Get to the Source Part III

This is another story about a stench that had to be found. And it was a stench, a horrible one. 

It was the middle of July. Things were quite busy on the farm and I didn’t go to town all that often, but one day I had to run in for some parts. I hadn’t driven the minivan for probably a week. I walked out to the car and opened the door to get in and the stench hit me. That is the only way to describe it, a stench. It was way worse than an odor. It made a skunk pretty mild. It was something dead. 

At first I thought a mouse had died in the car. I had found a nest in there once before and so I looked in the console, in the glove box, in the junk tubs in the back, no dead mouse, but everywhere in the car was this horrible stench. As I was unsuccessfully looking for a dead mouse, the thought entered my mind that maybe one of the barn cats had gotten in the car and been locked in. So I was also looking for a cat carcass. I just knew it had to be something horrible. 

Then I found it. Under the back seat, on the passenger side, there was a grocery bag. Apparently the bag had slipped under there and been overlooked when I was carrying groceries into the house. Inside of that bag was a family size package of chicken drumsticks, or at least what had been chicken drumsticks. When I took it out of the car, they were basically unrecognizable as anything connected to a chicken. 

First of all they were green, a horrible sick green color, and they were basically mush. After all they had been in a closed car in the July heat in Wyoming. I would imagine the temperature in that car had reached 150º or better everyday for about five days before I found them. 

Luckily the package was still intact and the juice from that stinking, rotting, foul mess hadn’t leaked out into the carpet, but the smell had permeated every fabric in that minivan and it was my only source of transportation. 

I drove into town with every window in the car open, even then my eyes were watering and I could barely breathe. I went to the parts house for the other parts and while I was there I asked about air fresheners. They had some really good ones, and I purchased one. Then a couple came in and told me about the best air freshener they had ever found, plain coffee grounds. I immediately went to the grocery store and bought some pie tins and a pound of coffee. It took awhile, but it worked. I just poured the coffee into the pie tins and put one on the floorboard in the far back, between the front seats and the back seat and one on the floorboard in the front. I had to put in fresh coffee about every 3 days for 3 weeks, but eventually the smell had completely dissipated.

I never realized that rotten chicken can smell so bad, it is way worse than any other rotting meat I am sure. But I have used the coffee air freshener often since then. 

Sausage Stew

(From a Hormel Advertisement)

1 medium white onion, quartered

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 cup celery, chopped

1 teaspoon fennel

salt and pepper to taste

1 tablespoon oregano

4 large carrots, pealed and roughly chopped

1 pound mushrooms cleaned and cut in half

2 12-ounce cans diced tomatoes with juice

12 small whole new potatoes

1 8-ounce can tomato sauce

1-pound package Polska Kielbasa cut in ½ inch slices. Heat oil in a large pot, sauté next five ingredients until soft. Add rest of ingredients except sausage, cover and cook over low heat 30 minutes. Add sausage and simmer additional 15 minutes.