Coming to America

I love the smell of skunk.

I know, I know, but I am one of those people. I actually had a discussion once with a member of the DuPont family, they of the "better living through chemistry" mindset, asking if that was important, and she slowly reached for her cell phone to call relatives in the perfumery department... I had to break her heart by telling her I'm allergic to alcohol. Thus endeth my illustrious career as a nose that should have been the toast of Europe, insured for millions by Lloyd's of London.

But I digress.

For over a decade, I worked for my former boss as a cashier at a local rock and gem show. My boss used to be a vendor at that show, till they got robbed by the very security that was supposed to guard them. But the full-body scrotal sack that used to produce the show took pre-payments for the year after, same location. The site demanded insurance, scrotal sack swore he'd get it, thinking he could just keep the money and get away with it. Yeeeah, the site pulled his contract, and now all the vendors were out the pre-paid money. My boss scrambled to do the show anyway under his own contract, but couldn't swing the (understandably) high insurance price. He formed a consortium with some others in the show, put it on the next year, and thus began a decades-long golden era on the rock and mineral circuit.

How are these things related?

Those first years when we put on the show were fun. Me and my hubby, with the boss' consent, would pull in any friends we vetted to be trustworthy to handle the money, and we had such a blast chatting with people and helping them navigate around the area. Recommendations for a new restaurant? Got you covered. Who's selling what? We might have checked everyone out and can give you the layout without a map. Emergency numbers? Got the list and the local Yellow Pages for assistance. Saw the show's ad on the highway, dropped in, but now need a place to let your parrots rest while you shop, instead of in the hot RV? Put 'em right behind us, we'll make sure no one messes with them. Dogs, too. Hubby and I dragged two of our standing fans from home, to keep the window-lined and westward-facing vestibule as cool as possible in late August heat.

And we'd stagger our rest breaks so we could support our own "hard rock" habit, with vendors that got to know us well over the years. And would give us a bit of a discount for treating them well.

Good times.

Except the once, early on.

Most of the vendors, still leery about That One Year but still painfully fresh in memory (less than five years ago at that point), would actually pitch tents or have RVs out back, and spend the nights on site. Not a problem, and completely understandable. Hubby and I lived only twenty minutes down the road, so we'd travel back and forth and do small errands if necessary. And it was the last show day, so everyone would be in the dining area, partaking of the complimentary breakfast that my boss' co-owners were sponsoring. No biggie, right?

We come with bags of extra stuff, security lets us in the building - and we hit the wall.

The wall. Of stench.

Let me re-type that: STENCH.

Even to my nose, that usually smells notes of "field of roses" or "the world's best coffee" or "the most amazing BLT sandwich," or at worst "fresh epoxy" or "stale burning tires" or "electrical fire," all I could smell was REALLY ANGRY SKUNK WHO WAS TELLING THE WORLD ALL ABOUT IT.

Egad!

The front vestibule was bad enough. The eating area... well, let's just say not a lot of people were terribly hungry. Me, all innocent, asks why they didn't open the back doors to the tail gate area to help air out the place? I was invited to go explore that possibility for myself, after being told to do something biologically impossible to myself after getting a genital graft and flexibility supplements in order to achieve said impossible task.

I ignored the extra-spicy suggestions in favor of opening the door.

The wall of smell was opaque. And very angry.

Well, that was going to put a damper on today's sales. And I had to reclaim both fans, which had been confiscated to re-direct the vaporous emanations as much as possible. I may have had to prove they were mine, personally, not the site's, and not the show's promoters. It may have gotten ugly. And I may have had to reprimand security for trying to move them constantly throughout the day. (Personal owner's marks are your friend. We mark our stuff at events like this with mine or my hubby's sigil in non-washable permanent markers for just this reason.)

I got the story much later in the day, with everyone stomping around with the most sour expressions I'd seen in a long time, and customers complaining like we did it on purpose.

This was two decades ago, when our relationship with Russia was actually genial for a time. Two guys from up in the Ural Mountains had a family mining thing going, where they pulled nice mineral samples, polished them, and peddled them over here. With that money, they'd fly back home and give the leftover cash to the family, lather rinse repeat. The two who were chosen to represent the family business were the two that spoke the best English, a guy and his... Cousin? Uncle? Third cousin twice removed from the first marriage? The relationship was never fully explained, they didn't have enough English to detail the convoluted connection. But it was somehow conveyed that all the men in that family look exactly like each other, so Stan may have been a clone, for all I know. (Before the Sith takeover, not after.)

Enter Yuri.

Yuri was alone, his first show year.

Yuri was a nice fellow, selling his eudialyte and astrophyllite and seraphinite. I still wear the piece I bought from him often, the polished surface nestled in folds of leather to make a pendant.

Yuri was not used to America, or its denizens.

Yuri pitched a tent in the back, with the other vendors, because he was here in America for the first time, and this was the cheapest way to vend on the circuit. Other vendors were kind enough to explain things, show him the ropes – or in this case, where the bathrooms and showers were.

The call of the wild bladder happened in the middle of the night, as these calls do.

Yuri answered the call, and returned to his tent.

The rest of the story is best told from his point of view, talking with one of the show owners that wasn't my boss. Please read it with your best Russian accent filter in place, because he had a lovely one...

"Ack! That... smell! What is that? Smell all day! That is bad smell!"

"That's called a skunk, Yuri."

"Ska...yunk? Ska...onk? Sk-onk? Is that what is? Skonk? What is skonk?"

"It's an animal we have here in America, and it sprayed last night very near here."

"Is that what happened?"

(sudden suspicion) "Yuri, what do you know?"

"So, I wake up, I have to use bathroom, so I go. I come back, and shine light, and there's this... this... lump! Thing! Under tent! It go scurry, scurry, scurry! So I go battah-dah battah-dah battah-dah! (makes motions of hitting lump as it moves around under tent) And....SMELL! Awful SMELL! Smell bad!! What does it mean??"

(completely exasperated) "It means you should go back to Russia, Yuri..."

And the story spread like... well... like... a really powerful, really bad, really strong scent. Epicenter under Yuri's tent, with all of Yuri's clothing in it.

Stan came with Yuri the year after, to help with a second table of other Russian goodies, like matreshka nesting dolls and lacquer painted pins and enameled egg pendants. We regaled Stan with the story of how Yuri was acquainted with some of the local fauna, and why Yuri was so emphatic about not hitting unknown lumps in the middle of the night.

Stan was seen on the pay phone that night, chattering excitedly with the folks back home.

After that, Yuri always had the most hangdog expression, and Stan had the widest grin that didn't quite wrap around his entire face, but was within millimeters of overlapping. His eyes always lit up when he saw me, and I got a nice discount on the pin I bought. It's like he appreciated my telling him a story or something.

Yuri seemed relieved to hand over the reins of the American franchise to one of his kids years later, who had gotten intensive language lessons in English.

And stayed exclusively in hotels.