Therapists say that odors trigger memories better than anything else. I'm not sure that's true with me.

There are certain odors that definitely bring me back, of course. Rural air after a thunderstorm, full of biting ozone as it is, seems delicious, which doesn't make sense, since ozone is not particularly pleasant, but I remember walking through the acre of tomatoes we raised for Stokley Van-Camp ketchup shortly after a thunderstorm, and there were tomato blossoms opening up and sending out their scent to attract insects to pollinate them. I've never run across an odor so appealing in my life!

Heaven Scent

And there's Heaven Scent perfume. I've heard innumerable women tell me that it's a fragrance for immature girls, but I remember working at the church tent at the fairgrounds with a girl who wore Heaven Scent. It was a huge tent, as big as any that you could rent, and we fed a whole passel of people, but when I would try to take diners' orders, Jenny would manage to keep bumping into me, and when I was filling a paper cup with Dodger Cola, she'd manage to be filling another cup with 7-Up, and somehow, she kept managing to rub her breasts against my upper arm.

Will you survive learn to drive? i know you can't describe
The dreams you want to be - either stay, get away
I'm not playin' around - can't you tell the way i'm squeezin'
Your hand - i'm just a kid don't make me feel like a man

I must've been about 10 or 11, and Jenny was a year ahead of me in school, too young to be sexually mature, you'd think, but she had D-cup breasts, and it was all I could do to keep myself from throwing her to the ground and raping her right there in front of Pastor Brown and Aunt Liddy and Miz Johnson, who were running things. I was a good boy, though, and this was in the old days, when women only consented to sex because they were married and they had to, because nobody ever heard of women who actually enjoyed it.

I've never been able to decide if she was teasing me to be ornery, or if she was interested in me, but ever since then, the fragrance of Heaven Scent has always turned me on.

Everytime I look at you, I can't believe what you did to me
You had me thinkin' we was all right, then you pulled your trick
And walked right out on me
You had me thinkin' we were in the sky
Today I'd like to lay down and die

Ether

And then, there's the smell of diesel starting fluid, which is mostly diethyl ether, the explosive stuff they used to use in surgery. That scent takes me back to an incident when I was abused by strangers shortly before my fifth birthday; they thought it useful to have me lose consciousness. We has gasoline-powered tractors, though, so I didn't ever have to smell that odor very often.

Mostly, though, my memories get triggered by music. There's an ad currently running for breakfast at one of the fast food chains, where a guy is trying to chat up a girl who lives in his building every time they are in the elevator together. Finally, he talks about the dollar menu, and she's interested in talking about it. Then he points to the ceiling of the elevator, and suggests that the elevator music could be "their song." Whups! She's not buying into that.

As I write this, I'm playing Hall & Oates' 1973 album, "Abandoned Luncheonette," and it's bringing back memories, mostly pleasant, about a relationship I once had was equally one-sided, and I was equally clueless. The girl I was interested in treated me like a friend, but it later turned out that the five girls that shared that house, none of them ever ended up in a relationship with a man. Duh.

And from the first time that I saw you
Had I known you better then
I would've said those three old words
And from the first time I saw you
Had I known you better then

Winter Camping

I happened to mention one day that my cousin was just returned from a tent-camping trip high in the Rockies. The last time I'd been tent-camping was in Boy Scouts, and I'd nearly frozen to death in early May, which isn't really all that cold. Apparently with the right equipment, you could camp comfortably in mid-winter, and his stuff was rated for forty below. Mary thought that sounded like fun, and somehow, I agreed to borrow Sammy's equipment so we could go camping together the following January weekend.

I called Sammy and made arrangements. He suggested that we go bar-hopping on Friday night and stay at his place that night, then take off for the state park to camp out Saturday night, and return the equipment on Sunday before heading home.

When I arrived on Friday night, though, it turned out that Mary suddenly had something come up. That was all right, she said; her housemate, Sue, wanted to take her place. I'd never seen Sue with a guy, but that was probably because Sue was intimidating. She was close to six feet tall, and of sturdy build, a real Amazon, but she was really stacked. If Mary didn't already have first claim on my heart, Sue sure could have easily staked a claim on me.

She Really Liked Sammy

It was a three hour drive to Sammy's house, and she didn't like any of my other cassettes, but she loved Abandoned Luncheonette. The two of us sang along to all the songs all the way. She and Sammy hit it off like bandits. I was sorta jealous, which didn't make sense at all at the time, because Sammy was gay. Of course, knowing then what I know now would have made a difference.

We drank too much, then went out to Steak N Shake for supper at about 2 AM, and what with the talking, we didn't fall sleep at Sammy's place until the sun was coming up. We got the equipment, loaded it in the trunk, and headed for the state park. It was dark when we arrived, and the signs said you had to pay to camp, but there wasn't anyone there to take our money. We went back and camped anyway.

Laughin' Boy, that's you layin' in the meadow
Laughin' Boy, memories ought to make you cry
Don't let your mind surrender, 'cause I can't imagine days without
you no one wants to be without you
you'll find a way to help you play on
You won't pass the time alone
I'm your friend that knows you and I'd like to tell you
that I think your laugh's a lie

There weren't any other tent campers. There wasn't even anyone with a popup trailer. There were a couple of pickup campers, a couple of silver Windstreams, and a motor home the size of a Greyhound. We put down the ground cloth, put together the alpine tent, and then unrolled the sleeping bags. "What's that?" Sue asked, and poked a dark spot above my sleeping bag. It was some sort of discoloration, but the thing is, canvas will repel water until it gets wet on both sides, at which point water will readily penetrate the canvas. As soon as I told her it was just a discoloration, Sue said, "Oh, that's not the only one," and she poked the tent above my feet as well. All night long, a drop would land on my face, then two minutes later a drop would land on my feet, and two minutes later there would be another drop on my face. Winter sleeping bags need to be kept dry in order to remain warm; come morning, there were only 25 letters to my alphabet, because I'd frozen my 19th letter off.

The Drone of a Cummins

It didn't make much difference, I suppose. That motor home kept their huge diesel running all night long, and although the fumes mostly wafted away from us, the engine provided excessive noise all night. Did I mention that it needed the injectors cleaned? The rumbling would be disturbed every fifteen minutes as the camper gunned the engine. He surely didn't get any sleep, either.

As the pediatrician told the worried mother, "All things will pass eventually." The dawn didn't come up like thunder; it came up slowly and begrudgingly. Sue opened the hole at the end of the tent, and told me that it was morning. No shit, Sherlock. The dew, she said, was frozen on the wire fence. "Wire fence?" I asked. Yeah, she said. There are a couple of buffalo out there, about twenty feet away.

No way in hell were there buffalo out there. Hell, a couple of years ago, buffalo were extinct, only found on nickles. I crawled out of the sleeping bag, immodestly - I'd heard that it was a lot warmer if you were nude in your sleeping bag instead of clothed - and looked out the tent hole. Yes, there were actually three buffalo - a cow nursing a calf about 20 feet away, in a pasture of frosted timothy grass and a bull maybe 150 feet further away.

Now I'm out in the cold and I'm getting old
Standing here waiting on you
But it'll be all right When The Morning Comes

All's Well That Ends Badly

I give up, I said to myself, as I sat in the tent, pulling on cold wet underwear and sweatshirt, soggy jeans, wet socks, and sodden leather shoes. Under different circumstances, a frosty morning might have seemed beautiful and romantic. I was frozen, tired, frustrated, and I couldn't wait to drive Sue home. The same music played on the way back, but I wasn't singing, and sensing my foul mood, she didn't either. We dropped off the gear at Sammy's, he said not to worry about it being wet, he'd dry it out, and we kept on driving.

As I pulled into the parking lot behind her house, Sue leaned over, brushing her ample bosom into my arm, and pecked me on the cheek. "Thank you. You're sweet. You just need to learn not to try so hard." And for the next couple of years, I kept trying to figure out what she meant as I struck out with one woman after another.

If you are young enough that you don't understand what she meant either, think about that guy in the elevator. It ain't Hanes until Inspector 19 says it says Hanes, and, well, it ain't a romance until she decides it's a romance.

Each blockquote is from a different song on the Abandoned Luncheonette album

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Abandoned Lunchette - diesel starting fluid - dollar menu - elevator music - evocative scents - Greyhound - Heaven Scent - Inspector 19 - ketchup - Steak N Shake - winter camping