Whew! Smells Like........

If you work in a kraft pulp mill, you know a paper mill when you smell it. I  moved to a new town situated about 10 miles Northwest of a paper mill. All the neighbors swore they could smell the paper mill a lot. What I eventually learned, was almost anything that smelled bad was credited to the paper mill. In fact, during the 30 years I lived there, you could count on both hands, the number of times the mill could actually be smelled. Of course, that wasn't the case for everybody. The predominate wind direction was either from the Southwest (to Northeast) or from the Northeast (to Southwest). The folks in those directions could count on smelling the mill at least half the time.....and just so no one gets the wrong impression - paper mills do smell (at least the kraft paper mills do).

Well, one day we had a salesman visit. Turns out he had grown up just north of the mill in Charlotte, NC. Whenever his family was traveling and would smell something bad (while living in Charlotte) his Dad would say, Whew! Bowater. Turns out the paper mill south of Charlotte was called Bowater (now AbitibiBowater). Well, this "young" salesman thought that "Bowater" was a term you used to describe something that smelled bad. He didn't know it referenced a paper mill.

The salesman went to West Point and completed a career in the military before getting a sales job. He taught his children to say, Whew! Bowater anytime they would smell something bad. It wasn't until he made his first sales call, that he realized it was the mill his father had been referring to. I chuckle to think of all the places around the world that he and his family have given the Whew! Bowater reference.