When you go out to an event with Caroline, the event doesn’t matter: the drive matters. Caroline is always willing to explore strange new roads, to seek out new houses with holiday displays or all the belongings in the front yard, to boldly go in to Bridgeton to show me how much it really does smell.
Bridgeton is a suburb here in Saint Louis that stinks so much that the government is suing the source of the stink, a landfill simmering right below the surface.
I work in Bridgeton, and I’ve never smelled it. I expressed doubt to Caroline on our drive home. She immediately swung her minivan around and drove toward the intersection of 70 and 270.
We were going up the ramp when I said to Caroline, and I quote, “Well, maybe there’s a slight OH MY GOD THAT IS DISGUSTING.”
My body rejected that smell so forcefully that I stopped breathing. My hand automatically pinched my nose. I eventually let myself breathe through my mouth, as Caroline is doing in the photo above. She complained the smell was tainting her mouth. We drove a mile before my fingers loosened on my nose.
The landfill in Bridgeton has been percolating for years. I know a former fire chief who has wonderful stories about flaming cockroaches swarming out of the glowing cracks.
I hope the people of Bridgeton win their lawsuit against the landfill company. It is the closest landfill to my house, but happily I’m upwind of it.
5 responses to “The Drive Home”
Flaming Cockroaches – garage band name.
We were hit by horrid smells in the Mexico City Airport. Smelled like a pig farm.
Let’s hope there’s no atmospheric inversion. Someone will light a match and the whole neighborhood will explode in a methane fireball.
About twice a year the wind switches directions. Miserable, but better than living where the wind blows the other 363 days.
Becs – Flaming Cockroaches is on a double bill with the Incestous Pandas.Hattie – I remember Cancun had above ground sewers. It was foul. ~~Silk – Awful thought! I still rememeber the inversion we had years ago. An inversion in Saint Louis is bad enough without methane. Caroline – I probably assumed I was what smelled twice a year. I think the one drop of One Drop I applied to my wrist effectvely neutralized the landfill smell.