Smokey Joe’s

Speaking of Scouts (as I was in my last post) brings to mind no end of memories from way back in the 60s and 70s. No surprise there really…

There was (and indeed still is, I see) a Scout campsite but a few miles from where we grew up in (reasonably) leafy Surrey in the UK. We used to go there quite a lot for weekends throughout the year and the site was heavily used even back then. It is now billed as a ‘multi-purpose site’ and is clearly open to all manner of youth and educational organisations, rather than just to scouting boys as it was then.

I have a strong recollection of hiking to the site with a reasonably large group, carrying all of our camping gear along what was even then a busy main road on a trek cart. I don’t know how many of these splendid contrivances yet survive but I would not be surprised if it were no longer legal to take one out on the public highway.

Winter visits to the campsite were particularly interesting. We considered that sleeping in the scout tents of the day was just too brutal when there was a thick frost on the ground, but were fortunate in that the site had a cabin (it now has three!) with a big wood stove in it. Many a happy weekend was spent figuring just how much of a fug could be engendered therein by firing up a big blaze and stoking the stove as furiously as we could. Of course, we then had to try to sleep through the ensuing miasma!

As I recall the place was affectionately and unsurprisingly known as ‘Smokey Joe’s‘.

At that age I naturally simply followed the example of my peers and it didn’t occur to me to wonder as to the origin of that soubriquet until I used it as the title for this post. The InterWebNet is slightly less helpful than usual – with most references being to contemporary food joints, cigar lounges and clothing companies – not to mention the Leiber and Stoller based songbook musical, “Smokey Joe’s Cafe‘.

These references are, however, all too recent.

The Urban Dictionary offers an alternative slang definition which refers to a somewhat ‘colourful’ sexual practice that I certain would have been far too young to have understood at the time.

Probably the closest I can get is the somewhat older phrase ‘Smoking Joe‘ which – long before being applied to the legendary Joe Frazier or being adopted as slang for cigarettes – was used to refer to the steam engines that were developed in the eighteenth century to power the nascent industrial revolution.

That at least seems appropriate.

These atmospheric remembrances are particularly brought to mind just now by the fact that – somewhat later than last year but just as unwelcome – the view from our windows has vanished in a haze of smoke from the various wildfires burning not just in BC but also down through the US as far as California. I gather that this year’s smoky cloud cover is unlikely to last as long as did last year’s, but we still cannot wait to see the back of it.

In a post that already features one great heavyweight, let’s end with another:

“Generally when there’s a lot of smoke… there’s just a whole lot more smoke.”

George Foreman