Vicks Vaporub
was my grandmother’s favorite medicine. When we were kids, it was vicks for everything- we used it for the normal stuff but also as a wound dressing, as a drawing salve, as an elixer for coughs, mixed with a little kerosene or corn liquor (yes, we drank shots of Kerosene with Vicks dissolved in them) How we never ended up having our stomachs pumped I’ll never understand.
The little town where I grew up had a lake. I’d never swim in it, but plenty did, and there was always a lot of drinking going on ON the lake, people often drowned.
One particular summer, I was probably ten, had several drownings and it was kind of a maudlin sport among some people to drag for the bodies. Almost everyone I know had a drag, a piece of a board trailing small chains with hooks attached to the end, weighted to hang off the back of the boat. My friend Greg’s dad had a big pontoon boat and we went joyriding as often as we could; they paid for gas by dragging- the town gave them a few dollars an hour to do so.
Dragging was occasionally fun, We’d drag up car parts, (people parked junkers on the lake and had a pool when the ice would melt enough for them to drop)the odd bicycle, fishing equipment, once even an old outboard. Then one fine hot summers day, drinking koolaid out of anodized aluminum cups (remember those?> bright red, bright yellow, bright blue) we pulled a body.
it was the first dead person I had ever seen, and boy, was he dead. Turtles had been working at him, and he was missing most of his face, one hand, and there were a bunch of diamond shape pieces missing from all the places the turtles could reach. This was the first time I had seen the pieces of a skull sticking out through the remains of a face, and made the association wiht the two items. Prior to that they had always been distinct entities- yeah, I know the deal, but you don’t get a visceral feel for the relationship between the two unless you see one peeking out of the other.
What skin was left was horrible, slimy and green with algae where the fat didn’t show white through the turtle bite marks. The smell was horrendous, and Cedar Lake was already pretty bad. Greg’s dad had dragged for the coroner from time to time, he grabbed a little jar of Vicks vaporub from his tacklebox and passed it around. I watched as others on the boat put a dab under each nostril and I followed suit. The menthol masked the smell of the body, and made it possible to work without gagging.
I’ve seen some dead bodies since, lord knows, some long dead like this, some freshly enough dead that they blew their last breaths in my face. You never forget the smell. I still associate Vicks Vaporub’s menthol smell with the smell of death, and my grandmother’s home remedies gave me nightmares ever after, I’d wake up with Vicks rubbed on my chest having dreams of corpses in the moonlight with turtles still munching away.
Happy Sunday! Sorry if i just ruined your breakfast.
16 comments Og | Uncategorized
Betting on when cars will fall through the ice…that’s new to me. I would’ve gotten in those pools for sure.
it’s a yankee thing. You have to have ice. North of the cheese line it’s the most exciting part of the winter.
Not a big crowd that knows of that particular use for Vicks Vapor Rub. I’m sorry every time I meet another one of them.
Vick’s … essential for the zombie apocalypse … breath easy with menthol freshiness to a die off near you!
I always heard cigars were the time-honored method of masking such smells, but probably not for a ten-year-old.
Cedartucky?
Thanks for the laff. Half a notch above Lake Dale. P.U.
There has been a recent infusion of big Dean White family money (chump change for them), who hope to make Cedar what it should have been all along. Lotsa’ luck Deano.
The Lighthouse restaurant. Been there. Ain’t bad. It’s a good start.
Dad used to place a dab of Vicks under his tongue (when sick), claimed it helped, I don’t know if it did, never tried it myself. Then again, his dad used to claim if you wanted to grow a mustache you covered your upper lip with honey, to help “pull the hair out”, and cow sh*t on the inside of your lip, “to push the hair out”. Never tried that either!
boy! Ain’t you just the little beam of sunshine?!?!
MC
1. Used a gasoline soaked rag for same purpose.
2. Getting a whiff of fuel the right(?) way will still make me gag.
3. For many years, my exposure to such has been limited to the side of hospital beds.
4. May that continue.
V/R JWest
When I was in the Marine Patrol, did my share of dragging, snagged one once, a boy who had only been down 20 minutes, so we had to do CPR. His parents were on shore when we pulled in, and that look on his mother’s face was the worst thing I’ve ever seen on a person’s face. I understood every word of her wailing lament, even though it was in Spanish. Something on the order of “We’re God-fearing people, Lord, how could you do this to us?” At least he was a fresh one.
The old ones were worse, but no laments. We did use Vick’s for those, and every one of our patrol boats had a jar on board. I never had to eat any, though, but Coal Oil (K-1 kerosene) was approved for de-worming when I was a kid.
Ick. But kinda cool. My childhood was so boring…
“people parked junkers on the lake and had a pool when the ice would melt enough for them to drop”
Haven’t heard anybody refer to this bit of cabin fever in a long time. Not politically correct these days, but could get “exciting” along about late March to early May depending on the winter. And IIRC the event usually happened in the evening when the ice was soft and all could observe.
Q
Never heard about the ice bets… but the Vicks, yeah… used that a few times. Worked a LOT better than a cigar!
We used it when we got chafed by our trousers when out in the bush huntin Swapo. Burnt like hell for a minute or two but prevented the chafed skin from getting worse.
Funny thing is Swapo used it too… so if you caught a wiff of it out in the bush you never knew if it was friend or foe.
“Neutroleum Alpha”
In the autopsy scene of “Silence of the Lambs” they pass an unlabeled jar around and everyone applies a dab of something under their noses before examining a body pulled from a river.
I seem to recall reading a story or seeing another movie where they used Vicks on horses’ noses to keep them from spooking at the smell of dead bodies – whether human or animal I don’t remember.