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Judge Garman had finally had enough.
				On Jan. 21, 1920, His Honor John Garman of Luzerne County banned spittoons from his courtroom.
				It&rsquo;s difficult today to imagine people in a courtroom jawing away on tobacco during a trial or bankruptcy proceeding and occasionally wandering over to the nearest cuspidor (the polite name) to noisily unload a mouthful.
				But apparently that had been standard practice at the courthouse for some time.
				The old pleasures were coming apart at the seams in another way that winter of a century ago. National prohibition was kicking in. But that had been in the works for some time. Banning loads of tobacco spit from a courtroom seems to have just struck from out of the blue.
				Here&rsquo;s our question of the day. What did a spittoon look like? They were part of everyday life a hundred years ago and more. But how many of us could identify one if we saw it?
				The classic spittoon was basically a short, chunky brass pot maybe seven or eight inches high, with a wide mouth &mdash; a very wide mouth, for obvious reasons. There are lots of pictures of them online. I&rsquo;ve heard that at one time, men took pride in their ability to fire loads from surprising distances right into a spittoon without troubling the crinoline petticoats of ladies seated nearby, but I have not researched this point.
				Spittoons are not exactly hot items today, but you can still buy one, believe it or not. A brief search turned up one on eBay for $33.74, a vintage model from England, though with &ldquo;small dent and scratches.&rdquo;
				If you really want to impress the tobacco chewer in your life, there&rsquo;s a shiny and genuine &ldquo;Union Pacific Railroad cuspidor&rdquo; (apparently what they used to have for chewers and spitters on luxury trains) for $100 from another seller.
				By mid-20th century, spittoons seem to have pretty much gone away. Public places had big &ldquo;NO SPITTING&rdquo; signs, evidently for the few remaining traditionalists, and I have no recollection from the 1950s of seeing cuspidors anywhere.
				I guess an era had ended. We sold a lot of packs of William Penn, Hunt Club, Top, Prince Albert, Beech Nut and Bugler tobacco in our East Market Street store. But that product seems to have gone to pipe smokers, gents who would come in puffing away amid an aromatic haze.
				I kept a few hard plugs of &ldquo;chaw&rdquo; in our tobacco case. They sold slowly. It seemed that only in old cowboy movies were there still a lot of guys who preferred chewing and spitting to lighting up.
				Life had changed. Cigarette advertising of the 1950s often showed men identified as &ldquo;doctors&rdquo; extolling a brand of smokes as better for your health. For hero worshipers, there were Oscar-winning actors shown in nightclubs or other fancy haunts puffing away and urging you to join their lifestyle.
				Had the Judge Garmans of the world put an end to chew and spit?
				Or were even the creative powers of Madison Avenue unable to make the firing of brownish globs of saliva and tobacco into a metal urn with a loud &ldquo;ping&rdquo; look as sophisticated as puffing on an Old Gold?
				But, you know, those online cuspidors do have the charm of a vanished era to them.
				Imagine the conversations that&rsquo;ll take place when your guests see a brass pot in your living room and ask what it is and you flash your best superior smile.
				Yeah, chew on that for a while.

Remember When: They took cuspidors out of the courthouse