As we pulled off of California Highway 101 into Gilroy, I was assailed by the pungent odor of garlic. When I rolled down the window my eyes began to water and my nose tingled. A blind man driving down the road wouldn’t need a sign to tell him he had arrived at the Annual Garlic Festival! If there were any secular or religious worshipers of garlic, Gilroy would serve as their Mecca. Yet it is not alone in its oleic appeal. I flew into Wenatchee, Washington, one summer. As we deboarded the airplane, the pleasant aroma of the apple orchards filled the air. I began to salivate. Another time I saw a bumper sticker on a fertilizer salesman’s truck in the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley near Bakersfield, California. It read, “I © Ammonia.” To each his own. Certain smells can bring back vivid memories. I spent a lot of my working life in the feedlots. When I drive through towns like Hereford, Texas, or Dodge City, Kansas, my mind fills my nostrils with scents of front-end loaders cleaning pens, moldy hay, fermenting grain, Terramycin on my fingers, rumen contents and feedyard dust. It’s an olfactory bouquet that still gives me a warm feeling. On the other hand, when I smell freshly mown hay or a farmer out cutting his 5-acre lawn, I roll up the window and grab my allergy pills! We spent a day at the garlic festival and ate or tasted a panoply of garlic concoctions: sausage, chicken, bread, pork, prawns, artichokes, rattlesnake, ice cream, squid, potatoes, corn on the cob, candy, oysters, honey, caulking, house paint, deodorant, fly spray, time-release suppositories and mouthwash. It has qualities that are touted, particularly as being “good for the heart.” Although that is disputed, it is certainly a good excuse should the ‘patient’ be shunned by friends and family for having halitosis strong enough to drive a hyena off a bucket of baboon livers. “Whoops, sorry darlin’. I chew this clove of garlic to prevent artistic fibrillation. I think your bangs will grow back!” Next morning as we were leaving Gilroy we remarked that we could no longer smell that deep, penetrating garlic odor. Then an oncoming vehicle swerved wildly, and I saw the driver grabbing at his nose. Maybe, we observed, we had become used to it. Moral: One man’s hog farm is another man’s garlic shampoo. PD