14 Comments
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Eric Stromquist's avatar

Thank god careless spitting has been eradicated everywhere...except professional baseball.

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Peter Pappas's avatar

Rather gross to watch

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Kathlyn's avatar

Football (or soccer as you’d know it) is pretty rife with it too 🤢

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Andrew Smith's avatar

Remember Big League Chew gum? This is a much more recent low-key hearkening to tobacco, but nonetheless, they definitely used to market chewing gum shaped like chewing tobacco to children during the 80s at a minimum.

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Peter Pappas's avatar

Start ‘em early

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Andrew Smith's avatar

I really do have a weird craving for candy cigarettes.

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E.R. Flynn's avatar

I had pals back in high school who would use "chew" because their baseball idols used it. I never could understand putting wad of awful tasting garbage into your mouth just for the sake of dribbling a vile brown goo. Of course they also later moved onto smoking, another nasty habit.

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Peter Pappas's avatar

Great for oral health

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Michele McCarthy's avatar

Great post! After his disappointing visit to America to witness what democracy looked like first-hand, chewing tobacco wasn't the only thing that disgusted Dicken's and prompted his scathing indictment of ill-mannered, money-hungry Americans and our politicians, “the lice of God’s creation.”

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Eric Stromquist's avatar

The spitting or the sports?

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Kathlyn's avatar

I’m so glad it’s not so common (except for teenagers clearing their throats 🤢). Just the sound is vile, nevermind the sight. *shudders*

Thankfully, chewing tobacco never really took off in Britain in the same way as America. It was mainly taken as snuff or smoked.

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Peter Pappas's avatar

Snuff never made any sense to me

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Kathlyn's avatar

Smoking never made sense to me either. It’s all pretty revolting really (but the flower is pretty enough)

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Peter Pappas's avatar

I’m reading Erik Larson’s newest - “The Demon of Unrest” he had a passage about spitting in mid 19th century America and a bit of Dickens on the subject. Inspired the post.

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