It Smells of Nostalgia

A few weeks ago as I walked downstairs into my basement, I picked up a musty-like waft of odor that gave me sudden feel of nostalgia.  A quick, but strange comfort came over me. I didn't know why, and it was gone as quickly as it had come.  Both the feeling and the smelly waft were gone.  I went about my business in the basement.

There it was again!  The smell.  It was not a "good" or a "nice" odor.  As a matter of fact, it would have been "bad" had it been amplified many times.  I hadn't identified it yet, as I had only grasped a fleeting whiff, but it was, for sure, there again.  And for sure, it was gone again.  It came and went so fast, but this time the nostalgic feeling stayed.  Why did that odor give me a feel of bygone comfort?  And by the way, what was that smell?

A day or two went by.  I take something down to the basement.  There's the fly-by odor again, and before it got away from me this time, the answer to my déjà vu hit me.  Tennessee...my Mamaw Reno!  NOOO, she didn't smell like that, but that is an aroma I associate with all my wonderful childhood visits to Tennessee to see Mamaw and all the Reno relatives. 
  

Mamaw Tressie Lee Reno--April 1964

                                                                     
When I was a kid we would go see my dad's mom and family in Townsend, TN outside of Maryville and adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  I joyfully remember those road trips--as we were heading out of Miami, Mom would turn around from the front seat and tell me "we're going to the mountains"!  I knew that meant joyful times ahead.  We would always (it seemed) stop on the way at Suwannee River State Park to have a picnic lunch.  My sister Colleen went with us sometimes on those trips, but for most of them she stayed with her dad's mom, Grandma Rose, a grandma I also loved very much.  

As I stand in the stairwell, registering the aroma and connecting it to memory, the warm thoughts of staying at Mamaw's are upon me.  I remember Mamaw's house.  It was a wood frame house with a long porch.  It had two front doors, as did many houses built back in the late 1800s-early 1900s.  It had unpainted hardwood floors and walls.  It was a fantasy house to me, and that it had no indoor plumbing added to the "dream house" effect for me.  

Tammy (left) and I sitting on Mamaw's front porch--April 1964

Bedtime was extra special, too.  My little cousin Tammy and I would be put into an old-timey bed with a charming hand-made quilt over us, "now I lay me down to sleep..." having been prayed, a chamber pot under the bed, and my Teddy Bear on the pillow between our heads.  The Teddy Bear that Daddy gave me played Brahms' Lullaby when you wound him up.  Tammy was a delight to me as she giggled every time I turned the key to play the bear's tune.  Her giggling made me giggle, and so we giggled ourselves to sleep in Mamaw's wonderful old house in Tennessee.
                                                   

  

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      Chamber pot under the bed 



Oh yes, I loved that concept!  Being a kid living in the early 1960s Miami, of course we had an indoor toilet.  But Mamaw did not have one.  Going to Mamaw's was a comfort, a joy, and an adventure!  She had chamber pots for the night time, and an outhouse for the day time.  An outhouse!!  It was a genuine thrill for me to go to the outhouse. 

                                 

Aunt Betty Curtis (dad's sister) with her kids Patsy, who is holding little Tammy, and their brother Mike.  I am the one standing directly in from of my aunt.  See the outhouse in the background.  It is also in the photo of Mamaw pictured above

Thrilling as it was, it was also a little scary to close that outhouse door behind me.  Once inside, I would ponder the gaping hole that opened to the dark, perilous mystery below.  Yes, I did have mild reservations about falling through that big hole, but since Mom or my Aunt Betty always escorted me, I got past the fear and enjoyed the outhouse effect.  What a wonderful vacation it was to be in Tennessee at Mamaw's!  And meshed in with all that wonder and joy and comfort is that aroma.  

C'est l'odeur.

Time has passed by, and I am grown up and at my adult home.  I enjoyed the reminiscent whiffs for a week or so, off and on, until the once faint odor gradually grew stronger.  It became an entity of its own, and took over and away any pleasant déjà vu I had experienced.  Nostalgia now displaced, I knew the reality that there was either a septic tank problem or a sewage leak under the house.  I went into the crawlspace to see what the situation was.  There, under the bathroom--a drip--at the base of the toilet.  That drip had now developed into a gnarly pool of sewage adjacent to the basement.  Ugh! 
                                    

Tammy (age 3) and me (age 5)--April 1964

On another note, I still have the Teddy Bear.  He's in the smelly basement.

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