Monday, November 14, 2011

Occu-p.u.

I was strolling past the OccupyDC tent-slum this afternoon and was struck by the…aroma. Now, it is said, and truly, that the stimulation of our olfactory glands can be a powerful jolt to our memories, oftentimes calling forth the instant recollection of an experience that one had decades ago – and so it was in my case. The stench coming from McPherson Square took me back to the halcyon days of my youth, when, during the summers, I worked for my father's garbage company and had to make frequent runs to the county landfill. Y-e-s…the smell from the park was exactly the same as the funk rising up from that vast estate of waste, where heterogeneous trash decayed and fermented and ultimately resolved itself into a more-or-less homogeneous mash of organic soup.

And yet the stink didn’t bother me too much, precisely because of the fond old associations. Garbage meant money to the Pacos, and as Old Paco used to say (tongue planted firmly in cheek), his friends would sometimes make fun of him for being a garbage man, which made him cry all the way to the bank. The smell also brought back memories of a cruise I took upon graduating from high school. We put in for a day and a night at San Juan, Puerto Rico in the middle of a sanitation strike. The same stench, perhaps a bit more pervasive. But I danced in the ship’s ballroom with a pulchritudinous young woman, to the wild and joyous strains of “Roll Over Beethoven”, performed by a highly talented little band, after which I drank nine whiskey sours and knew no more.

Ah, the old days are gone forever…But where was I? Oh, yes. McPherson Square. If the self-styled anarchists and Bolshevik poseurs wish to stink their way to victory, then they will find, to their consternation, that this is one partisan of the ancien régime whose nose is proof against that particular weapon.

6 comments:

JeffS said...

...after which I drank nine whiskey sours and knew no more.

Uh huh. What a convenient lapse of memory, especially after all that dancing with "a pulchritudinous young woman".

Meanwhile, back to today......

The #OccupyCretins are losing support in many places; people are seeing them for what they are. These overprivileged and underworked lefties aren't down nor out; they're hard to eliminate, much like cockroaches. But I'm pretty sure the message received is not the one they sent.

RebeccaH said...

Careful, Paco. You don't know what X-Fileish type beast might be brewing down there in the soup.

Anonymous said...

In light of your lineage, one would have thought you'd go for a mulchritudinous young woman...

Anonymous said...

RebeccaH is right. Remember the garbage scene from "Star Wars".

You should have worn work clothes in and kept the custom hand-tailored suit in a bag. The dry cleaner is going to have a time getting the stench out. Unless, you wore the custom hand-tailored hazmat suit over the suit.

Missed a perfect opportunity for coffer enrichment due to the loss of memory. Too bad you couldn't prounounce "San Juan" at the time.

Deborah Leigh

bruce said...

On my birth cert my dad is described as a 'Lagger' - installer of lagging.

Good honest hardworking smells rarely offend, at least after a day or so, but I imagine that composting 'organic' waste in New York apartments smells like pure smug.

Steve Burri said...

Just think, Paco, that 30 years down the road one of these occupiers may take a trip to the landfill and be aromatically reminded of the good ol' occupation days where they made a difference and got a lot of Conservatives elected.