The Smell of Dial Soap

[Until this entry, my writing process has been a laborious three-step ritual that begins with a rough draft in a longhand notebook, editing by hand and then transcribing those words to these digital pages. For the first time, I'm trying to do it all on my laptop or desktop and it's a challenge! I'm so resistant to change! Particularly challenging is this piece which taps memories--so there has been lots of cross-referencing existing journals for content. But change is good. Shall we embrace it?]

I try to flesh out memories and add to content when it suits my writing. Essays on life, loss and love are observational in real time but memories are fleeting--snippets like short YouTube clips with distortions. Kind of like watching those videos while exceptionally high on whatever your mind-altering substance of choice. Most of my recall of late has been prompted by smells, sounds and sights. A few years ago when I was deep into my family photograph archive scanning frenzy, most of my memory essays were based on photographs. I'd see these images in a new light at higher resolution--with details that baffled me. That dresser was never in that corner! The pajamas with feet were red, not yellow! He never wore glasses! But the photos were great source material. They still are. With memories related to senses, however, there are rarely photographs to corroborate the evidence. The only evidence is that memory. We hold it somewhere in the recesses of those less used parts of the brain. Then the trigger. I think mine are generally happy with a few exceptions. Mostly, they're neutral but evoke reflection that may result in a quizzical smile or raising of the eyebrow...later.

 My childhood trips to Texas--thanks to parents who kept close contact with relatives who participated in the post WWII migration to the land of favorable jobs--gave me an early appreciation of the smallest of details in regards to personal hygiene. My Texas relatives used Dial soap in the shower. At least that's what I remember. My Aunt Bernice (mom's oldest sister) and her husband lived in a ranch style home built sometime around the year I was born and they had an in-ground pool which favored heavily in decision-making when it came to which relative we'd be staying with. They lived on the outskirts of the city of Fort Worth, Texas. Mom's youngest sister Kay lived closer to Dallas but they didn't have a pool. There's one picture of me at Aunt Kay's house in a small plastic backyard pool that explains why the in-ground pool was optimal. But I digress. Both of these families used Dial soap in their bathrooms. The smell--to my child's mind recollection--was invigorating and pleasant. It was nothing like the fragrance of Dove or Ivory, which were the preference at our home in Pennsylvania. Dove and Ivory get mixed up in my mind but I remember the floral scent of Dove and the unmistakable "clean" scent of Ivory bar that was so pure "it floats!" When one walked into the pink tiled  guest bathroom of my Aunt Bernice's house, the smell of Dial soap permeated the walls it seemed. No Ivory or Dove in this place!

Dial Soap originated in Chicago with a chemist who worked for Armour and Company--a meat-packing industrial giant. The year it was introduced--1949--it was touted as "the first active, really effective deodorant soap in all history [because it] removes skin bacteria that cause perspiration odor." From 1953 on, it was touted under the slogan "Aren't you glad you use Dial? Don't you wish everyone did?" I also remember the numerous ads seen in Newsweek and LIFE magazines which were those we subscribed to at home. I think I implored my mother to buy Dial soap but she never did.

Years later, in an effort to reinvigorate those sensory memories of my youth, I bought a bar of Dial soap just to see if it would trigger anything. It didn't. The formula had changed through the years particularly when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration outlawed the use of hexachlorophene in non-medicinal products. Hexachlorophene was the active anti-bacterial agent in the product. Armour replaced it with triclocarban--a synthetic anti-bacterial agent. I have no idea if this changed the fragrance but it certainly wasn't the same fragrance I remembered as a child. It wasn't until many years later, as my husband and I wandered through a street fair in North Carolina, that I smelled that scent again. I have no idea what product was being peddled but there were lots of organic soaps and candles in the booth. The scent was fleeting but it was definitely the scent I remembered all those years prior. For just a moment, I was a 10 year-old kid spending a few weeks of the summer in Texas and I could see and feel everything. EVERYTHING.