After my father’s death, more than 40 years ago, my mother passed along to me two personal items of his: a cigar cutter and a handcrafted wooden humidor. Both of these objects are uniquely unlike anything else I’ve ever seen — functional, roughly beautiful and meticulously made. Naturally they remind me of my dad, who was very successful in business but humble and self-effacing to a fault.

One thing on which he indulged his big spending was a long dark Cuban cigar, the kind that comes in an aluminum tube, that he bought by the dozen from some fixer he knew who had a contraband connection that imported them by way of Canada. Fat Jack (my friends’ affectionate nickname for him) smoked mostly at the track, or at home in the den, watching a football game or boxing match. That toxic smoke came from good tobacco, and it smelled good, intoxicating with its fatherly aroma, even to my unseasoned young nose.

I said he died more than 40 years ago, at 75, younger than I am now, and it was a brain tumor that killed him — thanks, I speculate, to those killer Cuban cigars. Even if you don’t inhale directly, you breathe and the smoke gets into your lungs and blood and goes to your head, and that buzz is one of the pleasures of cigars, and next thing you know some bad thing is growing in your brain. So that was the end of my gentle, cigar-smoking father.

Such dangerous pleasures offer a tradeoff: quantity of time for quality of life. Pop clearly chose the latter, as he understood it, and I’m sure would have anyway even if he knew what we know now about tobacco. To him a high-quality hand-rolled Havana cigar, smoked at leisure in front of a sporting event, was the payoff, the ease and leisure earned from a lifetime of work. As he would say, even years before his final illness, “I’m just waiting for them to call my number.” Having provided for his family, he felt his mission was accomplished and there was nothing left for him to do but indulge his vices: betting on sports and smoking cigars.

The cigar cutter feels to me by its weight to be made of brass, with an enameled handle, its textured blue-green finish by now well worn, and a spring-loaded blade you press down over a hole at one end to chop the rounded tip off your cigar. I use it as a paperweight and pick it up often because it feels good in the hand.

The humidor is a heavy wooden inlaid box seamlessly joined at the corners and with a felt bottom so as not to scratch the table. Inside, the top and bottom are lined with white glass, and there used to be a long skinny sponge in a light metal-netted casing that slid into slots on the inside top of the box to provide the humidity to keep the cigars fresh. I now use the box to store certain valuable documents, fresh checks, a little cash, but no cigars.

My father’s humidor, which is a bit banged-up and scratched from several moves over the years, must be what got me started collecting cigar boxes, which I’ve picked up here and there at flea markets and smoke shops, in various shapes and sizes but always wooden and well made, and whose beauty and utility — they are perfect for keeping office supplies, postage stamps, miscellaneous memorabilia — are among my best and simplest domestic pleasures. While none have quite the historic aura of my dad’s illegally imported puros, I like the way they smell inside, and so different one from another.

I’ve smoked cigars from time to time in my reckless younger manhood, but the last time I tried to smoke one, about 15 years ago, I almost passed out and had to go lie down. So I won’t be smoking to my father’s memory, although I enjoy remembering him, and have surprised myself by writing this when what I meant to do was tell you about my cigar boxes and how cool each one is and what I use them for.

Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.