Olfactory Overload

Mark and Freddie sort of tag-teamed a couple posts that upon reading, really brought back some memories. And some not very good ones at that.

They got to talking about odiferous aromas, and it started me thinking what the worst smell I ever encountered was, and the first thing which came to mind - which I threw in the comment box - was the rank smell of accumulated pig shit.

The pig farm...

Now I grew up in a farm community and was around cows, horses and sheep a good portion of my young life. I helped out on some farms to earn pocket change which at times required walking, or even driving a tractor at feeding time through many a barnyard where animals such as cows, horses or sheep were corralled.
I also used to work as a maintenance guy at the county fairgrounds where I would have to shovel animal shit from the livestock pens after the county fair, or any of the many livestock shows or auctions, into a manure spreader to use for fertilizer in the fields.

But I had some distant cousins we would occasionally visit, and their house was quite near a pig farm. Now that was - for a few years anyway - the worst smell I had ever encountered.
Even worse than maggot filled dog shit in the back yard in the middle of a Las Vegas desert summer day.
We would be out and about doing what boys do when they're out and about. We made sure to hasten past the pig pens or avoid them all together. The stench was quite the deterrent.


Then there was the city dump...

I was helping a buddy of mine take some things to the dump. We ended parking to unload the trash fairly near an automobile sized pile of some sort of gray colored mass that the devil himself must have squat and shat.

With runny eyes, I turned to my then buddy and stated something like "What in THE fuck is that stench?!?!? Let's get this shit outta the truck and get the hell outta here STAT!!"
He said he had asked one of the dump 'caretakers' once that stuff was. He was told it was sludge from the sewer treatment plant which was unable to be processed. You know, shit, mud, used kotexes, rubbers, cigarette butts, chunks of food from the garbage disposals from the many hotels and food service joints in the city, and whatever the hell else people would flush down the toilet that wasn't able to rot and be returned to the ecosystem.
Take my word for it. Rotted garbage disposal leftovers and sewage is not something you want to linger near for more than about, well. Never if you can help it.


Then there was the freezer...

I was visiting my mother one day who was in town staying at my my sisters' house. She asked me if there was something I could do about the terrible smell in the house.
Upon inquiry, the smell was apparently coming from the freezer in the laundry area, which was not actually in the house, but in a small room which had been walled off from the garage. Therefore, not really in the house, but more like in the (un-air-conditioned) garage.
Why was there a smell coming from the freezer? Because my stupid fucking niece - thinking she needed to listen to a radio whilst catching some rays - unplugged the freezer full of meat to have a place to plug her radio into. Now obviously, since she was outside catching some rays, it was the middle of summer. And in case you didn't know, I live near Las Vegas. Which is the middle of the desert. Which in the summer, is very hot.
Now granted, a freezer will stay cold inside for quite a spell without being plugged in while niece catches some rays, or if it just up and loses power. But not in Las Vegas, in the summer, after being unplugged for several days.

I donned the gloves and rounded up some garbage bags and a shovel, with the intention of removing the spoiled meat and cleaning out the freezer. Upon opening the door though, I had to jump back to avoid the flood of rotted flesh, rotted blood, assorted rivulets of rotted slime, maggots and cockroaches that was pouring out of the freezer.
Oh, and let us not forget what brought us to this point in the first place: The stench.


Now I've smelled the feed lot down by Mark's house, I've smelled the pig shit down by the cousins' house, I've smelled the sewage at the city dump, I've smelled the livestock pens after three days of county fair, and I've smelled the outhouses at the campground. But I'm here to tell you, a couple hundred pounds of animal flesh rotting in a freezer for several days in the Nevada desert is enough to knock the balls off a pool table.

Sooooooo, I said "Forget it, I ain't touching that thing" and called some junk guy to come and haul it off.

THAT has to be the worst smell I've ever encountered, and by the grace of Allah, I will never encounter that aroma again.



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