Past methods were simpler, but not necessarily healthier

That smell of old kitchens — the sour gust of musty air when you open the cupboard to get a coffee cup. Remember that smell?

Not the resonant smell of Grandma’s stew simmering with little bubbles and plops in her favorite dented stew pot, the tang of celery playing counterpoint to the earthy smell of potatoes and the bass notes of beef.

Not the fermenting smell that came from the old plastic senbei bucket near the sink where Grandma threw everything from egg shells to papaya skins to use as fertilizer in her backyard.

No, that other smell. Acrid, acidic. It’s still there in lovely old houses. It’s not a good smell, but it’s a familiar smell, and sometimes when a Realtor has an open house at a vintage property, I go just to open the kitchen cupboards in search of that surefire portal to memory.

It might have been from shelf paper treated with insecticide. Seriously.

The idea of lining shelves and drawers with pesticide-treated sheets of vinyl seems abhorrent to modern thinking, but 50 or 60 years ago, it was a smart way to deal with the problem of cockroaches and silverfish crawling over the dinner plates and glassware.

The thinking was different in that era, the knowledge base smaller.

It was a time when girls begged their mothers to give them home perms, which basically involved squeezing foul-smelling chemicals directly onto the scalp. The perm solution was so strong, you had to hold a wet towel to your nose so you could breathe during the excruciatingly long process. The end result was often uneven frizz and a forehead riddled with chemical burns, but six months later we were back for more.

Remember how Grandpa used to treat his dogs for mange? Yeah, kerosene. Diluted with water or straight-up. Not to mention his homemade dog medicine for cuts and scrapes that consisted of sulfur powder, petroleum jelly and tobacco. And speaking of tobacco, the outdoorsmen of that era swore by smoking as a natural mosquito repellent. If a bug or a bee did sting a grandchild, the best first-aid was to chew a bit of tobacco (either from the can or just bite off a bit of a cigar) and rub the paste, spit and all, on the bump.

And speaking of saliva, men of that era actually used spit to spit-shine their shoes. WHAAAAT? Yup. They also learned that if you licked the node of a dying flashlight battery, you’d get a bit more life out of it, and that spitting on a polishing rag would remove little nicks from the paint on the Chevy.

Meanwhile, Aunty taught you how to separate mascara clumps in your eyelashes by using a sewing needle and told you to burn your pencil eyeliner before drawing it inside your bottom eyelid.

Such tales of horror lead just to this: The good old days and simpler times weren’t necessarily healthier than the hyperaware and scared-of-everything way we live today.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.