Depression Gas

But look, we're all grown here....what I'm talking about when I say we ate a lot of beans and cabbage is gas and I mean Gas...Gas with a capital G and a little A and a great big S...yes ...GaS! Now this brings us to the subject of Depression Gas, not to be confused with Depression Glass; you'll find that Google separates the two very nicely and you'll find that Depression Gas was never given away at the movie houses as a prize, albeit it was informally given away quite frequently there.

The second grade was over; it was now a thing for little children and had nothing to do with us. Justine and I had spent a lot of time together during the summer and from my point of view we had bonded into a unique entity, from which we could never ever separate. The summer had been spent dreaming dreams. Often Justine was the Indian Princess and I was the Cowboy. I was sometimes a pirate and she was a harem girl. I was sometimes an Indian Chief or Warrior and she was a young captive girl. Life was good that summer.

My mother was a stern woman who believed in hard work as a catharsis for sin and evil, so every Monday I had to spend away from Justine Elliff. My mother would build the fire and put the big black pot on it and then carry buckets of water until it was nearly full. As the water heated it was my job to carve the P & G soap bars up into little chips to dissolve in the water. Ivory soap was easier to carve and dissolved much faster than P & G but it cost a penny more even though the radio explained that Ivory was so pure it floated. This was the boiling pot. My mother would then bring the dirty clothes and put them into the boiling pot and I would have to stand and punch the clothes constantly with a punching stick which was an old broomstick sawed off to about a three-foot length. Once the clothes were placed into the boiling pot the punching job lasted about an hour, although it seemed like eight hours. I knew at these moments that I would never go into the laundry business. Now came the really unpleasant part of every Monday I can remember. My mother would fill a galvanized wash tub with warm water and I would position myself on my knees as if in prayer above the tub and behind the rub board with a bar of P & G soap in my right hand at the ready; my mother would then take the clothes from the boiling pot with the punching stick and lift them like large impaled rodents into my scrub tub. Now came the job that required courage and sacrifice. It was now my job to take each shirt and scrub the collar and cuffs especially hard on the rub board until all stains and spots were removed. My father, remember, was a business man and had a reputation to uphold. The shirts however were not my biggest problem.

We have discussed depression gas and now have a full understanding of this phenomenon but we need to contemplate the after effects of a day of wearing a pair of cotton boxer shorts in the hot South Texas sun by a man of 250 lbs. and a height of about 5 ft. 9 in. The after effects of depression gas released from time to time throughout the day was a residue of depression gas particular matter in the seat of the boxer shorts. I'm not sure that the average number of releases has ever been documented, but the diet would indicate a generous frequency. The end result was what Proctor and Gamble referred to on the radio as "tough stains". Today that is not a problem, our diet is different and our detergents are a new generation of state of the art confrontation against "tough stains".