Smell this, remember that.

​The weirdest thing about memories is how they smell. A smell can bring back some of your deepest seemingly forgotten memories. 

     I was in Walmart and walked though the produce section.  I stopped at the melons because one of them must have been on the verge of going bad. The strong scent slapped me all the way back to the early seventies.  

     I was still in Walmart physically, but I was mentally four years old and in Kroger’s when it was in the Broadway Plaza. I could see the RC cola in the basket of the cart above my head. My shoes aren’t the work boots I now wear every day. I’m wearing Buster Brown’s with one inch heels. I can’t see much else besides my green jeans, the white and chrome fronts of the coolers, and all the cracks in the white tile that threaten to break my momma’s back. 

     Ignoring the danger, she pushes on towards the canned goods. Spread along the way are toys and candy at eye level. Toy cars and boats hanging on strips of plastic catch my eye. It is probably where I got a little green and white boat that was my favorite toy for a while. 

     That smell will never go unnoticed because of that memory. The memories fade into the background, and I’m back In Walmart again.  Fifty years in fifty seconds. The time machine shuts down until another memory claws it’s way to top and screams, “Here I am!  Get your phone out and start writing!”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Colorado Potato Beetle

​       My grandpa and grandma always had three big garden plots. One was strictly potatoes, one was tomatoes, and the last one was green beans and a mixture of whatever odds and ends grandpa decided to try.      Canning was a big event when the tomatoes and green beans were ready, but the biggest crop was potatoes. We all had jobs when it was time to harvest potatoes. The adults dug them up with potato forks and put the biggest of the potatoes into baskets that would be deposited into the root cellar/storm shelter/cave. (That’s a whole different story on it’s own.)       That left the grandkids to gather the small baby potatoes from the dirt and the vines. If the job was done right, there’d be dirt under our nails, on our hands and faces, and our knees as we crawled from hole to hole, plucking taters from the roots of the plants, sifting through the dirt, and filling the holes.          But that was the end of the growing season. What I remember most is crawling through the garden and
Read more

Disciples among us.

     ​ I bumped into a man stocking shelves in a local store in a nearby town. He apologized for having to turn his wheelchair around in front of me. I told him that I wasn’t in a hurry, and it wasn’t a big deal.         I told him that he was an inspiration. In a time when able bodied people claimed they couldn’t find a job, a man in a wheelchair was working harder than most of today’s young people would want to.         He told me he didn’t want to be an inspiration because of his handicap. He wanted to be an inspiration for his love of God. He was humble because God says that we shouldn’t be prideful. He did what he did because God gave him the strength to carry on each day. His body wasn’t a reflection of him. The Holy Spirit and what filled his head and heart was what made him who he was. He    shared the gospel every chance he got.        He said that he often talked to people that came in the store about Jesus Christ freeing us from sin by dying on the cross. He said it was diff
Read more

Why am I here?

​        I woke up this morning with a question. “Why am I here right now?”     I’ll ask myself that question dozens of times throughout my day. Sometimes, the good Lord answers that question. Sometimes, He smiles and tells me he has given me enough clues to figure it out on my own.          He puts people in my path that change my path, or I change theirs. Twice in my life, he put a pastor of a church in my path that changed my point of view. Their honesty touched my soul. I’m a better man having walked the path with them.          Twice he’s put a pastor in my path that changed my view of religion and people in general.     They spoke in the name of God, but they acted in their own self interest. You can do anything in the name of God and consider yourself forgiven. It may not be the case, but my job is not to judge but to categorize.          What does that mean?    It means that I need to put people in their place within my space. I’m not in charge of the world, I do have some cont
Read more