I used to get headaches from riding on the STC buses, coming back from university or work sites, and on aritrips. I just thought that bus-riding and air travel gave me headaches.
Now? no headaches. It was the other peoples’ smoke that was giving me headaches.
I thought I was pretty old, but I don’t remember this. I do remember when trains had smoking cars (it might have been the same as the bar car, I was pretty little), and I think you could smoke in the back of long-distance buses (Greyhound etc.), but I also remember seeing people hopping off the bus and congregating around it for a smoke break when it stopped for other reasons.
Back in the days when people could smoke everywhere, I barely noticed it except in a couple of places. Bowling alleys, for some reason, just had terrible ventilation. It was an acceptable excuse when I came home smelling smoky to tell my Mom I’d been at the bowling alley (instead of driving around in cars with boys and smoking, which was what I’d really been up to).
But smoking and the smell of smoke never really bothered me, even when I didn’t smoke. In fact I kind of liked it.
Amtrak used to have a “smoking area” in the lower section of one of the passenger cars. I dreaded being in that can, and would move to a different car as soon as the conductor was not looking. The smokers would stay in this uncomfortable, nasty little room that was basically a baggage compartment without windows, chain smoking. And the stench of the smoke will fill the entire car.
I remember flying between Newark and Brussels one time when a lady started complaining that the guy behind her was smoking (not me, but I was still smoking at the time), saying she had requested the Non-Smoking Section. Turns out she was in the last row of the Non-Smoking Section and the guy behind her in the first row of the Smoking Section. 
That was the old People’s Air. The guy was nice and took pity on the lady, moving farther back when he wanted to light up.
As a kid, I remember seeing full ashtrays in elevators.
When I was a kid, the busses had “No Smoking” signs in them, which were usually ignored by the drivers and passengers. The drivers didn’t want to enforce the rule, and the passengers didn’t care, usually. Anyone who complained was laughed at. This was in the US.
I lived in Spain for a couple of years, and frequently used the trains to get around. Smoking was prevalent in the stations and in the trains.
I remember back when restaurants started making a big thing of having non-smoking tables/areas. The thing is, if someone lit up in the non-smoking section, the server’s response was to bring an ashtray to the table, not move the smoker, in most cases. And really, a non-smoking table which is next to a smoking table is NOT a non-smoking table. The smoke will drift over a few feet.
I was young when the ban was brought in, but I don’t remember smoking on public transport being that bad. I mostly remember people leaning out of the window to smoke at stops and on slow sections of the journey. Buses were airy enough, with smoking only allowed upstairs, that the smoke didn’t really linger.
I was in a “non-smoking” car on an Italian train in 1994 and the two people in front of me and the two people behind me were all smoking. It was a bit much. When the conductor entered the car I thought, ‘Finally! He’ll put and end to this!’ But he was smoking too! Ugh.
Is it still like that on Italian trains?
“Smoking allowed rear of line only”. Sign on Brisbane trams.
From what I recall, it wasn’t too bad as smoking used to be everywhere anyway. We all used to smoke at our desks in the office- the old guy opposite me used to smoke these dreadful cork tipped things (Ardath I think they were). Strange thing, 40 years of work he almost never took a day off sick.
An older friend of mine told me of flying to London when smoking was allowed on aircraft. Bear in mind that this trip would take about 24 hours. He booked late and could only get a smoking seat in the back of the aircraft. What happened was that a lot of the smokers had booked non smoking seats, then went down the back when they wanted a cigarette. They weren’t exposed to the smell for the journey.
My dad enforced the “no-smoking” rule. He had a big booming voice, and would bellow at anyone lighting up, “HEY! I WOULD RATHER HAVE YOU FART THAN SMOKE ON THIS BUS!”
True story. And it worked.
I never noticed it so much because smoking happened in every other place in society. Hell, even my parents who were both non-smokers kept ashtrays in their home for when guests came over. Once you are so heavily exposed to it, that smell becomes just like anything else.
It was only when the bans started in so many places that you began noticing it so bad in the places that were left. Restaurants were the main thing as pointed out above.
My mom was an adamant smoker. She wouldn’t go to a non-smoking restaurant. One time we picked her up and drove 40 miles to a restaurant in Carnation that we’d heard wonderful things about. When we got there, we were told no smoking and she wouldn’t go in. How long does it take to eat a meal? Maybe an hour? :rolleyes:
On a flight with her once, and the non-smoking section was full, so a non-smoker was seated in our row, which meant that there was no smoking in our section. Mom had the window seat, and she was so mad at that guy that whenever he leaned around to look out the window (Mt. Rainier, etc., cool stuff to see from the air), she’d lean forward and block his view.
I don’t remember buses being bad, maybe because smokers opened the windows, or maybe because bus rides weren’t so long that people didn’t have to smoke.
I remember that from the Spanish trains in 99. I remember being told that non-smoking just meant that you couldn’t smoke in the compartment but you could smoke in the corridor. The smoking car was for those people who chain smoked.
That’s interesting to know. As I said, I started using Chgo transit around 1995, but the guys I spoke to were telling me in the 70s and 80s they used to smoke on the buses and el trains. So they were telling fibs or just smoking anyway. LOL Probably the latter 
We had smoking sections in restaurants in Michigan until May of last year.
And of course, I meant People Express. Sir Freddie Laker’s venture.
I don’t think I’ve ever been on public transit (other than the school bus, where the only smoking was carried on clandestinely in the very back seat), but I can remember our local grocery store having ashtray stands at the end of every aisle. This would have been in the late 70s. Both my parents smoked like chimneys (so did I, starting from age 10), so I never noticed the smell because the smell was always there.
Never lived in an area with mass transit, but I started teaching high school in southeast Georgia in fall '84 in a big tobacco town. My first extracurricular duty was smoking duty- from 7:30 to 8 AM I had to watch the high school kids smoke behind the cafeteria. During the day, the science department met between each class in the storage room to smoke. At 3:05 PM when school let out, five out of the seven teachers down my hall stepped out of the room, watched the kids leave, and lit up.
There were ashtrays in strategic places in grocery stores there, too. Even the upstart video rental place had ashtrays located throughout the store.
Growing up in Brandon, Manitoba in the 60s and 70s, the only place I remember where people didn’t smoke was church. Buses, trains, theatres, your car, the gym, the orchestra pit, you name it…
In high school, two different friends had parents with asthma. By odd coincidence, these were the two houses where we’d congregate the most, so we all got in the habit of going outside every half-hour or so to smoke. Most other places, whether you or your family smoked or not, it was just expected that you’d have an ashtray in the living room, and your guests would light up whenever they felt like it.
In the 70s, asking someone not to smoke around you was like pissing on their shoes - you just didn’t do it!
Agreed. Sometimes people would ask, “Do you mind if I smoke?”, even as they were lighting up. It was akin to ‘how are you?’ - no one expects to hear a truthful response.