Staff writer
I like things that smell good. Luckily, my family knows this and I got several wonderful smelling candles for Christmas. The aromas available these days are scintillating! I got a honeydew melon, mango, lime candle and a mandarin orange, mango, vanilla candle, and several others that are just heavenly. I can think of only two things that smell better than these candles: my husband, and life in Marion County.
Without going into a lot of detail, let me just say that, the moment I first smelled him, I knew my husband was the man for me. It likely was much more a subconscious thing, but in our early dating months, I remember keeping one of his T-shirts under my pillow because the scent reminded me of him when we were apart.
Even today, when I have had a stressful day or need something to get me going again, a nice hug and big, deep sniff of my husband of 23 years is all I need. It is awesome how the scent of something or someone special can improve everything. I have often wondered if I could bottle him up somehow and carry a bit in my purse.
I guess popular teenage music sensation Justin Bieber did it. I remember reading in one of the “Dear Santa” letters last week that one little girl was wishing for Justin Bieber perfume.
Actually, I think it is what all movie stars and pop singers do when they want to grow their million-dollar bank accounts — they develop a line of perfume and market it along with movie trailers and song releases. Selling personal perfume is a very lucrative industry!
Maybe this is something we need to look into doing here in Marion County. Some of the best scents in the world are created right here in our own back yards, and I am sure they could be sold as exclusive to Marion County if we get the market cornered first.
We could patent and bottle the smell of fresh country rain on a spring breeze. There is nothing better than the green tingle of just-cut alfalfa. One of my favorite scents in Marion County is the aroma of dirt in a new-turned field. I am sure I am not the only one who loves the scent of funnel cakes frying at the Marion County Fair. And, more than once, I have stopped to enjoy the aroma of walking downtown in Hillsboro around noon. The restaurants there are putting out some phenomenal scent advertising.
There are additional rural scents we could lay claim to, like the heartwarming aroma of living, breathing horseflesh, or how about the lung-searing beauty of a cold Kansas night in winter … I can almost smell the stars.
All of these aromas make Marion County the best place to live in the entire world! We need to find a way to bottle and market them. Selling our county scents could be the avenue we need here to preserve our rural way of life and bring in additional income to fix the roads, improve the county fairgrounds, create jobs for families to be able to live above the poverty level, and more.
All we need is a very talented chemist and someone with a nice bank account to get the Essence of Marion County line moving. It will be hard to decide which rural life perfume I want to buy first. I know I will love them all!
Just in case anyone was wondering, however, I own exclusive rights to Scent of my Husband. I am not selling that one.