On the Sweet Smell of…

November 26, 2004 | 2:56 PM

Today, I was thinking about Christmas. And I was reading the news about the Ukrainian presidential election. And it got me thinking about Siberia (which is nowhere near Ukraine for you geographically challenged people out there). And the cold of Christmas and the pictures of all those Ukrainian people standing in the snow made me think about Village S, where I went last summer. So I went to my map software just to see once again where Village S was. (Actually, it popped in my mind that Chernobyl is in Ukraine, not Russia, like everybody thinks, and that led me to think about Siberia and Village S.) Anyway, in the midst of all that, I was somehow reminded of the sweet smell of Village S. In the morning it was almost always a little chilly, except that one day when it was stinkin hot. And because it was chilly (not quite as cold as it is in Mobile today), the dew would come and this strange aroma would permeate the air. I smelled it the first night we got there, around 1AM. So I wondered what it was. It wasn’t the smell of village cooking. I didn’t see much about plants around. Was it the grass? So Adam gets me talking for his interview and he asks me what my most memorable and also strangest thing of the trip was. I tell him it’s the sweet smell of cow pee. Because that’s the only thing consistent with Village S. Cows everywhere. And cows everywhere means cow pee and cow poop everywhere. They were even in the bath houses. Maybe it was some sort of chemical released by the grass and clover or something, when the dew came and the temperature dropped. But I like to think it was the sweet smell of cow pee. The End.

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