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Larry Berteau - Write On A smelly past: safe, sinful, simple By Larry Berteau I don't think it's due to the size of my nose - after all it's been broken a few times and has been reconfigured from a perfectly aquiline facial feature to a ruggedly hewn version of a goshawk - but my memories of past events are as much olfactory as they are visual or mental. - Writer's note: The olfactory nerve is the first pair of cranial nerves that arise in the mucous membranes within the upper part of the nose and transmit impulses concerned with the sense of smell to the forebrain. To elaborate on "mucous" would violate the canons of good taste in a community newspaper; so help yourself on that one. The same goes for "forebrain." **** The earliest smell-a-memory I have is my mother's kitchen. A fabulous odor was created when she baked bread on a wood stove. (The wood cooking stove had much more to do with my father's frugality than the number of days I've spent on this planet; there were no wooly mammoths or flopping of magnetic poles going on at the time either.) The combination of hardwoods like oak and walnut (to secure constant baking temperatures) burning with the occasional stick of pine (to encourage the oak and walnut), plus the bread baking to a polished brown in the oven turned the kitchen into a carousel of smell. I have no memory of the color of the walls in that kitchen, or the texture of the linoleum, or the makeup of the countertops. But I vividly recall that smell, and can be transferred to a young boy with one, long, nostalgic nasal take from my smell-a-memory. It smelled like safe. **** Another vivid SAM (smell-a-memory) is of Paris department stores. You could virtually walk me through department stores from San Salvador to San Antonio, and I could pick out the Parisian version - in a Montparnasse heartbeat. It's the perfume. All department stores smell like perfume, to some degree. Macy's and Meier & Frank have perfume sections, and you can pick up the scent from great distances. Try it next time you're in one of these establishments, say, from the men's underwear department. A hint of perfume lingers even there. But in Paris, it's headier than the chic clerk behind the counter. And, it stays with you. After a stroll through the Galleries Lafayette department store in Paris, you could be accused of having an affair with that clerk three days later. Chain-smoking six packs of Gauloise cigarettes wouldn't even be a match. Yet, it's not offensive, and that's the key. That's why it never goes away. Your pores embrace it. Your eyes glow with it. You can taste the perfume on your tongue. There are those who say you can hear it. It smelled like sin. **** Another SAM came from Kansas. I had an uncle who had a farm in Kansas. If you haven't seen (or smelled) a farm in Kansas, then you are forever uninitiated, albeit less than unwashed. The farm certainly had its share of smell - after all there were things nearby like sour milking buckets, cow dung, pig troughs, chicken coops and Oklahoma - but none that compared to Uncle Dave's tractor. I vaguely remember the manufacturer's name. Across the oil-soaked engine hood was written something like: International Harvester. In reality, it probably read: Int rn tion a Harv st r. But I filled in the blanks. With an equal helping of vague, I recall the farm beast was green. It had big tires in the back the size of my Uncle Dave. It had narrow little tires in the front that reminded me of Uncle Dave's hairlip. But these are barely memories. I can't truly close my eyes and see it. But I can still smell it. When Uncle Dave swung up onto the metal seat, reached down to yank me up beside him, and fired up that reluctant-yet-oddly-reliable engine, the smell of gas and oil spilling out of the exhaust pipe - that stood as proud and erect as the Statue of Liberty - sent me to places in Kansas that Dorothy and Toto have never been. The smell was part sunshine, part wheat field, part early morning, part barn, part Grant Wood, part Uncle Dave - and ALL tractor. It smelled like simple. Larry Berteau is editor of The Tidings. LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -