Today's topic du jour is body odor, I guess - as a gay man,

[Hekate]

42. Bathing in the wintertime was a no-no for some into the 20th century

Houses were cold and drafty, bathwater had to be pumped from outside and heated one kettle at a time on a wood stove -- it was an arduous process, and uncomfortable. You'd end up shivering like mad.

My Grandma was born in the late 1880s in a sod hut in Nebraska, and taught in a country school (probably in Colorado) before she got married. Some of the kids there were sewn into their long winter underwear by their mothers. (Remember the scene in Tom Sawyer? Aunt Polly sewed the top of Tom's longies shut, but in the Spring he and Huck wanted to go swimming so bad he cut the thread. She found out because he resewed it with black thread.)

Anyhow Grandma had an immigrant girl in her classroom who was sewn-in and unfortunately caught lice. She and another teacher took the girl home and deloused her, and it involved getting her out of all her clothing down to the skin and bathing her head to toe. Her mother was furious and confronted the teachers, saying "I send her to school for you to learn her, not to wash her!"

Grandpa believed in only one bath a week his whole life (1880s to 1950s) but Mom says he was meticulous with a washcloth the rest of the days of the week. Grandma had an all-over bath every day -- no doubt starting from when she had piped-in water in her own home.

Me, I lived in the tropics long enough to really appreciate the pleasures of a shower and the necessity of deodorant. No deodorant means not being able to wear a blouse more than one day, for one thing. If other people don't use it, by mid-day you just don't want to get into an elevator with them.

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Everyone has a personal odor on their clean skin, some more than others. I think it's in the oils. My father's pillow always had a smell that was "him" and my high school boyfriend also had a pronounced clean personal scent. That's what people are responding to when they want to hold a garment close and inhale its odor when someone they love has passed away or is gone for a long time. Olfactory memories are stored in the brain forever, as far as I know.