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From: Erica Peters <e-peters-9@alumni.uchicago.edu>
Date: May 16, 2006 8:47 AM
Subject: [Vsg] "we smell like hamburgers"- query
Dear list members,
This is cross-posted from ASFS (Assoc. for the Study of Food and Society).
Please send any responses directly to Josh Ozersky
<jozersky@optonline.net>, as he does not read VSG.
From: Josh Ozersky <jozersky@optonline.net>:
I'm trying to track down a meme that was very common in the Vietnam era.
Americans were said (usually by other Americans) to "smell like hamburgers"
or "smell like meat" to Asians. I remember reading this over and over, but
can't find any printed sources. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks!
Erica
From: Joe Hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>
Date: May 16, 2006 9:41 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] "we smell like hamburgers"- query
I do not have a reference for you, but I have heard various "smell"
anecdotes from the war years, from both sides. One that sticks with me is
the story that NLF agents would raid garbage dumps to steal discared soap,
shampoo, shaving cream, etc. They would smeer these around tunnel
entrances to confuse the dogs that American GIs employed to find these
entrances. Fact? I have no idea. References? I have none. (Isn't
history/memory a wonderful thing?)
From: Diane Fox (dnfox) <dnfox@hamilton.edu>
Date: May 16, 2006 9:50 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] "we smell like hamburgers"- query
A tangential reference: "Chinese Looking Glass" by... I read it 40 years ago, and am not sure,
but something like
Bloodworth (Dennis?) sticks in my mind. He was married to a Çhinese woman who found that
he smelled like--
perhaps not hamburger, but some sort of meat.
From: Diane Fox (dnfox) <dnfox@hamilton.edu>
Date: May 16, 2006 10:00 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] "we smell like hamburgers"- query
Ah yes, memory, as Joe says. In fact, in thinking back again, I'm now pretty sure that the
quote from "Chinese
Looking Glass" was that westerners smell like dogs because they eat so much meat....so
really a tangent to a
tangent.
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