My favorite episode of the TV show Mad Men is the one where the ad agency comes up with the legendary slogan “It’s toasted!” for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company’s most famous cigarette label, Lucky Strike. I have a soft spot for the episode because Lucky Strikes happen to be my single greatest guilty pleasure.

Don’t get me wrong. I rarely smoke, and only then on the appropriate celebratory occasions (like the end of Finals Week). I really can’t emphasize how strongly I disapprove of taking up smoking as a habit. Strangely, the danger is part of the reason why I enjoy lighting up a few sticks from time to time.

There’s also a vibrant history surrounding the brand that lends it further appeal. I can’t smoke a Lucky without summoning up images of World War II-era P-51s dive-bombing out of the French sky and epic battles fought by scared men in government-issue uniforms. Luckies were what men like my grandfather and his brothers smoked when they got a break from smashing fascism and liberating Europe. Luckies are known as the smokes that “won the war” for this very reason. I don’t taste history like that when I smoke other unfiltered cigarettes.

I was disappointed recently when I bought a pack without examining it carefully, only to later discover they were filtered. This was a complete shock because the filtered version has been discontinued in the U.S. for decades and also because I felt it cheapened the smoke. Like all-nite diners and spaghetti westerns, I believe Luckies are part of a vanishing landscape of classic Americana that shouldn’t be tampered with. I only calmed down when I remembered something my father once said: “No matter what anyone might tell you, there’s no such thing as the good ol’ days.”

I realized, of course, he was right. The same America that looks so photogenic on shows like Mad Men and seems so cool when you blow out a smoke donut from a Lucky just doesn’t hold up once you take the time to actually think about it. In the smoky age AMC’s Mad Men glorifies – a time of high-rise offices stocked like liquor stores, men going out for drinks after work with the boys and women with curves that don’t end – there also existed a dark undercurrent of deep social injustice. The era of R. J. Reynolds’ heyday was also the same time when my grandfather could risk his life for his country but couldn’t sit next to a white man on a bus in his own hometown, New Orleans.

I wonder what we’ll remember when we get old enough to do the same octogenarian complaining with our own young whipper-snappers. Will we remember the senseless wars? The genocide in Darfur we could have prevented? A recession brought upon us by a culture of “buy now, pay later”? Or will we just ramble on for hours about how “in our day 4 gigs of RAM was good enough”?

Medill junior Carlton Barzon can be reached at [email protected].