1965 - Oma and Opa in Germantown

This is the dining room table where he'd fall asleep with his head on his crossed arms, or, just as likely, snoozing while leaning back against the chair. This is the place where he fell asleep smoking (non-filtered). He often fell asleep with a lit cigarette in his hands. The rug and the floor had plenty of burn marks on them. One day he dozed off again. The cigarette got shorter. Mother and I looked at each other. I was about to wake him when she stopped me. She shook her head no and made the "shhh" sign with her finger to her lips. I thought it was just going to be another one of those times where the cigarette would burn down, get hot against his fingers, and he'd wake up. - Not so.
The hot ember finally burned close enough to his fingers, but instead of waking up he twitched his hand in his sleep and the cigarette fell on his pants in the middle of his lap. I reached over to take it and mother held me back. We sat and watched as the cigarette stub smoldered on the material of his pants. I looked at mother and she looked at me. She shook her head no. It didn't take long for the material to smolder and, once it did, for a small hole to appear. A few more seconds and the cigarette disappeared.
Yes, there was jumping. Yes, there was frantic moving and shaking the leg to get the cigarette to fall out of the bottom of the pant leg. Yes, there might even have been some German cursing. I'm not too sure about that last one though because mother and I were laughing too hard. He recovered quickly and no permanent damage was done. He was good-natured about the incident and laughed when the story was repeated, and repeated, and repeated.
Funny thing, I don't remember him falling asleep with cigarettes in his hand after that. I'm probably wrong about that, though. It must be that that one event made any others seem insignificant.