Ulysses S. Grant VI sat in a booth at Pappy's Place on Springfield's north side Saturday and mourned the city's new smoking cigarettes ban.
"I really don't like it," said the Springfield man -- named after the U.S. president who was his great-great-great-grandfather -- sitting with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. "I think it's just more big government getting in our business."
The morning after the smoking cigarettes ban started in most work places and buildings open to the public, area bars still smelled of smoke, but the ash trays had been banished.
Pappy's owner Scott Keese wasn't happy about it.
"We're just complying," Keese said. "There's nothing else I can do. I'm not going to curse, I guess. Print a lot of those symbols you see in the comics."
Springfield's smokers enjoyed their cigarettes online and cigars until literally the last minute Friday.
At Finnegan's Wake downtown, bar manager Travis Fisher warned smokers at an hour, 30 minutes, 15 minutes and five minutes before the ban went into effect.
Erin Sammons, 23, smoked Marlboro 72's and brooded.
"We're going to litter on the streets," Sammons said. "We're going to smoke cigarettes outside. We're going to have cigarette butts everywhere."
The ashtrays disappeared about three minutes before midnight. Then employee Melissa Lewis carried around an ashtray for patrons to put out their last online cigarettes in.
"You have to put it out," Lewis told Sammons. "Right now."
Sammons puffed several more times and then ground her cigarette out.
"What am I going to do with my hands?" she asked. "I'm thinking that cigarette was not finished."
The smoking cigarettes ban went into effect after a Greene County judge decided Friday not to delay implementation of Springfield's new smoking cigarettes ordinance.
An attorney for Ruthie's Bar on Commercial Street had sought the delay, called a preliminary injunction, in enforcing the ban while a lawsuit challenging the ban is resolved.
But Greene County Associate Circuit Judge Jason Brown ruled against the request, allowing the ban -- which prohibits smoking cigarettes in most work places and buildings open to the public -- to take effect as planned at midnight Friday.
At Harlow's, musician Mark Willhoit smoked outside at a picnic table on the patio Saturday as he now has to. His bird dog Peggy Sue was nearby.
"I don't like it," Willhoit said. "I think it's infringing on people's rights, especially small business."
IRS accountant Ken Davidson stood nearby and said he was smoking cigarettes less.
"I've gone almost two hours now without smoking cigarettes," Davidson said. "In the bar I would have smoked about 12 by now. I need to quit anyway. Of course after -- how long has it been -- 27, 36 years it's hard to quit."
At Pappy's, Joe Britain sat at the bar with his two daughters. It was his 57th birthday, but he couldn't smoke cigarettes his Marlboros inside.
"If you don't want to be around smoke, go to a restaurant that is nonsmoking cigarettes," Britain said.
Keese, the owner, was wondering if he would have to put signs in the window proclaiming that the business was non-smoking cigarettes.
"I don't know what's going to be next," Keese said. "Probably make you go to church on Sunday or something."
Does he go to church?
Said Keese: "Hell, no."
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