Browse:Yellow Wash (Volume 1, entries 2733–2734)
Yellow Wash
Volume 1, entries 2733–2734. Source context: THE DOCTORS AT WORK: REPORTS FROM LAYMEN → BUSINESS AND CUSTOMERS. Entries listed under this heading in the source volume.
Entries
Entry 2733
If you own a house and you wanta get a renter for that house, you take you some, what they call yellow wash, sugar, and your urine [three ingredients], and you put that in a bucket and you scrub that house all over. Start from the front steps, scrub up, and scrub it plumb to the back, and leave that house open and just make a prayer. When you make that prayer, in less time than two or three days you will have that house rented.
Entry 2734
(Use what?)
Yellow wash.
(Yellow wash?)
Uh-huh, they scrub with that yellow wash.
(These hustling women do that?)
Absolutely. They burn that incense powder, see. It's a custom rule, after that they burn that incense powder - then after they use that incense powder and that yellow wash and - not no bay rum - what is this stuff called. Witch hazel.
(Witch hazel. What do they do with that?)
Put on 'em all here, you see [demonstrates, rubbing his chest].
(On their breast?)
Yes, put it on their breast, see. That's for kind of drawing - that's for a drawing sensation. Now, after a man once ever go with this woman.
(He what?)
After a man ever once go with this woman, getting that odor in his nose, an' smellin' that, and if he go with another woman and not getting that same odor, he don't be satisfied. It same as over in the European countries when they had that chlorine gas. That gas, if it was made with a stink scent to it, the moment you'd smell it, you would clamp your nose, but it had a scent like perfume, see, smelled sweet, and the more you smelt, the more you inhale. You see. And the first thing you know, down you'd go. Well, it's the same way, if a man would go with a woman and she'd have a bad scent, well, he wouldn't crave for that odor; but if she have a sweet scent, ev'ry time he go with her he expecting that scent. If he goes to one and don't get that scent, it won't be a comfort.
(I see.)
That's the way it goes. [New Orleans, La., (879), 1449:10.] [Our main title is one of the oldest elements of religion - shrines, private and public. I visited two of them in Baltimore; the one spiritualistic with colored lights, the other Christian and the place where I interviewed. What these shrines are, how custodians differ, we must learn from the material itself. Most important will be the actual words of shrine-keepers in later subsections: Custodian of a Shrine, A Woman and Her Three Saints, Beer for St. Peter and Cigar for St. Anthony, and other interviews. Moreover, we must not forget the doctor and the professor previously met, Nos. 14, P.15, and 427, p.128. At the begin- ning I did not rush to New Orleans, tempting though it was; I gradually worked towards the city for experience along the way. Some of this work pertaining to the New Orleans atmosphere now follows, ending with margin-title Public Shrine.]