Photo by Cynthia Larsen

A fragrant disregard for the facts

By Ed Goldman

I recently attended a Catholic Mass. The good news is that I didn’t burst into flames upon entering the cathedral. The bad news is that when the kid came past my aisle seat waving one of those incense-spewing thuribles, I lapsed into a coughing fit.  

This is something you don’t want to do in flu season or so soon after the COVID pandemic. The people sitting around you will regard you with a mixture of disdain and fear, as though you should be wearing a mask at the very least or, more helpfully, a badge identifying you as a recovering pariah. 

The experience got me thinking about how important one’s sense of smell is, compared to the other four senses (sight, hearing, taste and touch, just in case you were out with mononucleosis the week your high school football coach enumerated them when he was forced to teach a Health unit).   

For example, do you remember the first time you noticed how fresh the air smelled after a long period of rain? How about the scent of bacon sizzling on a kitchen stove or lake trout frying in a pan over an open fire?

How about the first time you were aware of the after-shave, cologne or perfume the other person was wearing on your first date—and if that date turned into a romance which eventually ended, how you continued to search for someone with the same scent for months, years or the rest of your natural life? 

Can you recall the reassuring fragrance of the gas furnace cycling on in your home? And how, as you grew into adult homeownership, you wondered if it was caused by a leak that should be checked immediately, maybe going so far as to evacuate your home in an abundance of caution? 

I think our sense of smell may be the one with the most staying power—yes, even more so than hearing, whose audible triggers include songs we grew up hearing on the radio, in our cars or burbled into our ears by that date with the memorable aftershave, cologne or perfume.  

I distinctly recall an elderly lady who must have been in a jacuzzi whose jets spouted rose water before sitting next to me in a theater, producing another coughing fit. This one saw me vaulting over two other seated patrons and tearing down the aisle to escape an auditorium full of hostile operagoers. The fact that this happened as Mimi was succumbing to tuberculosis in “La Boheme” likely made my attack seem like a misguided attempt at parody.

We all love the fabled “new-car smell” but not so much the ammonia reek of a just-wiped-off Formica tabletop in an ethnic restaurant. Or the Windex essence permeating the ambiance of a Starbucks outlet as baristas dutifully clean the windows four times per shift.

When I was a kid I loved how city buses smelled but had no idea what caused it. Then I drove a friend’s old Mercedes and was simultaneously engulfed by a sense of deja vu and overcome with diesel fumes. 

One of everyone’s favorite aromas is of something wonderful baking in the oven. So much so that in how-to articles suggesting things you can do to sell your home, the usual recommendations (paint the walls, mow the lawn, edit your wall hangings so your place looks tasteful as opposed to like a discount art barn) pale beside this one: give your place an instantly homey feeling by having it smell like something yummy’s about to come out of the oven. 

The easiest way to do this, one article said, was to put a single vanilla bean in your oven, crank up the temp to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and watch as potential buyers salivated the moment they walked in the front door.