Well, I've had so many good cigars in nearly 11 years of smoking them, and so many nice experiences, that it's hard to say there's been a "best moment." My most memorable cigar moment was September 13, 2001, two days after 911.
I was living upstate, 70 miles or so north of midtown Manhattan in the house I lost to foreclosure in January of this year. The problems that would eventually lead to me losing the house were already rearing their ugly head long before that night, Thursday, September 13, 2001.
I had a girlfriend at the time. I was making a lot more money up until the end of the year 2000, and then those circumstances began to chop in to my income. The year 2001 had been a pretty bad one, as the parade of circumstances, namely budget cuts, outsourcing, health problems, injuries, and family troubles had hurt my income up until that point during the year. But in September, if you're a word processing operator temping at the giant law firms, you usually can count on a surge of work in September, that during good times will usually put you back on track, at least financially.
But 911 killed all that, and the giant law firms in NYC have ceased to be the work factories they once were. I was taking care of my girlfriend's dog that week, as she was on a cruise with her mother. I commuted back and forth between the house in Fishkill, and her apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, using it as a base to go to my midnight shifts. During this time I was also watching and caring for her little pug.
So Thursday night, the wind had shifted direction from the Ground Zero area, and began blowing uptown carrying that horrible haze of particulates that included asbestos, pulverized concrete, a bunch of other things, and of course pulverized citizens of New York City, as well as some foreign nationals. The stench from the area had, along with the haze, blanketed all of Manhattan, and reports of same from further uptown in the Bronx would also be in the next day's news.
My ex-girl's apartment didn't have the greatest air circulation in the world, but as I stepped out with the pug for that night's walk, into the night air of the Upper East Side, at least five miles from Ground Zero, I could smell the horrid odor everywhere, with every step. I could also feel the tiny particulates in my eyes, irritating them. I had looked forward to this walk and this cigar, as it was a new one for me. Memory escapes me, but I do believe it could well have been a Fuente, the one where they put Opus X filler inside a different wrapper that had been stored in cognac barrels. I can't remember the name.
It doesn't matter what the name was, and what cigar I smoked that night. Every step of the way, all the way up to Fifth Avenue from Second Avenue, and all along Museum Mile and back down Lexington Avenue, and eventually back over to 76th St. and Second Avenue, the flavor of that cigar was the same.
The cigar tasted like the haze that was over the city. It tasted like that horrible smell that surrounded me, everywhere I went. At the time I had been going down to a facility two blocks from the former World Trade Center for physical therapy related to a severe head injury earlier that year. The facility had closed for a while, but when I resumed visiting there, the smell lingered on for months. I also have a couple of my freelance word processing clients in that area. For months afterward, stepping off the subway blocks away, you could smell that horrid odor. My 11 years in the funeral business told me that was more than just asbestos and concrete dust, along with office furniture.
September 13, 2001, a memorable cigar, because no matter what it was, it tasted like smoking the haze from Ground Zero. Even every breath tasted like the haze.