South of town was a creek. It was known as stink creek. The paper mill was rumored to dump its waste in it. Paper mill run-off is some vile shit. The main spewage is called White Liquor. Sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide solutions, which is used to break down wood into pulp. It’s like acid and will burn your skin right off.
I didn’t know the term white liquor when I was growing up. I was made well aware of stink creek though. There were two ways to get to Monroe (which was the big city to us) one, take the most common route of I65 south, or two, take Old Monroe Road. But along Old Monroe Road you crossed over stink creek. Which as a kid always scared the shit out of me.
I was frightened because my mother made sure of it. Every time we took Old Monroe Road, she’d point out the little bridge spanning stink creek. It wasn’t much to be worried about, just part of the road paved over a ten-foot gap. But mom always said we had to be really careful not to run off the road into the creek or we’d be eaten up by acid.
It was enough for me to pray every time we zoomed over the creek. I imagined falling in and skin sloughing off flesh and then flesh from bone. At six or seven years old this was terrifying to think about. My mom was the master of fear tactics for no other reason to keep us in line. To keep our thoughts in line through mental anguish.
But I believed she knew what she was talking about when it came to stink creek. She worked at the mill for a few years when we were really young. She met her second husband there, who surely knew the mill was dumping waste into the water system, because everyone knew. You didn’t have to work at the mill to know what the creek was called.
You didn’t have to work at the mill to know noxious fumes were in the air and water. All you had to do was watch the white plumes wave upwards from the smokestacks in the center of town to know things weren’t clean. All you had to do was take a big sniff to know something foul was in the air. A smell that started just south of town.
Josh Mayhall 