There isn't much that smells worse than death, but at least you can usually get away from it.
I reported to NAS Jacksonville in the summer of '77. It didn't take me long to notice that there would be an awful smell in the air occasionally, and then I realized it always showed up on Friday nights. I asked someone who'd been around what the hell that foul odor was, and he told me there was a paper mill across the St. Johns River that was responsible for it. I remarked [unnecessarily] that it was a nauseating odor. The guy looked at me and said "you shoulda been around here in the old days before they started perfuming it." I'm pretty sure the look on my face was priceless.
I lived in an apartment in Fort Worth in the late 90s with two dogs (best ever!). There was a large vacant field across the road where I would take them several times a day to run a bit and take care of their business. One night---in fact, it was Memorial Day 1998, my two hoodlums cornered and CAUGHT a skunk out in that field. I bathed them in tomato juice and distilled white vinegar out on the balcony that night. Over the following weeks, I could smell skunk before I even opened the front door of the apartment when I'd come home from work. They still smelled like skunk when Labor Day came. Good thing skunk doesn't really bother me much.
