I think I’d have to work pretty hard to think of a less significant question than the one I pose below, but it nags at me. I’ve been meaning to blog about it for some time.
How come there isn’t any pine-scented room deodorizer anymore?
Oh, I know you can buy it during Christmas season. This is especially for people like me who have artificial trees (I’m a middle-aged bachelor, for pete’s sake—it’s not like I’m denying my heirs a Precious Memory). It allows us to pretend that we have a real tree desiccating in our living spaces, as long as we keep the lights pretty low and our eyes squinty. Which we middle-aged bachelors do quite a lot anyway, because we’re still trying to master that Charles Bronson thing that somebody said worked so well with the chicks in the ’70s.
Even longer ago than that, when I was but a wee keebler, pine was about the only kind of room deodorizer you could get. It came in a narrow glass bottle. You unscrewed the steel cap and pulled it outward, and a thick terrycloth wick that was attached to it came out of the bottle. You pulled it as far as you liked, depending on whether you wanted “a vague whiff of Douglas Fir from a distant mountain” or “bathing in a vat of Pine-Sol,” and evaporation did the rest. The bottle generally lasted about three days, I think, no matter how much wick you exposed. But it was a pine smell, and it pleased me.
Pine is an odor that guys like. It’s virile and outdoorsy. I can’t tell if women like it or not, not ever having been a woman, and not ever having met one either, that I can recall.
I have to assume that women don’t like pine, though, because nowadays when you go to the “room freshener” (“deodorizer” sounds so institutional) section at the store, there are a plethora, a multitude, an embarrassment of scents. But none of them is pine.
You get “mountain mist” and “meadow shower” and “giraffe sneeze,” but there is no pine.
I pine for pine.
This country is full of male shmucks like me who live alone. I bet we’re all looking for pine scented room deodorizers (not “fresheners”). I bet all of the others are just like me.
Except, of course, that most of them date, and want the place to smell inviting for the women they bring home.
OK, never mind.
Having heard Lars’s eloquent homage to pine scented products (and I don’t know about you, but I was moved), I’m sure you’re all motivated to learn more about the Pine. You can do so at this page from Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine
– p.s. You can always move north Lars, as we still have pine scented products up here in Canada.
– the connection between the n. pine, and the v. pine seems to be unknown. (But I’m sure a clever BW reader has the explanation.)
Looking up the words in a dictionary right quick, they appear to be separate words, completely unconnected but similar in English by coincidence. Both come from Latin, but not the same word.
Oh, Lars, how about pine scented wood polish or dusting spray?
I found some pine-scented soap you could use, and then you would smell like pine, if not the room. 🙂 I’m just the messenger here.
You could clean with Pine Sol, or Spic and Span (if you can still find it in the grocery store). But I remember those pine-scented deodorizer that you write about. Also the one that were scented with with the same fragrance from the main flavor in Pepsi-Cola. I could never drink Pepsi because it reminded me of the restrooms in restaurants.
If you will go to a commercial janitorial supply house, they should have a variety of pine-scented room deodorizers to show and sell.
Clean? Clean?
What is this “clean” of which you speak?
“reminded me of the restrooms in restaurants”
I’m going to gag . . .
Precious memories indeed. When I was growing up there were two scents around the house: pine and bayberry. Both came in a can from the Fuller Brush Co. and bore no resemblance whatsoever to anything in nature.
You know, I’m really wondering why I made such a dumb post. Maybe it’s because in my fishing days I motored by a Pine Island a couple hundred times. But who knows, the mind is a funny thing.
– p.s. you know Phil, I don’t think anyone has figured out this pine thing.
– from Online Etymology; pine; n.
“coniferous tree,” O.E. pintreow, the first element from L. pinus, from PIE *pei- “fat, sap, pitch” (cf. Skt. pituh “juice, sap, resin,” pitudaruh “pine tree,” Gk. pitys “pine tree,” L. pinguis “fat”). Pine-top “cheap illicit whiskey,” first recorded 1858, Southern U.S. slang.
– pine; v.
O.E. pinian “torture, torment, afflict, cause to suffer,” from *pine “pain, torture, punishment,” possibly ult. from L. poena “punishment, penalty,” from Gk. poine (see penal). A Latin word that rode into Germanic (cf. M.Du. pinen, O.H.G. pinon, O.N. pina) with Christianity. Intransitive sense of “to languish, waste away” is first recorded c.1440.
– so, here’s my thoughts (speculations)
1. to pine (v.) comes from being hung on a tree…
2. to pine (v.) comes from the ‘sap’ that runs down this tree… and looks like tears.
– okay; tear my ideas to shreds… I can take it. (I think.)
I’d send you some pine scent, but my yard is mostly oak and birch.
Have you tried the auto parts store? They might still sell those little pine trees that you can hang from the rear view mirror. I used to hang them from the parking brake release to cover the smell of mildewed carpet caused by water seeping through too many rust holes.
“Pine” (pronounced peen-eh) means to suffer in Norwegian. But their word for a pine tree is “furu,” which is related to our word fir.
I’ve got some car deodorizers (in pine scent) in my car. I suppose I could move one into the house. It’s strong enough.
Oh, well, if you mean why words end up the way they do, then that’s a complete mystery. I doubt that Pine trees and pining for my lost love have anything to do with each other, exempting the possibility that I’m in love with a pine tree.
Why are hell and hello similar when they have no similar linguistic roots? Why does cleave mean opposite things in context? I don’t know, and usually we can only describe how it happened, not why it happened.
God gave us some words in the beginning, and we’ve been messing around with them ever since.