SUZANNE TATE: Bowling Excursion Fun, But Smoky Air Ran Us Off

My family spent a little more than an hour bowling two quick rounds in Bristol last week. It was all my teenage daughter could stomach.
She eventually holed up in the women’s restroom with a book because, sadly, it smelled better in there. As hard as it is to believe, I had to agree.
Bowling alleys are one of the last indoor places where smokers light up with abandon. Interstate Bowl in Bristol is no exception. Black ashtrays sat on every table and many were holding a smoldering cigarette while their owners stepped onto the lanes.
It wasn’t like this when we first came into the alley. We arrived at the tail end of a private tournament for Special Olympics. But as more of the regular bowlers filled the center, so did the smoke. Within an hour, despite the protests from my sons who wanted to keep bowling, we needed to go.
As my sons and husband played one quick round of video games in the snack bar, my daughter and I headed to the car and fresh air. We could smell the smoke on our clothes and hair.
My daughter reminded me that not so long ago I was smoking myself, and that my clothes and hair were similarly perfumed.
I told her, and later her brothers, that the bowling alley is just one small example of what life was like for many years. Thankfully, they are too young to remember what adults my age and older accepted as commonplace behavior.
So I told them a story, a fairy tale, if you will, about the before times.
Before the federal tobacco settlement. Before the smoking ban bill in Virginia.
Before most people realized smoking was killing them.
A long, long time ago people used to smoke in grocery stores and convenience stores and any place they felt like it.
My children’s eyes got big as saucers. No. Really?
Well, where did they flick their ashes?
There were ash trays at the ends of the grocery store aisles. Metal ones. And no one minded.
Eventually some uppity asthma sufferers, I guess, someone who surely hated freedom, decided people shouldn’t smoke at the Piggly Wiggly and K&K Toys. So the General Assembly passed a law.
You could still smoke in the store, just not in the check-out aisle. You were still free to walk all over the store puffing on your Pall Malls, but not in the check-out line.
And all was good, at least for a few years.
Then the uppity freedom haters got back to complaining.
They didn’t think you really ought to be smoking in stores, period.
They brainwashed enough members of the General Assembly to go along with their plan – and poof – you couldn’t smoke at the Stop ‘N Shop or the Gas ‘N Go or any other store with a funny sounding name.
Now, mind you, smokers could still light up in restaurants and bowling alleys – thank goodness, just not at the grocery or convenience store.
So the battle shifted.
The people who wanted to breathe clean air pushed restaurant owners to go smoke-free. Many of them did.
By 2008, most restaurants in Virginia were smoke free and most Virginians wanted it that way. Others said taking their smoking rights was tantamount to stealing their freedom.
Of course, they had to stop and catch their breath to get that many words out in a row.
Then this year Virginia passed a smoking ban for restaurants that takes effect Dec. 1.
Bowling alleys might not have realized it, but if they sell food, they are restaurants, too, at least under the law.
So when will I take my family back to the bowling alley? Dec. 1. Sooner only if the alley chooses to go smoke free first.

Suzanne Tate is the opinion page editor at the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at (276) 645-2534 or state@bristolnews.com.