The Ol’ factory Where Ol’ Memories are Tucked Neatly Away

Now that I am a middle-aged grandmother, I oftentimes review the hollowed caverns of my decrepit mind and re-examine the things that stand out to me. Thankfully, when I think of something from my past it is always tied completely to a smell, which rises to the surface for me to follow it like a track of footprints toward a warm cabin full of memories in a snowy wood.

My grandmother lived in Brooklyn on East 15th Street and Avenue M. Her house was the place I wanted to be more than anywhere else in the world, mainly because she lived there. Life at 1365 was warm, loving, safe, and secure. Reminiscing about the days when I hid my face in the folds of her house dress fills me with a bouquet of fragrances that are entrances into my past. Every corner of my grandmother’s house had a distinct aroma, inside and out. Avenue M is a station stop on the BMT Brighton Line of the New York City subway, and it was an elevated el train, level with the second floor and in the backyard of my grandparent’s home. Along with the screeching brakes that we could hear from the station, there was always a layer of putrid diesel fuel, which wafted through air like a backdrop to a play.

Inside the house was a cedar chest, whose smell is seared in my mind. Every time it was opened, which was often as a favorite hiding place for children, the smell filled the cedar paneled porch where we congregated daily to watch the parade of shoppers passing by toward Avenue M. Wood smells had a strong impact on my memory, like the inside of my grandfather’s server where obsessive compulsive disorder reigned supreme. Perfectly stacked piles of sorted coins stacked in rows against the side, money wrappers, rubber bands, paper clips, and piles of newspaper clipping stacked in metal, mesh baskets. Mike’s server was the secret place that I would go to get gold and red paper rings from the cigar cases that I could wear proudly on my all my fingers. All the contents of the chest melded together with the spicy, leathery smell of cigars and dried out cherry wood. My grandma’s end tables were slathered with layers of lemony Pledge, and each drawer held a world of adventure filled with a cacophony of smells. A prominent china closet that housed decks of playing cards when opened its trapped, stagnant air held the fragrant promise of afternoon games of Pinochle and Gold Fish. Not to forget an entire second floor, whose wooden floors filled the air with the antiquated wooden smell of a colonial house I had visited. These floors had never been sanded or shellacked and were responsible for many tears shed as a result of deep, painful splinters in the feet of children who refused, after being repeatedly warned, to “…put their slippers on.”
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