My state smells like ...

My wife grew up across the road from 40,000 cattle in a feedyard in southwest Kansas. She says the flies were worse than the smell.

My parents lived in Liberal, Kan., for a while. Sometimes when I visited there, the stench from a packing plant would punch me in the face when I walked outside. Folks who lived there would say, "They must be burning blood today."

 

Then there is the non state specific smell of a skunk that got run over...

 

A fourth smell for my state. Spring Grove, Pa., has a huge paper mill in the middle of town. Overpowering aroma.

 

If your parents lived in Liberal, then they have my deepest sympathy. What a hideous hell hole of a town.
I know all about the burning blood.There's a huge packing plant around here that has a tannery in it. You can smell the odor of burning hides for miles.

 

cattle manure and hog confinements

 

McPherson's a great little town.

Skunk spray is wonderful for clearing my sinuses. Don't mind it at all.

 

With all great respect to the farmers who feed the world and my ungrateful self, I never want to visit Kansas now. It sounds like it would violate treaties to keep POWs there.

 

People here have mostly been talking about Southwest Kansas, which is loaded with feedyards and packing plants. You aren't going to get the same kind of aroma if you're hanging around KC, Wichita or the Flint Hills. Even where I grew up, cows far out number people, but the smell is fresher because it's largely pasture land and wheat fields rather than feed lots.

 

I don't know that Illinois has a smell, but the stench of Decatur makes up for the rest of the state. It's bad enough to drive through that I can't imagine growing up there.

 

Back to the north/south debate: South Florida is three counties: Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. Fort Myers is not South Florida. And the University of South Florida is most definitely not in South Florida. How it wound up with that moniker is beyond me.

Anyway: for cities that smell, I will submit in a vote for Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The cereal factory there makes the town on some days smell like the world's largest bowl of Cap'n Crunch and on other days smell like musty socks.

 

The Keys aren't South Florida?

 

Culturally, I think they're almost their own little world. Closer to South Florida than Southwest or North Florida, certainly, but not quite the same.