It's a smell from my childhood, from a cluttered dirt floor
garage that belonged to my great grandfather. In it, and within the piles of
rusty implements, faded fruit crates, and cobwebs, he parked a 1957 Pontiac Chiefton.
The Pontiac shed its oil into (not onto) the dirt floor; the various implements
sweat from their grease points; and, the stacks of cans and jars of various
varnishes, lubricants, and crankcase fluids all released odors of their contents
into the rafters of this time capsule of a place.
It was a brutal yet sweet, earthy smell. The smell of dead machinery wherein water intruded, mixed with the greasy components and rusted them to a bold red.
It was a place I often snuck into to find treasures, all against the warnings from my mother: "There's black windows galore in there, along with who-knows what else!" She'd claim.
It was the early 1980s, and the gray -board, metal roof garage, with rusted hinges and hasp at its entrance went untouched for over thirty years. All was just as he left it. A tomb.
Little is known about my great grandfather. I never met him, and the senior-most members of my family have all but erased any detailed memories to share.
I'm thirty-six now, and that ole' garage exists only in the pages of my past. But, the man who worked in it, the man who collected its innards, the man who drove that dusty Pontiac brand new off the lot in 1957... he still lives within those nostalgic smells that brush my nose every time that I, in my mid-30s, still sneak into old barns and dirt floor'd buildings and abandon structures, tombs, all of them, still in search of treasures, despite the black widows and who-knows what else.
It was a brutal yet sweet, earthy smell. The smell of dead machinery wherein water intruded, mixed with the greasy components and rusted them to a bold red.
It was a place I often snuck into to find treasures, all against the warnings from my mother: "There's black windows galore in there, along with who-knows what else!" She'd claim.
It was the early 1980s, and the gray -board, metal roof garage, with rusted hinges and hasp at its entrance went untouched for over thirty years. All was just as he left it. A tomb.
Little is known about my great grandfather. I never met him, and the senior-most members of my family have all but erased any detailed memories to share.
I'm thirty-six now, and that ole' garage exists only in the pages of my past. But, the man who worked in it, the man who collected its innards, the man who drove that dusty Pontiac brand new off the lot in 1957... he still lives within those nostalgic smells that brush my nose every time that I, in my mid-30s, still sneak into old barns and dirt floor'd buildings and abandon structures, tombs, all of them, still in search of treasures, despite the black widows and who-knows what else.
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