We (OK, our trademark York County smell) got bashed in this Dan Rodricks column in Sunday's Baltimore Sun.
Speaking of southbound traffic from northern Baltimore County and southern Pennsylvania, I must admit: It has been years since I've been out there - in the Hereford Zone - on a weekday morning to see this spectacle. It looks like a hurricane evacuation route every day, between 6:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Bumper to bumper to bumper in two lanes. It's nuts. You'd think there had been another meltdown at Three Mile Island, or that the sulfuric-sauerkraut stench from the paper mill in Spring Grove had finally sent everyone from around there packing. Amazing.
Maybe it's just me, but I barely notice the paper mill smell any more, and I don't think it smells bad when I do notice. Death of olfactory senses after too many years here? I don't know. What do you guys think?
(P.S. - He's right about the traffic, though. I noticed when I went to Baltimore on Saturday for a friend's wedding. Wow.)
Meanwhile, if you're curious about how that whole paper-making thing works...
Dear Joan -
To use Dan Rodrick's column in Sunday's Baltimore Sun to suggest an invitation to your own may sound like curiousity. But to hear an outsider speak of another's home town woes, 'smells' more like intrigue.
When the local elementary school stood downwind from the source you've mentioned, the cases of asthma found among its students probably 'ranked' higher than most because of the "sulfuric sauerkrout stench" which you have noted.
Do you think it is coincidence that the small town Spring Grove PA just happens to fall within the top 10 MAJOR CITIES with the most unclean air? Or do you think the industry there spends millions on pollution control to enhance their reputation or the quality of the air?
I don't know. I only know that I'm no longer able to smell the honeysuckle or the mutiflora rose of spring. Nary a marigold, and not one mum. And anymore, I can not smell the neighbor's herefords either.
Now, I have not the doctorate to discern the cause of "the death of my olfactory senses", (about 14 years ago), but I do suppose I'd be rather easily persuaded that I have spent too many years here...