerbeds, but he
can’t see them. It’s too hard to leave the house. In a
Western world of wide-open spaces, he’s confined to three or
four rooms.
In the late 19th and early 20th century in
the American West, it was miner’s consumption that cut short
male lives. In San Juan County, Colo., with a population of 589 in
the 2000 census, the only town is Silverton. Over 3,000 people lie
buried in the town’s cemetery, and the average age of males
is only 42. They died young in the mines from cave-ins and
accidents, from hard living and hard working, and inhaling rock
dust that perforated their lungs.
In other parts of the
West, fatal respiratory ailments came from working in coal mines,
breathing black dust and deadly gases that put many a miner into an
early grave. The West was a land of dangerous workplaces before
unions and health and safety laws forced an improvement in working
conditions. Near Grants, N.M., it was uranium mining, the dust from
digging yellowcake, that forced Navajo men back into their homes to
wheeze their last breaths beneath a turquoise sky.
For
many a decade, it was routine to die after short careers digging
gold, silver, coal or uranium. At one time in Colorado, a
widow’s compensation for her husband’s accidental death
in a gold mine was $75, a coffin, and a notice to vacate company
housing by the end of the week. Why in the West, with all our clean
air, have we sacrificed so many men in so many industries to live
their last days struggling to breathe? In Libby, Mont., we know
now, it was vermiculite asbestos that slowly eliminated lung
capacity for miners and unwittingly harmed their families as well.
But for my brother, it wasn’t the mines but the
myth that nailed him, that Marlboro Man myth of the rugged cowboy,
his horse silhouetted against a Western sunset, his Stetson tipped
back at the end of the day, and always, a cigarette dangling from
his lower lip.
For how many years did we Westerners
permit our spectacular landscapes and a ranching way of life to
become enmeshed in popular culture with smoking? My brother began
to smoke in a decade when large-format photo magazines like Life
and Look featured full-page ads for cigarettes. Smoking was good
for you, and your doctor was kind enough to recommend his brand.
Smoking calmed your nerves and aided digestion. And there were
those cowboys on horseback in a stunning landscape, pausing from
he-man work, cigarette in hand. The message: This is the way to
live to be a real man.
Western scenery sold cigarettes,
and it still does, and now my brother’s dying of end-stage
emphysema, although he quit smoking a few years ago. He has maybe
six months left to live. He’ll never enjoy retirement and
traveling around the West. He’ll never make it to the North
Rim of the Grand Canyon or once again drive Trail Ridge Road high
above Denver. His wide-open spaces have become closed-in places.
How many other men, around the world, have died before
their time because of the glorification of Western sunsets, cowboys
riding the range and cigarettes sold as a seductive symbol of
manhood? We know what happened to two actors who portrayed Marlboro
Men in commercials: Wayne McLaren and David McLean both died of
lung cancer.
The harsh beauty of Monument Valley, Utah,
on the Navajo Reservation, has been a backdrop for selling
countless products ever since the movie-making days of director
John Ford and actor John Wayne. The mythology of the West endures,
and every summer, European tourists drive slowly through Monument
Valley, entranced by the landscape, cigarettes dangling out the
windows of their rental SUVs.
I hope that the next
generation “gets” the anti-smoking message, but
I’m not so sure. Macho myths die hard, and plenty of young
men think nothing about lighting up a smoke. I wish they could meet
my brother. Before it’s too late for him, before it’s
too late for them.
Andrew Gulliford is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News
(hcn.org). He is a writer, photographer and professor of Southwest
Studies and History at Fort Lewis College in Durango,
Colorado.
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