Wonderful!!! Grew up the other end of Whitney Avenue and that Owl Shop was where I fell in love with tobacco. Memories of bribing older kids on the sidewalk to go in and buy Gaulois so as to cop the unbelievably cool high school pose of the existential French poet (flexed bicep pose). And buying delicious Turkish for rolled cigarettes that stained fingers (like our Yale TA's), and sophisticated boxed Nat Shermans, and always the incredible aroma of heavy English blends. Back then Meers were the ultimate cool. Ended up a double Y grad, but from later years when pipe smoking was less cool and smokeless tobacco in pouch form was the rage for both sexes. Cigarettes were always the sign of the prototypical scholar back then, or the " serious" i.e., suddenly-over-my-head student (I had courses where the prof would come in and say, "Here's the Mid Term, you have one week, keep it between 75 and hundred pages"; never had one with less than a 50 page minimum; finals could be much longer). For one course, and one took four a semester. Chain smoking/imbibing tobacco in any form was de rigueur then, and the Owl Shop was THE place in New Haven. Thanks again for the article post!
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