Another Prompt; Memorable smells

It's interesting that Professor Knepper should suggest smells or olfactory memory as a writing prompt, because just this morning, this forty-some year old building full of college classrooms and offices is full of them. No doubt because it is about as old as some of the classrooms I was in at undergraduate school. The cinderblock walls, the now antequaited chalk boards, the industrial air conditioning and floor cleaners.

This past week I've been to so many places that have very powerful aromas that evoke memories, invoke attitudes, and provoke reactions.

This hanging smoke from fireworks on the Fourth of July brought back campfires and bonfires. The second-hand smoke of someone else who'd come to view the show returned me to childhood in the 70's when it seemed like every adult smoked. Especially in airports and restaraunts.

The walking trail at the Living History Farms in Des Moines reminded me of the marshy path behind my grandparent's farm in Michigan where we cousins used to ride Grandpa's motor bike.

My wife and I stopped by her school to pick up something from her classroom and of course it reeked of floor polish and, well, whatever 80 year old school buildings reek of. Brick, mildew, janitorial supplies?

I backed our van out of my father-in-law's garage, which we had loaned him for entertaining out of town guests last week and I was stopped in my tracks, because it smelled exactly like my grandfather's garage in Bellville Michigan, where he kept his restored Model A and Model T Fords. Maybe it was the time of year or the humidity, but I could smell that exact same combination of dust and axel grease or motor oil so clearly that I paused, waiting to be discovered by my Grandpa or my Dad- just an eight year old kid exploring the old barns as if they were midevil castles or ruinned cathedrals full of wonder and treasure, but one faced certain doom if discovered by the ancient sorcerer who's lair you were trespassing in.

As I decended into our basement for something from the freezer to make for supper, I could smell my grandmother's basement, or maybe it was her porch. Old wood, moldy, musky rafters. I looked around for her jars of pickles, beets, beans, or baloney.

Many's a time a girl walks by and whatever scent she's wearing wafts behind her and it brings to mind an old crush from high school, and old flame from college, or some date I'd had with my wife and I swoon. Not like an old lecher, leering with preditory aims after whichever young woman was wearing the perfume- but just cought up in the swirling jetty of memories. Dizzy from infatuations and flirtations from long ago.