Burnt Peanut Butter...

It’s funny how when you live somewhere you don’t realize how much it stinks…well…that is if the smell means something to you. I lived for years out past the potato processing plant…when it was French fry day…it was glorious…when it wasn’t…UGHHH!!! I’ve lived on feedlots…where the smell of manure still smells like home (in moderation of course)… I lived near a meat processing plant…where in addition to watching the entrails fall off the conveyer belt, the smell on a hot July day was enough to make you gag… I lived near the cheese factory…and even when I worked there years later I still had problems not losing my lunch on certain days… But I never gave much thought to the sugar beet factory as a source of negative odors…that is until I went to college and everyone complained about it: “It smells like burnt peanut butter.” I have to admit, that after they said that…I closed my eyes in the midst of the next campaign…and I could indeed envision (or is the right word “ensmell”) burnt peanut butter…and it was refreshing and full of memories.

My granddad worked at the sugar beet factory in some fashion or another for over forty years. The smell of campaign…that offended so many delicate olfactory senses…was and still is one of the best remembered smells from my childhood. Granddad was…to a little boy…a towering man…his hands were huge…and his feet even bigger. I remember hiding from him more often than not when I was young…usually because my cousins and I had done something wrong. It’s funny to look back on now…because Granddad wasn’t the one we were most afraid of…I’ll have to tell you about Grandma sometime…

Even though he dropped out of high school to raise a family, he is one of the most knowledgeable people I know. Granddad always had the Discovery Channel on the television…and was a subscriber to every Time-Life book series available…and he had a state-of-the-art wood shop (at least it was to me) where he taught us how to build book cases and rubber-band guns… I learned so much from working alongside Granddad…and have forgotten more than I’d care to admit.

When I was eleven, I skipped school…at least to my recollection…and got to go with Granddad to work at the sugar beet factory. The task at hand that day: band the baby Peregrine Falcons nested at the top of the towers at the factory. I know that the Fish & Game was there…and I think one of the news stations too…but all I remember was Granddad. I was too afraid to admit to him that I was afraid of heights and that the elevator ride to the top of the towers about made me hyperventilate.

My job that day was to video-tape the event…not professionally, but just for posterity sake. I had a monster VHS recorder that was bigger than I could manage easily. So there I was…standing higher than I had EVER been in my life from the ground…literally shaking. I zoomed in on the nesting box as they banded the young falcons. I had a great camera angle…one of the Fish & Game guys pointed to the sky and I followed his hand…the camera still zoomed in. I still don’t know how I was able to find what he was pointing at…let alone at full zoom, but soon enough the camera caught an adult Peregrine Falcon in full dive mode…

Being the nerd I was…and having great ornithology field training from my dad, I knew that a Peregrine Falcon in dive was the fastest animal on the planet…at over 200 mph. To say I panicked would be an understatement…I’m eleven…standing atop the highest structure around…of course I forgot to pee before we came up…and through the viewfinder of a VHS recorder I see Mama Falcon coming straight for me and break away at the last second… I’m not really sure how, but the next thing I know my back hit the floor…the video camera still pointed up… My eyes broke away for my first plain-sight view of the magnificent creature…she was at least 10x farther away than I thought…well out of dive-bombing range… I remember Granddad looking at me and laughing (in only the way he could) and saying, “What are you doing on your back?” I gathered myself up and restarted the video-taping…though at that point they were essentially done.

I have rarely felt as much relief as when my feet touched solid ground that day…and soon got excited to relive the moment of my near-death experience. I checked the camera…and was disappointed beyond all description. The only footage on the tape was about 15 minutes…after the babies had been banded and my dive-bombing episode. I realized that the entire time prior to me hitting the deck and falling on my back, I hadn’t pushed REC. I was embarrassed…ashamed…I’d missed my chance to document the day. I didn’t really talk about my disappointment, but I’m sure Granddad could read it. To his credit he never said a word about the video. I never knew if that was because it meant more to me than to him…or if he was just sparing my emotions…but the one thing he made clear was that he was glad to have me along for the adventure.

My granddad was…and still is to some extent…a man of little words when it comes to emotions…a trait that he has passed on well through my father and me. But I am grateful for the fact that while he doesn’t say it all the time…you know, just by being near him, that he loves you…what he doesn’t share out loud, he wears on his sleeve.

Today I live just a couple miles from that sugar beet factory… when I drive by, I make sure that my girls are reminded that Granddad worked at the factory…even though they think it stinks. And every now and then, when the wind blows just right, I catch a sniff of that “burnt peanut butter” and think of Granddad…a smile crosses my face and I send a prayer his way.