The Scent Of Memories

Posted in Smell-O-Rama |

After my sister’s father died, my mom also took on the role of being a consultant for Mary Kay cosmetics. She gave me a pink, plastic, mirrored compact with three pots of lipstick when I was about 14. Besides being the best tasting and longest lasting lipstick I’ve ever used, the scent of it was so distinctive and evocative that I kept the compact for over twenty years, just to remind myself of the times I used it most: Mardi Gras in Metairie, hanging out at the corner of Bonnabel and Vets, trying to impress the cool punk kids and prevent my friends from getting into trouble.

At that time I went to a Catholic, all-girls high school: Dominican, where my mom had gone. I hated the surly nuns and the forcing of God down my throat and I particularly hated the awful bathroom smells of stale sewer water and sulphur. No matter how much they cleaned them (and they did that frequently) they were still almost intolerable.

Photo © Jim Gabour

Of course, all New Orleans teenagers eventually make their way down to the French Quarter, which has a plethora of odors to choose from, many of them unpleasant. There are good food smells, like the boiled crawfish at Tujague’s on Decatur Street or the coffee and beignets at Café Du Monde. But there is also the Lysol, piss, and puke combo—shot through with various kinds of alcoholic drinks—of the city’s oldest and grungiest bars. The worst offender is Bourbon Street, which ratchets up the stench to unbearable levels and truly smells both different and much, much worse than any other area in the Quarter.

The odors in New Orleans aren’t all bad. Yeah, the odd moldy tang of car air conditioners probably isn’t healthy, but it’s comforting when your face is soaking wet after the two-minute walk to your car on any day between May and October. The sweltering tropical climate is overwhelming during those months, but the sharp-yet-buttery scent of magnolia blossoms and night-blooming jasmine help tremendously. Although I don’t miss the humidity, the flying cockroaches, the hurricane evacuations, and a million other things from New Orleans, I miss those particular scents something fierce.

Magnolia photo © Basden Family.com

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