it was 1992. I was 9 years old. My dad was an outfitter here in WY at the time. Most of his clients would come in, kill an elk or deer, ship the head back home and leave the meat with us. As a result we had a gigantic chest freezer out in the mud room FULL of elk and deer meat. It was early July, we'd gone out of town for a week, temps were in the low 80's. Upon our return home dad tasks me with retrieving a package of elk steaks or a roast. I don't recall which. As I'd done many times before I ripped the door to the chest freezer open like I was in the gym trying to set the record for the clean and jerk.. The freezer had died while we were gone. And built up a great deal of noxious gas from the decomp playing out from inside the freezer. It hit me like a Mike Tyson upper cut to the jaw. I instantly projectile vomited akin to the exorcism of Emily Rose and fell into a pile on the floor. I remember crying like I'd had my birthday taken away. Dad came in to see what the commotion was about and had the exact same reaction, minus the crying in the fetal position. He managed to get the freezer door shut. As I recall we drug the freezer out of that room with a tractor and a tow strap, and dug a DEEP hole in the north forty and cast the freezer in there and buried it. I'll never, as long as I live forget that smell.
