A smell I do not miss at all

Dateline 22 Dec 09.


A Chief Engineer made a comment over dinner which caught my ear.

Now, of the 7 guys on this tugboat, at least five of them got started in the commercial fishing industry. I remember my days all to well. They were far away, long ago and just yesterday

The Chief, over a leisurely dinner, commented that for him it had been years since the smell of Ben Gay and Icy Hot had overpowered the food over dinner.

I remembered those days well.

I remember many times sitting down to eat with three or four other young men and smelling those two smells so overpowering that it covered up the aroma of good food.

The smell of Icy Hot and Ben Gay are not the smells I associate with a neighborhood basketball or baseball game.

It's the smell I associate with the battered bodies of young men trying to make a living in a brutal and quite often deadly business.

I do not miss that smell at all.