Donald “Don, Buddy, or Buddy Don” Hatchet, a middle-aged recent divorcee, and advocate of homeopathic medicine had a terrible habit of leaving his clothes in the washing machine long after the spin cycle, allowing them to ferment in the dark, damp, humid metal box. He never had to worry about laundry when he was married. Not because it was ‘her’ job to do it, she just recognized the fact he would screw it up and took it upon herself. But now she is gone and the damage to the clothes is done. Wherever Donald went a slight sour smell of mildew and mold spores got there a few moments before.
“I just don’t understand it. I use the expensive detergent. I use dryer sheets. Heck, I’ve even gone as far as putting a scoop pool chlorine in there from the above ground pool the old lady left me...I mean it’s practically soap, right?”
Don was the assistant manager at Gargantuan Mart (G-Mart), the only supermarket in town. He started to notice that during his morning meetings with his grocery staff that they would stand further and further away from him. One day he was in the coffee aisle and the staff was all the way back with the potato chips had to yell his announcements over confused customers. He suspected it was because of his smell. The reflection period after the divorce made him quite self-conscious of how others perceived him and would go as far as to ask his staff if he smelled bad. They would, of course, deny this because they pitied him and feared hurting his wounded soul further.
The truth finally came out when Don overhead the bread truck guy talking to the produce manager at the back dock of the store.
“I think y’all got some rotten rutabagas or something in there over by the honeydews, Pete.”
“Naw, that’s just ol’ Buddy Don. Ever since his divorce, he’s been coming up in here smelling like a moldy armpit. Don’t think he’s gotten the hang of the washing machine yet.”
“Y’all might want to crack open a pack of air fresheners or something then. That’s gotta be bad for business.”
“‘Bout as bad for business as that dern homeopathic medicine section…”
The real question one would ask is why Don did not buy new clothes or take his stink rags to a professional cleaner if he was already aware of the problem. Just like his marriage, he was the kind of person that had to wait until something really got to the breaking point to do something about it. For his marriage that happened when he realized his wife was not attending a Bible Study class with the preacher down at Julep Pentecostal. For the current situation, it was when he noticed his employees had taken to smearing scented lotion under their nostrils when they came to speak with him.
Don went out and bought an entire new wardrobe which consisted of two pairs of khaki pants, three polo shirts, three pairs of socks, three pairs of underwear and two white undershirts. He figured he could get three days from each combo. That would carry him through the week. Then he could deal with the washing on the weekend. But when the weekend came and he went to throw the clothes in the washing machine he became concerned. “What if the washing machine had washed so many stinky clothes for so long that the very spirit of the smell had embedded itself into the molecules of the machine itself, in an unprovable and non-scientific way? Ain’t that kinda how homeopathic medicine works?”
He thought about buying a new machine but most of his money was stuffed in a mattress somewhere in the Julep Pentecostal parsonage. He would have to make do with what he had. In order to ensure his clothes were as clean as possible he devised a system. When he would come home at night, he would strip naked and throw his soiled clothes in the above ground pool and stir them around with a garden rake. He would then walk over to his clothesline where there was already a dry pair of clothing hanging up and put them on. In the morning he would fish out the clothes with the rake and hang them on the line. Then he would repeat and so on.
“I don’t smell like rotten rutabaga no more, just like I’ve been swimming in the pool...I mean it’s practically soap, right? Only problem is I get a cold every time it rains ‘cause my clothes never dry and this darn homeopathic medicine ain’t doing nothing...guess I better go down to Julep Pentecostal and say a prayer.”