Sweet Smell of Stickney

I teach (extremely) part-time at Morton College in Cicero. It's quite a nice two-year school that's making big strides in the facilities and courses it provides its mostly Latino student body.

It's just not in the best location: essentially surrounded by a bunch of oil refineries and a horse-racing track. There is also a very particular odor in the air whenever I roll into the lot, hard to place--sort of latriney with a hint of petrochemicals.

Recently I caught a rebroadcast of WTTW's excellent homage to the Chicago River. Turns out the campus is barely a Biffy-length from the world's highest-volume water treatment facility, the Stickney Water Reclamation Plant. (For those of you keeping track, that's 1.2 billion gal/day from 2.38 million pooping, swilling, self-moistening Illinoisans.)

As you can imagine, my chest swelled and my nostrils flared with the pride of knowing that this was, in fact, a world-class aroma...and the relief of assuring that it did not emanate from any part of my anatomy.