You smell nice; suddenly I'm hungry for liver

By crackees, Granny Clampett used lye soap and if it's good enough for her, it ought to be good enough for us.

The other day on TV they were advertising "cucumber and green tea" body wash.

Holy buckets! Now they're selling soap that makes you smell like vegetables.

Who'd a thunk it?

It's odorific, I reckon.

Last week, I got behind one of those fancy high-dollar luxury cars and I noticed there was something hanging from the rear-view mirror.

Know what it was? It was one of those pine tree-shaped air fresheners.

Unbelievable.

I don't get it. I'd expect to see that in, say, Bill Joe Bob's pickup truck, but not in a fancy-shmancy fine automobile.

So this luxury car smelled piney-fresh. But why would you want a $50,000 car to smell piney-fresh in

the first place? Wouldn't you want it to smell like mahogany, or a box of fine cigars, or, in the words of Ricardo Montalban, like "crushed Corinthian leather?"

See, that's the thing about them Corinthians, they can make some mighty fine leather. Something about the way they crush it that makes it extra good.

Anyway, I reckon I'll never understand this fascination we have with making soaps and stuff smell like things you can eat.

I mean, come on, do you really want to smell like a cucumber?

Or green tea, for that matter?

And is it just me, or does anyone else think there's a certain element of danger involved here?

If you go out of the house smelling like food, you're bound to attract some weird individuals. That sort of thing might trigger some, shall we say, adverse reactions in some people. Remember in the movie "Silence of the Lambs" when Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter told Clarise that, "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti"? Well, maybe the census taker smelled like food and you know when you smell fresh food, you're going to get hungry, even if you've just eaten lunch, or dinner, or whatever. And if you smell like food and you're going house to house taking a census and you happen to knock on the door of a cannibal, well, mister, you're taking your life in your own hands.

See, if you use a soap or shampoo like, say, "Eau de Possum" instead of something that smells like food, the chances of you having your liver eaten are greatly reduced.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying using cucumber and green tea body soap is a bad thing. I'm sure it's a fine product and chances are pretty much nil that you'd get your liver eaten by a cannibal if you used it.

All I'm saying is I find it weird that someone would want to smell like a cucumber.

But then again, I've noticed they have soaps and shampoos that smell like apples and strawberries and other sorts of edible items. So why not make some that smell like green vegetables?

FIRST GUY: "I went out with Cindy Lou Veggihead the other night?"

SECOND GUY: "You did? How did it go?"

FIRST GUY: "Well, it was kind of strange. I mean, she's a nice girl and all, but the whole night I kept thinking about the salad bar over at the Sizzler. Couldn't get my mind off fresh vegetables."

SECOND GUY: "Boy, that's weird."

FIRST GUY: "Yeah, tell me about it. I stopped at the store on the way home and got several bottles of salad dressing. Drank one of them right out of the bottle, like a soda pop."

SECOND GUY (CAUTIOUSLY BACKING AWAY): "Dude, cut it out. You're scaring me."

FIRST GUY: "Sorry. I don't know what came over me. But something about her made me hungry."

I reckon all this modern-day purty-smelling fancy soaps and perfumes and shampoos are fine if that's the kind of thing you want to do. If you want to smell like a glass of tea, more power to ya.

But give me the days of old, the Granny Clampett days when, dadgum it, you took a bath on Saturday night whether you needed one or not and you did it in a round metal tub with a bar of homemade soap that could be used for multiple purposes (you could wash yourself with it and also use it as paint thinner or to get the tar off'n the fenders of your car) and a scrub brush and your momma would check behind your ears when you got done and the back of your neck too, and if you missed a spot you got sent right back in there until you came out all scrubbed up and shining like new money.

This was back in the day when your momma's primary concern was that you left the house wearing your good underwear because, "what if you got in an accident and they took you to the hospital and you had holes in your underwear? I'd be so embarrassed."

TROOPER: "Ma'am, I'm afraid I have some bad news. Your son's been involved in an accident. He's at the hospital. He's in pretty bad shape but they think he's going to pull through."

YOUR MOMMA: "Never mind that! How's his underwear? Was he wearing his good underwear?"

Yes sir, them was the good old days, when, if you smelled like a cucumber, it's because you had just picked a bunch of 'em out of your grandma's garden and she had sliced a few of 'em up and served 'em with your beans and taters and biscuits. And sometimes, especially on Sundays, there would be fried chicken.

Happy eating and happy showering, y'all.

And don't forget to wash behind your ears.

Klonie Jordan (editor@gaffneyledger.com) is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger.