Some memories are burned into my backside



Gimme a shovel – I need some VapoRub.

Actually, a trowel will do. You have to be careful digging up old Vicks bottles.

That’s what Britt Preyer did recently after getting a tip that the old family business site – Vick Chemical Co. in Greensboro – was being cleared for an apartment complex.

Construction workers, he was told, had uncovered hundreds of old medicine bottles.

Preyer, according to Greensboro News & Record columnist Jim Schlosser, donned old clothes and commenced digging up the discards with a garden trowel. He wound up taking more than 1,000 bottles home with him.

Preyer’s great-grandfather, Lunsford Richardson, invented Vicks VapoRub in the 1890s and began manufacturing the aromatic salve in Greensboro. Procter & Gamble now owns the brand.

Schlosser quotes Preyer as saying that an old bottle of VapoRub he found at an antique shop – and believes to be at least 50 years old – still packs a punch.

The VapoRub story got me to thinking about stuff that could be dug up from sites where I’ve worked in the past that have since gone the way of the dodo bird.

My first job was as a curbhop at Melvin’s Drive-In on Highway 64 west of Ramseur. Between rush periods I sometimes helped make french fries.

Melvin had a potato-peeling machine. The inside walls were rough and as the machine spun rapidly, the raw potatoes were thrown against the walls, which rubbed off the skins.

Once the potatoes were peeled, we would simply run them through a hand-operated slicer and, voila, french fries ready for the deep fryer. Not much chance of there being any residual potato peels after 45 years.

My next job was at Franklinville’s Upper Mill. It’s still there, although the buildings are crumbling. Last time I looked, however, there were scads of leftover roving cans.

A summer later I worked at Weiman Furniture at the site of the old Columbia Cotton Mill in Ramseur. Replaced by a newer furniture facility nearby, the old mill was eventually torn down.

Excavation at the location could possibly unearth some of the old rags we used to wax and polish tables and cabinets that came off the production line. Those chemicals probably had preservative properties.

The textile plant I worked at the following summer is still around but under another name. I was teamed with another college student to clean the metal beams that rose from floor to ceiling in the weave room.

Our cleaning fluid was called Varsol, a caustic, petroleum-based agent that kicked a punch stronger than VapoRub – as I found out. We used brushes to clear off fibers that clung to the beams before wiping them down with rags dipped in Varsol.

Without a thought, I stuck my rag in my back pocket soon after starting the job. We were out getting some more Varsol when I felt a burning sensation on my backside.

The Varsol in the rag had seeped through my pants and was causing havoc with the skin of my buttock.

That was the first time I experienced the hotseat on a job.



Larry Penkava, who has written Now and Then since 1994, says no trace of Varsol burn was left on his bun.