Pick Me!

A weblog by Laura Moncur

6/14/2013

The Daybreak Stench: Thinking about Smells

Filed under: Living in Daybreak,Living in Utah — Laura Moncur @ 6:00 am

The wind has been relentless the last few days. Whenever people ask me about Daybreak, they NEVER ask me about the wind.

They ask me about:

  • The crime: it’s nonexistent.
  • The Mormons: they are cliquish and omnipresent.
  • The Daybreak activities: there were more of them a few years ago than now, but that’s not really a bad thing because karaoke night is NEVER a good thing.
  • The commute to downtown SLC: It’s LONG and miserable.
  • The supposed “ghetto” of Daybreak: If that’s a ghetto, then you have lived a very soft life.

But the WIND!

They never ask about the wind that will:

  • Steal your BBQ cover, leaving it a quarter mile away, stuck in a neighbor’s tree.
  • Hit your backyard with hurricane force micro-bursts that leave garbage all over your yard and rip panels out of your vinyl fencing.
  • Knock over your yard umbrella, even though it is fed through your picnic table AND an umbrella stand.
  • Relentlessly wear away at your trees, your hair and your will to live as you try to enjoy the outside, ride your bike or even take a simple walk around the lake.

Sometimes they ask about the Daybreak Stench. The wind DOES bring that smell about once a month. I had a commenter complain about it:

As a recent resident of daybreak I just got my first ‘whiff’ and it is APPALLING!! It is absolutely unacceptable and the public should be told about it so they can make an educated decision about the move here. That landfill needs to be shut down!! It can not be healthy and it is a ridiculous statement that you made to ‘stop whining’. Insist on a higher level of living. Become active on fixing the problem…don’t pretend that it doesn’t exist. That’s just pathetic.

I find it interesting that the rich folk here in Daybreak think that the solution is to “shut down” the landfill. Where do they think their garbage goes? Apparently, they don’t want it to go in the county landfill. Do they think the neighborhood would smell better if each family had to deal with their own garbage? I wonder how they would like to have to burn, compost or bury their own waste in their own backyard.

As I said before, the Daybreak Stench doesn’t smell all that bad to me. It reminds me of a very happy childhood, just like the smell of a dead skunk on the side of the highway. So many people HATE the smell of a skunk, even if the animal died miles away, but at a certain distance, I’ve found that I like that smell.

I know I’m not SUPPOSED to like it.

I know that dead skunks and landfills are supposed to smell bad, but they don’t to me. This morning, the wind brought the Daybreak Stench into my open windows and I felt joyful. It reminded me of spring mornings in West Valley. It brought to my mind skateboarding on my orange, plastic skateboard all day long, around and around my block in Cherrywood. It made me smile.

I believe that ANY smell can be good or bad, depending on the memories that are attached to it. If you live a few years here in Daybreak and they are happy ones, then the Daybreak Stench will be a happy reminder of your time here. It will remind you of your early morning walks around the lake. It will bring to mind your happy bike rides along the trails, saying hi to the people you passed. It will remind you of the morning after a relentless wind when you finally found the right brick to put on your BBQ cover to keep it in place.

It’s like what William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so by William Shakespeare

Should you move to Daybreak? I don’t know. If you are an entitled elitist who believes that landfills should be closed down and insists on “a higher level of living,” then maybe this wonderful neighborhood isn’t for you. Go find another neighborhood and let a NICE person move here instead.

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1 Comment »

  1. We got a lot of that same wind over the hill in Saratoga Springs. Just amazing! We also lost a BBQ cover, had lawn chairs end up in the canal next to our house and more.

    Right after we moved in, our AC went out in the middle of August. So that night we opened up all of the windows and went to bed. A windstorm came in, and started blowing like crazy, and as a result of all of the construction that was going on (our house was the first up on the block) the wind blew a ton of dust into our house, it was slamming the doors shut, and left quite a cleaning mess when we got up in the morning.

    Comment by Jake Spurlock — 6/14/2013 @ 8:31 am

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