As instructed, I stuck my head in the window of the old Buick and inhaled. Jake had said, “Just smell it. Doesn’t it smell exactly like this kind of car always smelled back then?” I couldn’t believe it. I was immediately transported back to being a kid in my grandmother’s old boat of a car. Like streaming movie clips, memories careened and bumped through my head. I was in the back seat, sweat gluing my butt in place or making me slide forward and sidewards as she accelerated, turned, and braked. Or I was squeezed between adults, my head bobbing off someone's shoulder until, irritated or lovingly, they pushed me down into their lap for a nap.
So many of my memories are triggered by smells. I’ve been rooted in the smell of Pennsylvania, Bucks County in particular, my whole life. We didn’t live there. We drove hours and hours, sometimes days, to visit my father’s mother and my mother’s sister, who lived together--that's another story--on Covered Bridge Road near New Hope. One summer I flew there, my first and solo trip on a plane, to get out of my mother’s hair for a month. My brother and sister each got a summer with Honey, as everyone, related or otherwise, called her. I got several.
Honey and I ran errands in that Buick that would smell of something powdery, something baking in the warm sun. With all the windows open, or just those little triangles in the front whistling wind if it was raining, the smell of Pennsylvania would mingle with that of the aqua blue seats, the curling smoke from my aunt’s cigarettes, and the dog breath and sun-warmed fur of Fergus and Fiona, flanking me on either side, sliding or leaning into me as we took the curves, landing in a heap as we traversed the hills and dips that made my stomach lurch and flutter because we didn’t have hills in Michigan. I loved that feeling, even though after my first couple of experiments, you couldn’t get me back on a roller coaster for love nor money.
On those rides in the Buick, my aunt would dole out Chiklets. I loved the sound of them clattering around in the box and would arrange and rearrange them in the little celophane window just to hear them click softly and get a whiff of peppermint. My aunt smelled like Shalimar, bourbon, butane, and smoke, my grandmother like lotions and powders and cool freckly skin. As we passed through the shadows and shade of roadside woods, the aromas shifted to creek water, clay, old leafy vines and cedar. When we got home, those smells followed us into the house, with its slate walkways, stairs, and foyer, damp and shiny wherever moss didn’t grow and snails crossed on their way to the cellar. These inhalations were always peppered with the sounds of crows cackling, corn stalks rasping in the breeze, mourning doves cooing to each other across the creek, grasshoppers and cicada bugs zinging, complicated piano exercises, and dogs barking or crooning along with the students vocalizing in the studio where my grandmother taught all sorts of people to sing like angels.
I straightened up, took a deep gulp of car show, mown hay air, and dove my head back through the window for another dose of nostalgia I never imagined I’d ever experience live again. That gigantic car that took us on so many adventures. I could see it parked next to the cabin up north. I could remember sucking in my breath when I was old enough to drive as I barreled down one of PA’s narrow twisting highways to campus as though that would make it fit between the lines better, it's back seat and trunk filled with the boxes that when unpacked would practically overflow my tiny dorm room, not much bigger than the car. I recalled standing around it in the driveway with my dad, discussing how much longer we’d be able to let my aging grandmother own it, drive it, get lost in it as she forgot how the roads connected to arrive at her favorite places. A recent lemon meringue pie run to a nearby town had ended well after several panicky, cautiously chuckled about hours of driving that didn't result in pie for dessert that day.
I looked off into the distance and wondered how much it would cost to find one of these old boats and store it in a garage so I could occasionally slide into the back seat, stretch out with my feet on the far door, and pretend we had packed a picnic and were driving through the country, ice cubes rattling in sweating plastic cups, iced tea for me and cocktails for Honey and Aunt Mary, cheese and crackers to share with the dogs, grateful that if that didn't transpire, I'd powered up the olfactory memory for another 20 years.
