When I was in high school we had a fairly sizable group of students who were referred to as the “coat kids.” It wasn’t because they had especially nice coats or especially ugly coats; it’s just that during the winter they wore their coats all of the time.

They had a purpose.

When I was in high school, we had — and this is really going to date me — a student smoking area.

It was just outside the gymnasium doors at one of the main entrances to the building and perfectly located for quick butt breaks between classes. The kids who smoked simply kept their coats on all day long so they wouldn’t freeze during those dastardly darts to the “dark side.”

Of course, back then it wasn’t seen as the dark side at all. Not only did you walk through the student smoking area to get to the building, but a permanent haze of smoke was always present outside the teachers room across from the cafeteria.

I remember teachers rooms with those huge coffee table-sized ashtrays, equipped with a holding place for five or six cigarettes at a time and built-in butane lighter. They were almost always overflowing with cigarette butts.

My chain-smoking grandfather had one of those ashtrays as well and occasionally I try to remember whether he lifted the whole, massive ashtray to his cigarette for a light or whether he leaned way over to light it at coffee-table level.

When I started working at the BDN, just four years after high school, the tide was starting to turn on the cigarette smokers of the world.

The early to mid-1980s were the time when offices, even newsrooms where frazzled reporters fretted over deadlines, began to go smoke-free.

Smokers at newspapers, in the State House in Augusta and elsewhere were banished to the “smoking lounge.”

They were forced to huddle en masse in small smoke-filled rooms, and when they returned to their desks they would reek of cigarette smoke so strong it would revolt even the most committed smoker among them.

This, I believe, is when things truly headed south for smokers. Sure, there was no actual smoke billowing across the office, but the odor attached to those forced to smoke in such close quarters was as offensive as any cigarette. Then there were those cigarette breaks. Right away, smokers seemed to have a widely accepted excuse to take countless breaks, while nonsmokers toiled away at their desks.

A few years later and the “smoking lounge” was just a hazy memory, and smokers were forced to huddle together outside back office doors. Braving bitter winter winds and rain, smokers would dash outside for a butt. Warmer days, however, could still find a certain social network of smokers lingering over a good smoke and a bit of conversation, albeit on the sidewalk.

They didn’t smell quite so bad, being outside and all, but those numerous breaks lingered thickly in the air, steadily dividing the smokers from the nonsmokers.

The course to total banishment was well under way by the mid-1990s, when nonsmoking workers began to complain about polluted walkways and entrances where the dastardly smokers gathered.

The now popular “smoke-free campus” arrived.

The end had finally come to the quick hourly butt breaks outside the office door. Now workers were forced to abstain until having the time to walk off property and huddle awkwardly across the street to have a smoke.

I’ve been thinking of the nasty trail of smoking history this week as we prepare to swear in our next president, who happens to be an occasional closet smoker. Much has been made of Barack Obama’s dirty little secret.

The president-elect clearly doesn’t like talking about his once-in-a-while habit, but has admitted to it and says he is pretty much always trying to quit yet does fall off the wagon.

Sen. and former first lady Hillary Clinton, who will be his secretary of state, made the White House off-limits to smoking during her husband’s presidency. After all, it is a despicable habit. Of course, we won’t talk about the secret habits of her husband. He had a different way of reducing stress.

I wish President-elect Obama good luck in his ongoing attempt to kick the habit, but I really hope that he can find himself a quiet, safe and private place in the White House to light up when he really feels the need to.

The thought of President Obama having a private moment with a cup of coffee and a cigarette as he ponders world events doesn’t offend me much. The thought of him hiding behind a bush in the Rose Garden to sneak a stress-relieving butt really does.

reneeordway@gmail.com