FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for February 27, 2025

One of my lifelong friends was a Skoal dipper since our teens he died about 6 years ago from oral cancer in his right cheek right where he used to hold his pinch of skoal.

How have I never heard of dipping tobacco until today

Didn’t make the connection at first. Been a long time since I knew anyone who dipped.

Such a disgusting and vile habit. I will never understand why anyone would willingly choose to chew tobacco. (Nor anyone who willingly chooses to start smoking, knowing what we know now.)

I don’t get why young men do it….it’s a great way to turn off women.

So the reference to the big dipper and the little dipper and Copenhagen and Skoal has nothing to do with how couples spoon in Scandinavia?

Tried once, got sicker than heck. I have a friend who dips and never spits, don’t know how he can stand it. Super gross to me. And the guys and their spit cups setting around, as a former tobacco user from my early days, smokers and dippers now gross me out and I can’t stand the smell.

the dippers are their unofficial names, the constellations are REALLY Ursa Major and Minor, and have more stars than what’s used to make the ladles

Paige would say she sees the Big and Little Dippers even in broad daylight.

When I started teaching in the 70’s one of my buds got a job in a high school that mostly rural. Students were allowed to carry a styrofoam cup because the students were allowed to have a chaw of tobacco (the cup was for the spitting)

Coppenhagen and Skoal are probably Southern Hemisphere constellations. The place where “what goes around comes around” just as in the Northern hemisphere but the other way.

It’s in the Bible.

We had port and starboed 6 hour watches. They started using chew to stay awake and couldn’t sleep on the off watch and fell asleep on station.

Eww.

When I was about Peter’s age I bought a can of Copenhagen. I didn’t want loose bits of plant matter getting stuck in my lips and gums so I chose one that was rolled into tight little packets kind of like teabags.

The moment I put one in my mouth I instinctively spat it out. I tried another and spat that one out too. I threw out the can, having conceded I was not capable of indulging. I was actually kind of disappointed that I apparently couldn’t handle dipping. I’ve always looked back on that day with nothing but gratitude for my failure.

Oh PLEASE no!

Just thinking about the smell of Skoal etc. turns my stomach. I used to work with several fellows who used it, and I thought it was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever been around. Worse still they’d carry around a styrofoam cup full of spit, and that occasionally got knocked over, spilling its contents onto the table! I didn’t think that the smell of tobacco like the Red Man brand was quite as bad, but still, I’d rather be around a smoker any day. All of it reminds me of the saying that “kissing a smoker is like licking out a dirty ashtray”.