I already told the story of how some time ago I went to a rural supply shop in New South Wales to buy some salt for my mum's cattle. The man there showed me where to find what mum was after - in a corner of the shop's big warehouse was a heap of bags labelled "Himalayan rock salt", sold in 25 kilogram lumps.
After checking that the bags contained decent-sized single lumps and not a whole lot of 5 kilogram pebbles, the bloke heaved several of the best onto a trolley, which he pushed out to my car. As he hefted a couple of the sacks into the boot, I noticed that there was an address printed on the side of them. It proved that they really were from the Himalayas and not, as I had imagined called 'Himalayan' purely from whimsy or to create a romantic impression, (and, indeed, now I come to think of it, I realise trying to endow cow salt with romance would be an unlikely marketing ploy).
Anyway, I was so surprised that I made a comment.
'They really are Himalayan', I said.
The bloke from the shop dumped the second bag into the back of the car and straightened up before turning for the next one.
'Yeah', he said, pushing back his hat and wiping his forehead.
'I suppose there's some poor little bugger up there on the top of Mount Everest, chip, chip, chipping away.'
He bent over and grabbed hold of the corners of the next bag.
'It'd be a long hard way down with 25 kilo', he grunted, as he hurled it after the others.
The memory came back to me walking through a field in south Wales this afternoon. There it was - a chunk of Himalayan salt, another bit of that poor little bugger's bounty, so I guess he's still up there, chip, chip, chipping away.
There was a short-lived movie theater on Florida Avenue NW about 19th St., called Visions. The first movie we saw there was "Himalaya", about salt miners taking risks to get their salt to market, of course by yak train. For the reminder of its existence, we referred to Visions as "The Yak Shack."
ReplyDeleteSo that's how they do it. ZMKC
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