Oh man, I used to smoke. We were poor poor, so coming up with tobacco was a trick. Cigs were very cheap (I remember thinking that if they ever got to a buck I'd quit). Still, when you don't have any money cheap isn't good enough. We'd occasionally score a can of Bugler, maybe after mowing some lawns or shoveling or selling costume jewelry - stuff like that.
My brother Chris and I would pull stubs from the ashtrays at the local playhouse or mall. You need to find places where people are in a hurry to get a few puffs then kill it - they leave some good ones. We'd get tons of them - an inch or so of cig left before it was stamped into the litter in the ashtray. You'd squirrel the thing back and forth to get the remaining tobacco out and into a paper, then roll it up in a zigzag (we did have a rolling machine). Woot! Sometimes we'd just re-light the stubs outside the playhouse, but often (because it was so short) we'd scorch our eyelashes and eyebrows with the lighter. I hate that smell of burning hair.
I remember scooping snow in pots, bringing inside to melt, then pouring it into the toilet tank so it could flush. We didn't have running water sometimes. Neighbors did, but not us. We were poor poor. If it's brown, flush it down, if it's yellow, let it mellow. Hah! I still have foodstamps from back then (I'm a stamp collector, so I just saved some of the bills my mom gave me).
