History of Mokin Bigars
Our story begins in Wayne, NJ circa 1995 at the home of my sister -in-law and her family. At the time, they had two children, ages 3 and 2. The younger of the two, our nephew and beloved Godson ‘Anthony’ had a little trouble pronouncing his “S”‘s, which usually came out as a “Y” sound, or not at all when combined with another consonant such as “M” and “N”. Now that we have that all cleared up, the story goes on….
As was the ‘new’ custom, our merry band of family members – all adults, all related -gathered outside on a particularly crisp evening, congregating on the front porch to enjoy a nice post-dinner cigar together. The kids were inside watching tv or so we thought. We begin our usual banter and all-around pleasantries, clueless to the audience we had drawn. All of a sudden, there’s Anthony, climbing on the windowsill, all of 3 feet tall, peeking out like Kilroy over the fence. From out of nowhere, he looks out at us, and in his most eloquent non-S diction, yells to his mom (my sister-in-law), “Mom, they’re Mokin’ a Bigar!” Of course, we all erupted in riotous laughter.
And so started a tradition in the Family…“let’s go moke a bigar”… We say it to this day … giving birth years later to naming this very column!
