(Editor's note: Parts 1 through 4 of this post were published in an unabridged edition on March 25, 2006. For the sake of my reader's eyesight and patience, I've chosen for now to delete the long version and republish only part 1. Parts 2, 3, and 4 will be republished over the next couple of weeks. Each part will be slightly revised from the original because, by nature, I can never leave well enough alone.)
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Despite its less than seductive and beguiling reputation, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is actually chock full o' mystery and intrigue. No, really.
Please note, Jean Naté and others, that I am not alluding to the happenings and histrionics of life in the mythical Pennsylvania burgs of Pine Valley and Llanview, as evidenced in the U.S. daytime TV soaps, All My Children and One Life to Live, respectively. There are some real queer (as in strange) things going on in the Commonwealth, and they don't necessarily involve good and evil twins, multiple personality disorders, long-lost-loves returning from the dead, or games of baby, baby, who's got the baby.
In actual fact, some of the oddities and strangeness that take place in the Keystone State are even more freakish, warped, and unconventional than a crystal meth-adled Agnes Nixon could ever imagine.
Ladies and gentleman, Raplicious the Fabulous presents you with his own personal guide to Weird Pennsylvania, The Mysteries of Blogsburg. In part 1, you will learn about our odd, unexplained smells.
Enter, if you dare!
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You ever notice, as Andy Rooney might whine (and by doing so should illustrate how we all might make careers out of being professional nudges), how sometimes when you're near a food manufacturing plant the air around it takes on the smell of the food being produced? For example, in Hershey, the air smells like chocolate. In part of Harrisburg near Stroehmann's Bakery, everything smells like fresh bread. In Baltimore, the air used to smell like cinnamon and other spices from the old McCormick Factory near the Inner Harbor. I can only dream that the Utz potato chip plant in Hanover occasionally smells like their delicious Carolina BBQ and Maryland Crab chips, at least from time to time. And as the gods as my witness, someday I'll realize my lifelong dream of traveling to Torino, Italy, just to savor the air around the Ferrero factory that produces Nutella hazelnut spread.
So it is with an odd mixture of incredulity, perplexity, and pride that I report to you that in my little West Shore community the air is vaguely reminiscent of . . . bacon . . . and ham . . . and maybe a scrapple-like product.
It's quite a pleasant aroma actually, especially if you are carnivorous and perpetually hungry like me. But it is an odd aroma for a seemingly non-ham-producing/non-abattoir-friendly community to emanate, and one not necessarily likely to draw in hordes of vegetarian tourists to any annual Quinoa and Quorn Festival we might choose to celebrate someday.
Plus, this essence of pork is a very inconsistent one.
I don't smell it when I'm in Camp Hill, three miles to the east. I don't smell it when I'm in Carlisle, eight miles to the west. I don't smell it in Dillsburg, five or so miles to the south (heck, I don't even smell pickles in Dillsburg, darn it all). I know there's a company that makes (manufactures? designs? what do you call it?) bacon in Lemoyne, but that's at least five or six miles to the east.
I do, however, notice it in my neighborhood from time to time, getting in and out of my car in the morning or afternoon, but I have also noticed the smell near the Sunoco Oil and Gas Terminal on Simpson Ferry Road. Could it be that my car is now burning bacon grease as an alternative fuel? Could it be that the major oil companies have switched our fuel supply over from petroleum, jumping right past ethanol, and straight into hog fat? Could it not be petroleum-related at all, that that little car air-freshener I bought, the one guaranteed to make my old car smell like a new car, has gone bad and flavors the air with smoked pork chops and kielbasa?
Perhaps not.
Thus, I am led to the only other possible conclusion: That I have stumbled upon a porcine product cold spot, a hog-heavy galactic portal, a tear in the cosmic space-pork continuum, which is transmitting pig-scented ether from the netherworld to our world.
Come into the light, Porky. Come into the light, Petunia. And somebody light up the Kingsford, pronto.
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2 comments:
Ooh, I've got another one to add to the list of interdimensional food vortices: There's a place I call the "garlic underpass" on I-90 east, heading toward downtown San Antonio. As you drive under the bridge, the smell of garlic is potent and unmistakable. There are no restaurants for miles. The smell seems to be at it's strongest at 8:00 a.m., when no one in their right mind would be cooking. It has peppery overtones, reminiscent of Sriracha chili sauce. I thought I was losing my mind, but your phantom pork smells have validated me. Thanks, Raplicious.
Snappymack beat me to the blog already? I need to pick up the pace. But not as in Pace picante sauce.
I don't know about the I-90 thing, but it never ceases to annoy me, that when I walk into work of a morning (not at the early 8 a.m. in the Snappymack time zone), but freshly showered and teethly brushed, on my way to our infamous building, the air vents outside seem to blow bacon grease odor into the otherwise fresh morning - and not a pleasant, hey the bacon is crispin' smell, but the stale greasy industrial kitchen smell. Which is almost like walking into somebody's cigarette smoke cloud and then feeling like you will smell like an ashtray for the rest of the day - ashtray, rancid pork product, what is the difference? In comparison, it is much more delightful to stroll into the building the morning after the skunk burrows have been disturbed by construction and the Pepe Le Pew perfumes have been sucked into the ventilation system. Guess it beats book mold!
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