re: #253 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

I grew up in Gary, Indiana, which at least bordered on Lake Michigan, which helped keep smog from building up. But still, when people came to visit and asked “What’s that smell?” our response was always “What smell?”

And when they asked why the sky was that color , we replied “Is the sky supposed to have a color?”

You knew when an east wind was blowing where I was growing up in northern New York. You could smell the sulfur smell from the paper factory on the Canadian side of the St Lawrence River there. It was also a hidden indicator that the fluorides coming out of the stack of the aluminum smelter run by Reynolds Metals was headed in our direction. (IIRC, farmers on the usual downwind side of Reynolds did eventually successfully sue them over that pollution.)

ALCOA had a large smelting operation there as well.* I doubt recall that operation getting as much legal action tossed at it. And that particular plant outlasted both Reynolds and the GM parts plant that operated in the area. All of the big industries in the region are gone now, including the Canadian paper plant. When I was last through the town in 2014 or so a lot of the small businesses were boarded up as well.

* - ALCOA was there in 1907 or so. They actually had a power canal dug between one of the smaller rivers and the St Lawrence to generate electricity for the operation. Everything got larger and the other industries came in during the late 1950s when the St Lawrence Seaway project was done which included cheap hydroelectric power being available in quantity.