The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1917-12-23

Cork. Both say they are going back to
Belfast.
1t is indeed quite a puzzling situation.
No one would ever dream of calling II
a 'mal- odor," except a public health de-
partment. A public health department
would refer to Pixies Peak as rising
ground" that's the sort of conservat-
ism one expects in a public health de-
partment.
Did YOU ever in your callow college
DAYS joyfulIy generate a large quantity
of sulphated hydrogen in a girls dor
mitory? Did you ever, in haymoW,
step on an old nest of forgotten eggs
That's what the mail odor" in Moth
er Maeree's kitchen and in the other
Kitchens along the Ballymachrone road
is like.
CuriousIy it never occurs to anyone
Except the public health department,
which happens to live at a safe distance)
to inquire whether it is innoeuous or
not. In the Ballymachrone road, they
don't care whether it is innocuous or
not innocuous 1t is a smell and the
most woebegone smell on earth!
Yet current rumor throughout Cork
has it that four Corkmen are coming
that smell into gold and actual investi-
cation discovers that profits varying
from 2 to 40 per cent are being MADE
out of it.
It all originates on the high seas, and
il ends in the porkpenS of Ireland one
first comes across it at Cork down on
"the Pleasant banks of the River Lee,
when a smashed-up ship, with a great
hole stove in its side by German tor
pedo. is towed UP from Queenstown ana
made fast to a Cork quay. Then the
bidding starts and the smell arises. Be-
cause most of the ships on the seas
nowadays are food ships, most of the
torpedoed vessels towed into Cork har-
Dor are grain ships. And because there
are none too many ships left on the
high seas nowadays, the water soaked
grain is sold at once and removed, and
the ship is run into dry dock to be
fitted up in a hurry for the sea again.
The srain-most of it so soaked that
it is PUPPY and liquid and in a state Of
advanced decomposition-is sold for a
song and lifted in great, dripping, stink
ing hodfuls out of the ships hold and
slowed into small carts that fairly drip
with their Shiny load and rushed away
through the Ballymachrone road to the
new drying kilns.
I tried to get close to one of these
poor, smashed-up steamers to look into
some of the other stories that are afloat
everywhefe in Cork concerning the sale
of salvaged cargo There's story
which appears to receive considerable
credence to the effect that the agents
of one vessel which came in with cargo
of brass" ingots in one of it's holds, all
but sold the stuff for 48 cents an ingot
before it was learned that the brass
was gold and worth $500 a brick. There
are other stories about, but had barely
reached the quay when I caught Whit
of it's cargo full on the chest and rushed
away and lit piece of brown paper.
It appeared to me that the ship had been
carrying a cargo of ripe cheeses, and
that the general effect of sea water on
cheeses was to cause rapid rate of pu-
trefaction to set in.
From Mother Macrees, have, how
ever. taken a run out to the drying
kilns, where the aroma of sour grain is
somewhat abated by the cracking,
brown smell of the heat. Here the grain,
according to it's state of decomposition,
Is sorted out for drying and is sold
later at very good prices to fatten pigs
and for fertilizer
And 1 have wound up the day by find
ing a couple of seamen off the torpedoed
grain ship which was towed in last night
and asking them how they stood the
smell.
ITS not so bad" one of them said.