Smells

Subject: Smells
From: Tucker
Date: 07 May 99 - 10:02 PM

Ok, I know a lot of mudcatters live in pristine, wonderous spots (I do too, getting at that) I live on a terrace, overlooking a intercity strip of ethnic restrauants. Right now the smell of Soy sauce, pepperoni, garlic, smoked burgers and gyros fills the spring air. I love it. There's also the sound of the freight trains from the yards below. I live in a small city but I love the bustle of it all. I wish I could have 2 or 3 acres in the city, cows, horses, sheep, corn, folksy neighbors, etal but geez, I love the city too>comments?

Subject: RE: Smells
From: campfire
Date: 07 May 99 - 10:23 PM

Well, I live in the city (Milwaukee) that some baseball player commented something about not liking to play here because the city actually stinks. In the "valley" around the Stadium, the odors of the breweries, the stockyards and tanneries, and the god-only-knows-whats DO create a rather malodorous combination.

On the other hand, my father lives about 5 hours north, and I visit as often as I can. About three hours north of here, you can smell the difference. When we were kids, driving up to see the grandparents, we would "smell" that we were "up north". Must have kept down on the "are we thre yet?"s.

campfire

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Tucker
Date: 07 May 99 - 10:43 PM

Thank you Campfire, I don't know where you're from but I know I am going to get comments from Chillicothe/or about them.....P.S Chillicothe folks, I love you, I like Mead, use their paper, let's talk.

Subject: RE: Smells
From: campfire
Date: 07 May 99 - 11:04 PM

Sorry, Tucker.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin is about an hour and a half north of Chicago, Illinois - "A Great Place on a Great Lake" is our city motto - our eastern border is the shore of Lake Michigan. And ALL of the city does NOT smell bad, regardless of the opinions of visiting baseball players.

campfire

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 May 99 - 11:36 PM

Ah, but I lived on the south side of Milwaukee, "where the streetcar turns the corner round," as they used to say. A meat packing plant and a glue factory were not far away. When the wind came from the south, the smells were most enlightening.
In my exile home in California, we have smog. Doesn't smell too bad, but I think I prefer the glue factory. I've been in California for over 25 years now. I still like Wisconsin far better, but it's not home any more. I guess I'll stay in California. Friends and family are far more important than air quality.
-Joe Offer, who fled Wisconsin when the yuppies arrived-

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Ronn
Date: 07 May 99 - 11:52 PM

Admittedly, when the wind is blowing off the Patrick Cudahy plant, it's not the most pleasant, and the valley can be somewhat oppressive if the brewery yeast is just a little off. Downtown Milwaukee isnt the same since Ambrosia Chocolate moved. But I live on the west side where the most noticable smell is from my own lilac bushes, there is nary a yuppie in sight, and who cares what baseball players think anyway?

Campfire--my father grew up in Marinette, about 5 hours north of here. Is that anywhere near your father?

Subject: RE: Smells
From: campfire
Date: 07 May 99 - 11:56 PM

Hi Ronn- My father is in Lac du Flambeau, in Vilas County. Everything up there smells fresh and clean and pine-tree like. My neighbor has lilacs that are also in bloom and MY yard smells just great. I'm just west of the Stadium, though, so I know what he meant.

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Alice
Date: 08 May 99 - 12:01 AM

my back yard= fresh air, pine needles, lilacs, (and sometimes doggy doo-doo)

Subject: RE: Smells
From: DonMeixner
Date: 08 May 99 - 12:26 AM

On a still summer night when the humidity is up I can smell farms around Jordan, NY. The damp, decayed, smell of the abandoned canal bed isn't unpleasant but it is unique. When the wind is right you can smell, if only faintly, the race track and the burnt fuel and rubber. And the blackpowder smell of the fireworks on the fourth of July linger long after the lights are gone.

In August the Seneca River has a smell that is a reminder to me of everything good about my childhood spent on it's bank. I have heard it said that smells, pleasant or no bring back the deepest of memories. I would tend to agree.

Regards,

Don

Subject: RE: Smells
From: northfolk/al cholger
Date: 08 May 99 - 12:42 AM

A year ago in February I moved out of a small town in northern Michigan, at the age of 48, to take a job as a Union Representative in Detroit...most of my membership (I was President of my Local Union) thought I was nuts. Alot of their thoughts were based on a mix of racial fear and mistaken rugged individualism.... but I got to say I love it...being under constant attack by corporate power isn't enjoyable, but everyone is. Being in this mix of racial, ethnic diversity...getting to know a whole bunch of new friends, and being able to reallize that there is a dynamic beauty to to the city...I can see Len Wallace play irish slavic labor music, on the squeezebox from hell one night...and ani difranco the next night. I can make common cause with the religious social justice and the environmental and the labor and the leftist....I damn near am in heaven and didn't even have to die...

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 08 May 99 - 12:45 AM

Hey Northfolk, next time you see my buddy Len Wallace say hello, and tell him to e-mail me more accordion jokes. I need my fix. Great post by the way.
rick

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Cap't Bob
Date: 08 May 99 - 01:03 AM

Finally ~ no smoke ~ no forest fires today thanks to a few thunderstorms during the last couple of days. Today it's just the smell of pine and spring in the north woods. 62 morels frying in butter with a few onions. A great day for a walk in the woods.

Cap't Bob

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 08 May 99 - 01:03 AM

We have a shed, and in May of each year a mating pair of foxes return to it to nest under the corner. Yesterday I came home to find fresh dirt kicked out of the fox hole, a bumping noise on the plywood shed bottom, and the musky unmistakeable odor of them in the air. In the early morning today we saw the pair with two black kits playing in the path. Anyway, that musky odor, along with the sharp snap of rising pine sap in the air has come to mean the arrival of Spring to our home.

LEJ

Subject: RE: Smells
From: The Shambles
Date: 08 May 99 - 06:08 AM

I have come to think that our sense of smell is probably the most evocative. You catch something on the breeze (nasty that) and that can take you right back to somewhere or someone.

That smell of fresh floor varnish that used to greet me when I returned to school after the long summer break. If I smell it now, I still get that 'orrible' sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Roger the zimmer
Date: 08 May 99 - 07:58 AM

I spent the first nine years of my life within smelling distance of the old Saltley gasworks ( site of a famous strike) and one of my first jobs was at Aston between the ketchup factory and the brewery. So gassy and malty smells remind me of those times, but I wouldn't say I miss them! We have a ceanothus in the garden in flower at the moment which smells of caramel- very dangerous for someone with a sweet tooth who's trying not to put any more weight on. (I don't mean I eat the flowers, just that I have a craving for a sticky pudding with caramel sauce instead of some healthy fruit!)

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Tucker
Date: 08 May 99 - 04:31 PM

Hi everyone. Re: The Shambles, aye, I agree. The odor of moth balls instantly transport me back into the Army,the odor of floor wax to when I worked as a janitor,mums to funerals I'd rather forget and baby powder to when I was a baby. Hoppe's to pleasant days of shooting, the river when it's down and slow to days at my grandfather's camp. The sense of smell so instantly transports me that I don't know what hit me. A remarkable sense indeed.

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Roger in Baltimore
Date: 09 May 99 - 12:53 AM

Every summer, my folks took the family to Ocean City on the Atlantic Coast. 'Twas before the days of air-conditioned cars and my heart always leapt to my throat when I caught the first whiff of the salt air.

On the downside, I live about 15 miles from a paper factory and when the wind is just right, I can smell the factory. The factory is in the center of a little town and people live there to my amazement. Of course, if you spend much more than a half an hour in town, your olfactory nerve shuts down so you can't smell the factory.

We former country folk laugh at the new suburbanites who move next door to a farm and then complain when fertilizing is being done. We tell 'em its the smell of "fresh country air". 'Course even suburbanites know cow poop when they smell it. We're trying to pass a law to disallow such complaints since the farmers were here first, and you do have to put it on the ground and spread it all around to make things grow.

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Tucker
Date: 09 May 99 - 12:59 AM

I love it Roger. You need a Brady Bill. Every new home owner needs to wait 10 days before he or she is allowed to smell the poop, after a rigorous backround check that is!

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Joe Offer
Date: 09 May 99 - 03:21 PM

You know, it's amazing what you can find here on the 'Cat. A while back, there was information about the area of Detroit where I lived until I was ten. Now there are reminders of the smells of Milwaukee, where I spent my teenage years. The thought of those smells brings back good memories. Even the awful smell of the chocolate factory reminds me of a lot of good times.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Smells
From: The Shambles
Date: 09 May 99 - 05:37 PM

Tucker

Another anagram for salamander, which probably belongs here is 'nasal dream'.

Subject: RE: Smells
From: sail
Date: 09 May 99 - 06:16 PM

Sometimes when the breeze is just right there is a faint smell from Tropicana, the orange juice plant in East Bradenton. From my bedroom window I can smell orange blossoms when they are in bloom. That is a wonder smell. Best of all is the salt air coming off the Gulf of Mexico at the beach. Guess I'm very fortunate.

Subject: RE: Smells
From:
Date: 09 May 99 - 09:17 PM

Len Wallace lives in Windsor, Ontario. He has a CD out. He plays around the city at such venues as The Sandwich Mill and Patrick O'Ryan's. I've seen him play up the Press Club too. Celtic and union stuff. I've often wondered why he doesn't sing Look For The Union Label, which is a nice song to play in a pub in a blue collar city.

Smells, egad, I live in Windsor across from Detroit. There are many smells, not all pleasant. The Rouge River works sometimes waft their heavy, metallic smell over our way and leave black clinkery things on our cars. Down in the west end of Windsor, there is a sewage treatment plant which doesn't seem, to my nose, to be up to modern standards. Down in Walkerville, there is the smell of the Hiram Walker distillary. Some people don't like it but it reminds me of baking bread. Now that someone has opened a brewery nearby we should have more malty smells. But that's fine, because you can't have beer without some folks putting up with a few odours.

I'm told things were much worse thirty years ago, although I don't know how anyone with allergies could live here.

This is all worse in the humidity of summer, because the air just hangs over the place. It would be oppressive enough without the smog. When I go back to the east coast I wonder why the air smells so strange. It is, I have decided, simply the smell of fresh air.

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Tucker
Date: 09 May 99 - 09:43 PM

first a thing to Sail, When can I move in? I belong on the coast somewhere and though I love the ocean better than the gulf, and the pacific better than the Atlantic, they are all heaven to me. Just give me that wonderful salt air, sunsets and sun rises ( in Florida you can have both if you drive fast enough). Ah Tim Jaques, the yeasty smell of baking bread.....yeah...killer smell eh? Whiskey? maybe I shouldn't larn o' this one, but an ethonal plant by South Point had a distintive smell, something like fried chicken to it.

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Margo
Date: 10 May 99 - 07:34 AM

When I was a child of 4 I went to Hawaii with my grandparents. Going back 20 years later, I was immediately struck with the wafting perfumes of the leis as I stepped off the plane. It was then I first felt the amazing rush of nostalgia. Words can hardly describe the poignant memory brought on by smell.

Up the Columbia river gorge from Vancouver is Camas, where there is a sewage treatment plant and a pulp mill. I can recall travelling north across the Columbia river and exclaiming to Jack "Ugh. Veronica's diaper needs changing.", only to arrive home and find it clean. Ah! Camas. (Know what I mean, Mudjack?)

It's interesting about the senses. Some people have more acute senses than others. I know all about that sort of thing, my two children being autistic. I really do believe it is genetic, at least in our case. My dad has quite a keen sense of smell which was hard to bear growing up in Turkey. He tells me about the marketplace smelling like camels and patchouli oil. He always ends his description with a requisite ugh!

Margarita

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Allan C.
Date: 10 May 99 - 09:19 AM

I have been doing a lot of driving the past few days and have encountered a wide variety of smells or have been reminded of them.
Dulles Airport was surrounded by the smell of automobile exhaust.
Front Royal, Virginia still stinks as much as it has for as long as I can remember.
Waynesboro, VA smells much better than it used to back when the whole place would stink like vinegar when they would change the dye vats at the textile plant.
The Bridgewater and Harrisonburg area farms are currently getting their periodic coating of aged chicken manure which is so acrid as to nearly sting the eyes.
The manure spreaders (cow manure this time) are doing their work near Baker, West Virginia as well. It is just considered as one of the smells of spring around there.
But on the more positive side, I smelled the sweet perfume of some enormous lilac bushes as I passed through Moorefield, WV.
I caught the scent of the emergent spring foliage as I walked through the woods near Oldfields, WV.
And Alice has reminded me of the time years ago when I climbed to the top of a short mountain which overlooked a lake not far from Great Falls, Montana where I was surrounded by the wonderful smell of pollen-covered pines as I stopped to rest awhile.(Lucky me - the pollen does'nt bother me in the least!)
But all of these scents fade from memory when I hold close the woman I love and smell the sweetness of her. Not any kind of perfume. Just a scent which is hers and hers alone.

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Mudjack
Date: 10 May 99 - 09:57 AM

Ahh,Nothing but fresh air. Occassionally we get a sniff of our neighbor's smoke from his wood burning stove.Last winter we took some advise from a knowlegable man and put moth balls beneath the house to deter any unwanted rodents and mice.I think it destroyed my sense of smell and now I see mice with attitudes. They think it's perfume.
Yes Margarita I do know about Camas and the stinch, which proves my sniffer does still work. I worked in a pulp mill for over two years and believe it or not, you get use to it,especially on pay days.
Mudjack

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Matthew B.
Date: 10 May 99 - 10:13 AM

My bride, cats and I, live in Sheepshead Bay, at the southeastern tip of Brooklyn. I work each day in bustling Manhattan, but we're just a few minutes from placid Fort Tilden, a deserted, pristine, CLEAN, deserted beach about 3 miles long, where we go for long walks all year 'round.

A little further on is a bird sanctuary, where we love to go for nature walks.

So, as for smell, imagine the smell of the salt sea as it passes through lush forests. And this is in Brooklyn! (Who'd of thunk it?)

Subject: RE: Smells
From: northfolk/al cholger
Date: 10 May 99 - 12:40 PM

Rick, I hope you (and others) enjoy this. Len was doing a workshop on worker culture, about 2 weeks ago, with a number of other people in Detroit. During the evening one of the other presenters stumbled over Len's stomach steinway...at which point someone else shouted..."you can't kick that, It's not a banjo".

Subject: RE: Smells
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 10 May 99 - 01:18 PM

I work right near the Mars factory, and when they are making bounty bars......... yum

Subject: RE: Smells
From: Allan C.
Date: 10 May 99 - 02:28 PM

KingBrilliant, I can understand that perfectly. I used to work at a plant where they pre-cooked chicken for fast-food restaurants like Tastee Freeze, KFC, Golden Skillet and many others. Sometimes, when I am visiting in that area and the wind is right I can still smell that delicious odor. Most folks who have worked there for awhile say they either don't smell it anymore or can't stand the smell of fried chicken at all anymore. I, on the other hand, never tired of it. - Of course, I developed this messy Pavlovian thing as a result.