As I have mentioned before, my judge is an avid smoker. One of my duties as her clerk is to run out to the local newsstand and get her smokes when she runs low. Almost everyday she requests two packs, this in addition to anything she picks up on her own.

Because of heavy tax increases designed to deter smokers, cigarettes are insanely expensive here in New Jersey. My judge's brand set her back five dollars a pack. It is possible she would save money by purchasing a carton, but I don't know what a carton costs because Judge Selma will not permit me to purchase a whole carton for her. I have suggested it twice and both times I have been scoffed at. I think this is some kind of psychological aberration that has to do with addiction. I'm not sure.

One of the many things Oklahoma has in abundance is Native Americans. As you may or may not know, a long time ago a bunch of white people moved all the Natives they could round up to Oklahoma and told them to stay. This worked well for the white people until one of them noticed that the geography of Oklahoma is such that the eastern portion of the state is considerably greener and better suited to farming than the western portion and that there were lots of Native Americans on the green portions. So the white people moved all the Native Americans out of the Eastern portion of the state and onto the Brown portions and then gave huge plots of green farm land away for free to any white man who would claim it.

So, what does this have to do with anything? Well, the answer to that is as a direct result of all this moving, there are a number of Native American businesses located in the state that operate outside of many of the government imposed rules other businesses must operate under. Oklahoma is certainly not the only state with such businesses; Indian casinos are springing up on tribal lands all over the country, for example. But it is a place where I am familiar with these businesses and know how to take advantage of them. With this in mind, I decided to visit an Indian smoke shop before returning.

See, here's the thing. Indian smoke shops operate on tribal lands and as such state taxes are not applied to the purchase of Indian ciggies. This results in a substantial savings to the purchaser, as you can well imagine.

Now, the way it is supposed to work is that members of the tribe are the only ones who get tax free smokes. The smoke shops are supposed to collect the personal information from each of the non-tribe members who frequent these establishments and report their purchases to the state, which assesses the appropriate tax when income tax returns are filed or when property taxes come due. But in the ultimate thumb of the nose to whitie, none of them do it.

To combat this, most every state with Indian smoke shops have passed legislation to compel taxpayers to declare how many cigs they have purchased from tax free establishments and to pay the tax. To this I say get real.

So, here's the plan. I buy cheap ciggies in Oklahoma and support a marginalized people. Then I bring said ciggies back to my office and keep them in my drawer. Now, when the Judge asks me to run out for smokes, I pretend to leave, but just go to the bathroom or stretch my legs or something and when I return, I sell her the smokes I have hidden in my desk for the price she would have paid to the neighborhood news stand. My brother-in-law has already labeled me a racketeer.

So I run this plan by my family and they all think it's a capital idea seeing as how we, as a group, are always looking for ways to stick it to the man. I had my sister scout out a few smoke shops before I arrived. One afternoon, after pooling my Christmas money (or should I call it seed money?), my sister and I set out to get the Judge's smokes. My mother was in the back seat offering her tacit approval to the whole endeavor.

The smoke shop nearest my sister's house is a spectacle. It's a little shack, and an ugly one at that. It sits in the middle of what was once a four acre vacant lot, which has since become an enormous sprawling Walmart. Though I have no actual knowledge regarding these dealings, it looks as if Walmart probably tried to buy the smoke shop out, but met resistance. To combat the existence of the smoke shop so close to their property, Walmart has created enormous dirt piles, at least two stories high that completely obscure the smoke shop from the Walmart parking lot. They do a fairly good job of obscuring the smoke shop from the road as well.

The approach to the smoke shop is via a dirt path that has been marked with a hand painted one way sign. The establishment is entirely drive through. We laughed heartily at the moron who drove through the wrong way. "Yeah, now your passenger window is up against the building! Gotta lean over, dontcha! Moron!"

The clientele at the smoke shop were not the carefree happy smokers of cigarette ads and trendy martini bars. The people in the cars around us were the hardened smokers who were as likely as not to spend their last dollar on smokes as baby formula. The women had thinning hair, fewer teeth than God originally intended, and yellowed nicotine stains in the deep creases that lined their faces. And the men sported mullets and t-shirts bearing the Bars and Stars of the Confederate flag.

My mother sank down in the back seat in a futile attempt to obscure her tastefully cheerful Laura Ashley ensemb and full head of hair. My sister, a tiny blond with charmingly young features and the constant smile and disposition her job as a first grade teacher has taught her, pulled up to the smoke shop window in her air tight Jetta and used a hand held remote to lower the window.

A grizzled old Anglo leaned out of the window and silently sized us up. "Wait," my sister said. "I thought this was an Indian smoke shop."

The Anglo cleared the tar off his vocal chords and spat on the ground between the car and the shop. "Yeah, it is," he growled.

My sister smiled a first grade smile and said, "But, you're so pale."

The Anglo took a pause and then said, "Well, what can I say? I left my loin cloth and war paint back in the wigwam." He took a drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke into our car. "You want smokes or not?"

"How much for a carton of suchandsucha brand?"

"Twenty-one dollars."

The three of us huddled and conferred. The Anglo grew impatient. My sister asked another question. "How many packs in a carton?"

This threw the Anglo. The people who frequented his shop knew what they were doing. We clearly did not. "Ten," he said without bothering to disguise his annoyance.

We conferred again and finally decided to buy four cartons. My sister leaned back out. "We'd like four packs, then please."

"CARTONS!" mom and I shouted.

"Oh, oh! Yes, I meant four cartons of suchandsucha brand."

The man took a drag and said, "Hard or soft?"

We scratched our heads a bit. "What?" I asked?

"Box or soft pack?"

This was a problem I had not predicted. When I go to the newsstand they never ask me that. I didn't know the answer. I tried to think back to the packs I'd carried, and I knew what they looked like, but I wasn't sure. "What's the difference?" I asked.

"Look, it's the same price, which ever you choose."

I wasn't really asking about the price, I wanted to know the difference in packaging, but as the Anglo's voice was so very impatient and I was pretty sure the newsstand sold me the soft packs, I went with it. He handed over my surprisingly voluminous order and we paid.

My sister put the car in gear and was about to pull off when the Anglo stuck out his hand. "Wait," he said. "Here's a free lighter. He rummaged around out of sight and produced a small blue lighter. He started to hand it to my sister and then a thought seized him. He withdrew his hand and tested it. Once it was blazing he showed the flame to us and we nodded in approval. We accepted the lighter. "Will this light all four cartons?" I asked? "What is the life expectancy of a lighter? How many smokes per butane cell?"

The Anglo glared at me until I started to feel uncomfortable. My sister drove away none too quickly.

I told the airport security man, who had quite the quizzical look on his face, that the smokes were a Christmas gift. "Somebody must really love you to give you a gift like that," he said. I was taking off my shoes for him to inspect at the time, so I was unable to see what expression his face carried.

Posted at 4:15 p.m.

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