I’m not talking about fame nor fortune. Well, maybe fortune in an indirect way. But certainly not fame. I’m writing about industrial odors. Seems like a weird topic for a spring Sunday. But I saw a post on Facebook asking me to pick my two favorite fragrances from a list of twelve. They were things like newly mown grass, freshly brewed coffee, or opening a bag of chips. All nice smells. That triggered a memory of a childhood smell from the nearby zinc smelter in Palmerton, a town just north of Slatington. That smell wasn’t so nice. So please indulge me as I touch on four industrial smells from my life. One bad, two good, and one neutral.
The bad is the aforementioned zinc smelter in Palmerton. My sister lived in Lehighton, so when we visited her we had to drive past that zinc smelter. “Put the windows up”! It was a thick sulphury smell. I don’t know how hundreds of people worked there. The smelter no longer exists. They can now grow grass in Palmerton!
Anyone been to Hershey? There is a sweet smelling town. Chocolate made the town and chocolate made the town’s air smell just great! If we are going to die from air pollution, Hershey would be the place to do it.
I used to work at the Pfizer pigments plant in Easton. Driving there, from Slatington, you knew you were close when the aroma of fresh baked bread arrived in your car. No, it sure wasn’t Pfizer. It was the Schaible’s (?) bakery, making thousands of loaves of bread every single morning. So nice!
For eight years, I worked for Minerals Technologies. We were building small chemical plants on the sites of paper mills all over the United States, and later all over the world. Here is a pretty common thing about paper mills. They are usually in a town in the middle of nowhere and they are typically the only industry in that town. Every one of those towns smells like cooking cabbage. You could be lost and you could find your way to that town just by the smell. I listed this one as a neutral odor. It wasn’t at first. But I guess, just like the people who live in those towns, I got used to the smell and grew to like it.
Weird topic, I know. They say the sense of smell is the greatest sense for stirring memories. I guess that is true for me! One thing I am glad of is that my hometown really didn’t have an industrial odor. We quarried slate, manufactured lamps, made clothing and silk. All pretty fragrance free. How about where you have lived your life? Any fragrance memories stirred?
A Semi-retired Kind of Life 