The Scent Of Memories

Posted in Smell-O-Rama |

On Saturday nights, I’d go to my dad’s place, a dark wood-paneled house across the Mississippi river. Often we took camping trips with my half-brother and stepmom and the smell of cheap dishwashing liquid and lingering campfire embers remain strong in my nostrils to this day. No matter where we were though, the memories of my dad are connected by one thing: Old Spice and food. He’s lived in several different places since (thanks to Hurricane Katrina) but no matter which location, the scent remains the same.

Bagasse

One Mardi Gras, we went to a parade near his house. It was near a levee road, but the visuals are so fuzzy I couldn’t tell you where. One factor stands out more distinctly than all others: the smell of bagasse, or the “fibre remaining after the extraction of the sugar-bearing juice from sugarcane.” I could barely concentrate on anything around me, the sour-sweet stench was so bad.

Like many New Orleanians, I participated in Mardi Gras as a member of a carnival krewe with my family. The first year, I was so nervous, I barfed in the makeshift bathroom on the truck float (really just an ersatz closet with a wooden seat and a black garbage bag) and immediately felt better, though I avoided spaghetti and meatballs for at least a year afterwards. The second year was fun, so we tried for a third. Unfortunately, that year the truck exhaust pipe was pointed towards my face the entire day. So for at least eight hours, I inhaled odorless carbon monoxide in addition to gases which smelled just as deadly as they probably were. That was the last year I rode the floats.

Photo © John McCusker

Another family activity was dancing. I took dance lessons from the time I was a toddler to about age 13 and my sister started when she could barely walk. My mom taught at and was the general manager of my school, so I was there almost every day. Everyone recognizes the stench of a locker room, the studio smell was different somehow. The air was heavy with steam made of pure perspiration, which dampened the dust from the shoe rosin—which looked like crack cocaine—that lingered in every corner.

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