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Steve Sleightholm
Steve's Venezuela Memoirs
N° 4711
Steve Sleightholm's Venezuela Memoirs
N° 4711
I recall one very hot day when my parents were in the jeep heading out the
pipeline road towards Dabajuro on a picnic/hunting trip and my brother and I
came along. It was one of those days during depths of the dry-season when the
cattle died of starvation and the lack of water and the sweet stench of death
hung in the air anywhere you saw buzzards clustering on the little breeze there
was.
We caught a whiff of something sweet in the air and in this case it was like
orchids but not quite. As we drove along the scent became stronger and
eventually we could see a cab in the distance going in the same direction. The
scent was quite nice and clearly it was emanating from the cab and the source
was identified as we came upon the cab -- It was the cologne that the passenger
had on. The guy was dressed in whites with a white Panama hat. Dad drove on by.
You see, when one did not have water to bathe in one resorted to the use of
colognes for special occasions and that was very common in the early years in
Venezuela. Not unlike most of the French and the Germans I knew when in the
Military Service in Europe in the late ‘60s who, only when they absolutely had
to, applied cologne except they had water.
Anyway, that was all there was to that day that I recall. I did not think it had
made that much of an impression on me until I was in a Hecht’s department store
in Baltimore about 1970 and I am a sucker for nice men's colognes and I was
testing the samples at the counter when I held a bottle of cologne to my nose
and took a whiff and I stood there having a flash-back where momentarily I was
in the jeep looking at the guy in the cab on the Dabajuro road. It was the
cologne that I had smelled on the drive all those many years ago. It is
“Glockengasse N° 4711”. To this day, I keep a bottle in the medicine chest.
What's the point you ask? Well this website and the stories that many of you
have shared have been #4711 for me. I see names of my childhood friends and
their parents, stories of times and places that I know and it has been a great
experience and I want to thank you all.
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