AtDDtA1: The Stockyards

Joe Allonby joeallonby at gmail.com
Thu Jan 25 20:04:43 CST 2007


I don't know if anybody here has actually ever smelled a slaughterhouse,
stockyard, or feedlot. I can attest that they are revolting. To learn that
Chicago literally means "bad smell" is poetic justice. (No offense meant to
Chicagoans - your bustling big city does not smell for the most part.)

On 1/25/07, Otto <ottosell at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> "In 1670, French trader Pierre Moreau built a cabin on the site where
> the Chicago River empties into Lake Michigan (Schroeder, 1992:37). The
> area was called "Chickagou," (bad smell) by the Potawatomi Indians
> because of the skunk cabbage that choked the bogs draining into the
> river."
> http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm
> (from Tim's post)
>
> "When leaves are bruised or crushed, the plant releases a strong odor
> which smells like rotten meat."
> http://www.fcps.edu/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/mpages/skunk_cabbage.htm
>
> Aha!
>
> 2007/1/24, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>:
> >    "As they came in low over the Stockyards, the smell found them, the
> > smell and the uproar of flesh learning its mortality--like the dark
> > conjugate of some daylit fiction they had flown here, as appeared
> > increasingly likely, to promote.  Somewhere down there was the White
> > City promised in the Columbian Exhibition brochures, somehwere among
> > the tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke, the
> > effluvia of butchery unremitting, into which the buildings of the
> > leagues of city lying downwind retreated, like children into sleep
> > which bringeth not reprieve from the day.  In the Stockyards, workers
> > coming off shift, overwhelmingly of the Roman faith, able to detach
> > from earth and blood for a few precious seconds, looked up at the
> > airship in wonder, imagining a detachment of not necessarily helpful
> > angels." (AtD, Pt. I, Ch. 2, p. 10)
> >
> >
>
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