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- Samuel Goldwyn
Chicken manure?
That's the latest suspect in the mystery smell that stank up our town last week.
After a couple of days of Columbia County blaming Richmond County industries and Richmond County blaming Columbia County construction runoff, a new culprit was cited - farmers.
Yep, farmers (unnamed) "on both sides of the river" who were said to have brought in several manure loads, the better to fertilize their fields.
Naturally, I'm suspicious.
I know the fragrance of chicken manure, and whatever that was last week didn't smell like poultry poop. It smelled like the floor of hell's dog pound.
What do I think it was? I don't know. But I do know the Garden City has its aromas.
While building the Augusta Canal in 1849, workmen began to dig their way through an ancient swamp and soon you had townsfolk complaining about the reek of thousand-year-old rotted goop. I figure it must have been bad because these were people accustomed to outhouses.
More recently (Nov. 25, 1962, to be exact), a sickly stink became front-page news.
"A foul-smelling odor, which blanketed the downtown Augusta area Saturday morning, was finally traced to a broken cooling unit at Borden Creameries on Walker Street," The Chronicle reported.
"A broken machine - which refrigerates the huge milk and ice cream plant - was being repaired by workmen wearing gas masks when police and fire department personnel traced the ammonia-smelling substance. The odor had driven occupants from a nearby restaurant and flooded the police station with complaint calls."
Sound suspicious? Sound familiar?
Maybe we just get spoiled because usually Augusta doesn't stink. That's why we notice those occasional mornings when things smell more "coastal'' - like Savannah or St. Simons.
I was told long ago that this seaside scent is prompted by a shifting wind flow from the south that picks up a whiff of wetlands, river and southside industries.
As a young reporter three decades ago, I put the question to the late Willie Watkins -- the back-room sage of the Augusta-Richmond County Municipal Building. Why was it, I asked the man who seemed to know everything, that some mornings you walked out the door and Augusta smelled like compost?
He grinned and said, "That's the smell of money."
It was the first time I had heard that expression, and I was so impressed with its cleverness that I never got him to explain exactly what he meant.
Thirty years later, I still lack an explanation.
Just like last week's mystery smell.
Reach Bill Kirby at (706) 823-3344 or bill.kirby@augustachronicle.com.
