The Village Idiot: Fresh scents aren’t always appealing

By Jim Mullen / Columnist

MULLEN

The coupon said, “Fresh New Country Scent!” and there, floating over a background of tree-covered hills, was a giant can of room deodorizer. And on the front of the can was a picture of my house: A little farmhouse surrounded by rolling hills and trees. Theirs had a white picket fence and mine has a stone fence, but other than that, they were almost identical. On the back of the coupon was a little scratch-and-sniff square. I scratched, I sniffed. It smelled for all the world like laundry soap mixed with pine needles. If they start making an underarm deodorant for trees, this is what it will smell like. But it’s not what the country smells like.

When I hear people say they wish they lived in the country because the cities have become so dirty, I wonder — do they understand that the country is where dirt comes from? The country has a dirt floor. It is filthy. It is full of mud, bugs, rotting pine needles, decomposing mushrooms, twigs, worms and slugs. It has dust bunnies the size of — oh, never mind, those are real bunnies. And those are real bunny droppings.

Someone over at Air Freshener Central is living in a parallel universe where the country is taken out and dry cleaned twice a week. They are right about one thing, if you want a lot of bang for your fragrance buck, you can’t beat the country. It’s wonderfully smelly. An ever-changing mixture of odors from septic system backups, frightened skunks, mown hay, freshly spread manure, fermenting silage, stagnant water, damp leaves, compost heaps, and the town landfill. It’s really not something you’d want to spray around your living room, even if it does remove that heavy cigar-smoke smell from your curtains.

There’s a fresh new scent for each day in the country. I found a deer carcass by the side of the road recently. The vultures had done a pretty good job but it still had a good odor on to it. My nose told me it had been there three or four days. I sniffed the room deodorizer once again to see if it had that authentic hint of death and decay, but it had been left out entirely.

Of course, the air-freshener industry doesn’t really care what the country smells like. All they know is that an air freshener called “Fresh New City Scent!” would sit on the store shelf until the end of time. The mental whiff of garbage piled up on street corners, bubble gum-covered sidewalks baking in the hot sun, rolling clouds of bus exhaust, gutters full of fast food containers and unscooped dog poop is too much to overcome. The funny thing is, they would make it smell exactly like “Fresh New Country Scent!” The only thing different about it would be that instead of a picture of a farmhouse on the can they’d put a picture of giant, doorman apartment building.

(Jim Mullen is a syndicated columnist. You can contact him at [email protected].)