Monday, August 22, 2011

52 Weeks to Personal Genealogy Smells

Week #34 – Smells

Week 34: Smells. Describe any smells that take you back to childhood. These could be from meals, fragrant gardens, musty basements, or something entirely different.


While my grandmother had a lot of flowers, I seldom smelled them, so I will tell about three other smells that I remember from childhood.
The first was the refinery near the railroad tracks north of the city limits where they refined old used oil, and the stink was terrible.
Where we lived in Spokane we had a paved street in front of the house and the street next to our house was dirt and also the alley was dirt (both are paved today). In the summer the city would put down a dust control spray on the dirt streets and we could also get it on the alley if we paid for it. The city used a waste product from the paper mill in the Spokane Valley and it did a wonderful job of keeping down the dust, but it stunk so much the kids all called it bug juice.
That's the end of the bad smells, so now a good one. Once a week my dad would stop at a local bakery and buy bread, hard rolls, and cookies, and if school was out like in the summer we got to go with him to the bakery, and the smell of that bakery brings back a lot of memories. When I was small one of the ladies might give a cookie to my sister and me, and they made great cookies.

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