Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
There is a distinctive odor when people burn coal to warm their homes. That very specific odor came back into my mind this morning as I made the chilly trek to catch the subway. Intellectually, I know that this sweet yet pungent scent is the release of sulphur fumes as the coal burns. But when I reflected on it this morning, my only considerations were of the emotional sort.
While growing up, I couldn’t see my nearest neighbor—we were separated by distance and hillsides and trees and pastures. Yet none of these obstacles was a match for the smoke that wafted from Old Lady Conner’s house over to where I lived. To me, winter officially arrived when Old Lady Conner first fired up her coal stove in the back parlor of her modest yet intriguing house. That arrival nearly always coincided with the “fall back” change of the clocks in October (although it happens in November this year).
Her house was built before indoor plumbing. Originally, there were four, square rooms that made up the house. There was an attic, but it was just for storage. Before I was born, a kitchen was added to the back of the house, running the full width. It had a sink that pulled water from a well that never ran dry. Her water tasted of sulphur, too, and I wonder now if that was caused by some sort of seepage from her stock of coal that was poured on the ground by a dump truck. That pile of coal was just outside her back door. That made it easier to fetch a bucket when it was time to stoke the fire.
In later years, Old Lady Conner added a bathroom in the house. I seem to remember that her family encouraged her to do this as they didn’t want her to try to navigate her way to the outhouse when the weather was bad. Or when snow and ice covered the ground.
Even though church was only a short walk from home, we always drove because we went to pick up Old Lady Conner. And always, she would invite us to join her for Sunday dinner after church let out. In my earliest memories, we would sometimes accept. But then once, my mother saw bugs in Old Lady Conner’s flour and that ended our meals with her. That didn’t stop her from cooking a Sunday dinner every week though, “just in case” somebody came to visit. A fine, old Southern Tradition.
The last person I ever knew to be “laid out” at home after dying was Old Lady Conner’s mother. She must have been well over 100 years old when she died, because Old Lady Conner herself was in her 80s. Ms. Ora’s casket was placed in the front parlor and people came to call and pay respects just as if it were a funeral home. Naturally, no one came empty handed. There were casseroles and hams and green beans and cornbread. All of it brought by others. My mother had a plate that day, I remember.
While growing up, I couldn’t see my nearest neighbor—we were separated by distance and hillsides and trees and pastures. Yet none of these obstacles was a match for the smoke that wafted from Old Lady Conner’s house over to where I lived. To me, winter officially arrived when Old Lady Conner first fired up her coal stove in the back parlor of her modest yet intriguing house. That arrival nearly always coincided with the “fall back” change of the clocks in October (although it happens in November this year).
Her house was built before indoor plumbing. Originally, there were four, square rooms that made up the house. There was an attic, but it was just for storage. Before I was born, a kitchen was added to the back of the house, running the full width. It had a sink that pulled water from a well that never ran dry. Her water tasted of sulphur, too, and I wonder now if that was caused by some sort of seepage from her stock of coal that was poured on the ground by a dump truck. That pile of coal was just outside her back door. That made it easier to fetch a bucket when it was time to stoke the fire.
In later years, Old Lady Conner added a bathroom in the house. I seem to remember that her family encouraged her to do this as they didn’t want her to try to navigate her way to the outhouse when the weather was bad. Or when snow and ice covered the ground.
Even though church was only a short walk from home, we always drove because we went to pick up Old Lady Conner. And always, she would invite us to join her for Sunday dinner after church let out. In my earliest memories, we would sometimes accept. But then once, my mother saw bugs in Old Lady Conner’s flour and that ended our meals with her. That didn’t stop her from cooking a Sunday dinner every week though, “just in case” somebody came to visit. A fine, old Southern Tradition.
The last person I ever knew to be “laid out” at home after dying was Old Lady Conner’s mother. She must have been well over 100 years old when she died, because Old Lady Conner herself was in her 80s. Ms. Ora’s casket was placed in the front parlor and people came to call and pay respects just as if it were a funeral home. Naturally, no one came empty handed. There were casseroles and hams and green beans and cornbread. All of it brought by others. My mother had a plate that day, I remember.
***
They say that our olfactory sense is the one that is best able to conjure up memories. I don’t have any reason to believe otherwise. I’m just thankful there is some trigger that can take us back to another place and another time.
posted by Michael Vernon at Wednesday, October 29, 2008
3 Comments:
Nice, Mr. Michael. Very evocative. Made me think of my childhood, too.
Love the storytelling.
I stumbled in here by accident, but I'm sort of glad to have taken that trip down memory lane through your writing.
Beautiful
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