Clothesline
Ames
1984
Mary Swander lived north of downtown, up Duff, near the hospital. She had just moved to town, hired by Iowa State, but was from Iowa. She was one of a few writers from Iowa, who lived in Iowa, and wrote about Iowa. In the post office downtown, the mural over the postmaster’s door pictured The History of Corn. The post office itself reeked, steeped by all the perfume and cologne sample cards advertisers inserted in magazines and catalogues. The odors expanded, tainting all the mail, lingering in the lobby, escaping from the sorting room in the back. Mary has environmental and chemical sensitivities, bad allergic reactions, to such smells. Her response is so severe that in her syllabi she asks her students to refrain from using scented soaps and shampoos. Driving up Duff in the spring after a long winter, I saw Mary hanging her mail on the backyard clothesline to air out. I told her that my grandmother always said I should get out more, “Blow the stink off of you!” Staying upwind of the clothesline, we talked about what we had ordered from the seed catalogues for the gardens this year.