The sensual joys of baking soda, orWhy Bibb’s Market hats can survive a nuclear holocaust

By Brian Hester
Sun contributor

My evening began innocently enough, I was spending the night at Bibb’s Market — the fresh food store that my wife Marcie and I own — doing a lot of grunt work, just washing all the walls and scrubbing the toilet. My friend John Belanger had been here helping me jack up my convection oven. I was tired of it sitting on treated 4 x 4’s, so we put them up on legs and, after he left, I was just about to begin painting the oven.
After I’d evaluated what I’d need to paint, I grabbed the 4 x 4’s and took off through the back of the building, accidentally turning the knob the wrong way on the back door. It was 11:40 at night on August 3rd, and I’d just locked myself out of the building. Still, I kept up my unassuming stride around the east end of Bibb’s Market towards my truck, which I knew wasn’t locked.
But as I walked around the picnic table closest to the Market, something stopped me dead in my tracks, a color that stood out against the dark night — the way a young boy pulls up lame just as he’s about to step in a patch of yellow snow.
I met the skunk directly, nearly missing stepping on it by half a foot. A split-second later I saw it lift up its hind end and shoot directly for my face. I heard the squirting sound — an audible pssssssst, like something was being squeezed out of it.
They say you sometimes do strange things on a dime in desperate situations. Well I’m not left-handed, but I grabbed my brand new Bibb’s Market hat — that I’d just received from two customers of ours — with my weak hand and threw the hat as far as I could.
Milliseconds later, it was as if I had walked into a glass wall. I suggested to myself, “Maybe it was just a little hit.” This was all happening in seconds. I’ve been robbed before. I’ve been shot before, so I know how quickly the mind processing these things. In a matter of milliseconds my life was passing slowly before my eyes. But this had to be fate that we met point blank. The skunk had made up his mind to shoot me long before I locked myself out of the Market.
Two-three seconds later I was pretty much overwhelmed. I started walking towards the front door of our sandwich shop. But I realized there was no way I could go in there. So I stood in the parking lot, twenty yards from M-22, and stripped down to my boxer shorts. I thought about revealing all, but I told myself, “I smell like I’ve been hit by a skunk, they’d arrest me for sure.”
So, in nothing but my boxers, I took off toward my friend John Belanger’s house on my daughter’s bicycle. Because my eyes stung so badly, I held up one hand in front of my face as if I could stop the air from piercing my pained skin.
I rode the bicycle one-handed, swerving like an inebriated dink-fart, while I cruised down Lake Street towards Lake Michigan. My buddy John lives behind Becky Thatcher’s.
As I passed Art’s Bar, things were hopping as usual. But still I thought to myself, “I’ll bet I could go in there and sit anywhere I wanted.” I was laughing at myself the whole time uttering, “I got sprayed by a skunk, I got sprayed by a skunk.”
But after crossing M-22, things were getting darker and darker as the lights became fewer and fewer. By the time I got to Becky Thatcher’s I had shifted into the lowest gear on the bicycle because my eyes were watering and I was having trouble seeing.
I pulled up to John’s house in my boxer shorts, went into his garage and pounded on his back door with enthusiasm. No answer. So I went around to his bedroom window and yelled “John!”
“What?” he replied.
Knowing that I was about to ask John to let me, “Pepe’ le pew” into his house, I had to think of something clever to tell him. I told him that we needed to trap a skunk.
“Tonight?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “We’ll trap him another night. I just met him and I didn’t catch him tonight.”
A long, drawn out “Oooooh Brian!” followed.
I said “Yep … point-blank, direct hit. You gotta help me out buddy.”
He asked, “What do you want me to do?”
I told him, “Turn on the shower and make it a nice tempy. Then open the door and clear the way.”
Going down to the garage door, I took off my boxers and waited 45-50 seconds. Who knows? It seemed like an eternity. I saw the back room light turn on and I took off, running through the garage. John opened the door and I hit the deck in perfect stride, ran through the house and jumped in the shower. I took two complete hard showers with soap, but they didn’t seem to make any difference.
So I squatted down in John’s tub and asked him for his cordless phone to call my wife and tell her that I was going to be home later than expected. On my first attempt I got the machine and yelled excitedly for someone to pick it up. I hung up and called on redial. Finally, my wife Marcie answered the phone and asked what I wanted.
I didn’t mess around. I told her that I had been sprayed by a skunk. She asked me what I had done about it so far and I told her that I had taken two showers — neither of which had worked. She told me to ask John if he had any baking soda. He did. I told my wife I would try it. She wished my luck, but told me to come home even if the plan wasn’t a success.
I hung up the phone and caked myself with John’s industrial-sized Sam’s Club baking soda. John placed it on top of the toilet and said, “Brian, you stink.”
I thanked him.
I stood in the back of the shower after caking myself completely, rocking on my heels, chanting, “Yep, I got hit by a skunk. Hey, you ever met anyone who’s been bit by a skunk?” I figured I was the only human being out there in the world who could say, “Yes indeed, I have been sprayed by a skunk.” At one point while rocking in the shower I slipped and John thought I had fallen.
For or five minutes went by and I was finally ready to rinse off. As I rinsed, the caked soda began to slide off and run down the drain to the septic system where it belonged — with the rest of the aromatic pleasures no one ever – ever – ever – except me has had to deal with. After rinsing myself clean with pure, pristine downtown Glen Arbor water, I was free.
John had gone to bed. Meanwhile, I was experiencing the most glorious short-term recovery in the history of these parts.
I yelled out “John!”
“What?” he replied in annoyance.
I told him I needed some clothes, knowing fully well that I had left my own ones safe and secure by the roadside, in front of Bibb’s Fresh Market across town.
I dressed, not needing to say goodnight to my good friend John Belanger, and jumped on my big two-wheeler for the trip back. When I returned to the scene of the crime, I grabbed my clothes and stuck them in a brown bag (my favorite boots included), and tossed them in my truck.
I was just about ready to leave when I remembered my hat. There it was, lying in the lot next to Burdette’s Flower Court. I hesitantly approached it, knowing it was going to have a pungent aroma. I drew closer and closer and then stopped, bent down to cradle it for perhaps the last time, and found it had come through unscathed.
Imagine that! Not only do I have an incredible wife who loves me enough to say, “Come on home Skunky,” she cures me and hat lives on.
I can go to work selling food tomorrow and still wear my new hat. I can’t wait to tell Jack and Renee.
P.S. Pepe ‘ le pew has moved on to another place in town. Beware Glen Arborites … he could be lurking anywhere.