When We Were Young

October 2004 When members of the younger generation ask me what it was like 'long, long ago' when I was in elementary school, the differences that come to mind are not the technical differences. Sure, we did not have color TV, DVDs, VCRs, computers, cell phones, etc. But those things, good as they are, are just 'things'. No, when I imagine myself walking to school then and now, the biggest difference that strikes me is the loss of smells. When I retrace the route of my childhood, it is sterile. There is no life in the air anymore. This is most apparent in the autumn. Fall used to be all about smells, but no more. What a loss for our children. My route started off down the hill, through the park, and past the packing plant. In the fall, when the apples were flooding in to the warehouse to be boxed and loaded onto the freight cars, the air was rich with their smell. You can still have that experience if you happen to have a large fruit market close by, but it take A LOT of apples to create that enveloping cloud that fills your nostrils and your lungs. That must be what they mean by a 'heady' aroma. You felt that if you could just take a deep enough breath, that rich air would lift you off the platform and float you through the air. Who needed a broomstick when you had an apple packing plant! Then, over the train tracks and along past the Buckerfield's grain elevator. What a warm and wonderful mix of mysterious aromas drifted out those huge doors. As a child I had no idea what those smells represented, but I was sure it would be something marvelous. Gathering up my courage one day, I ventured in the door, expecting who knows what wonders….to be greeted by a puzzled man behind a counter. Buying and selling grain by the ton, he had nothing for me but sympathy. If we took the shortcut home, we passed the Vernon Box and Pine. That was the clean, crisp smell of freshly cut wood. It would draw us like a magnet past the stacks of wood, along the platform by the tracks - we could peer into the dark sheds and hear the sounds of saw and hammers. Adventurous stuff. At the bottom of the back road there was still a working blacksmith. He was still there in the early 1950's and I don't know when the shop finally closed. You could smell the horses and hear the hammering, but it was the other smell that told you where you were. That is a smell you never forget - very acrid. I think it must be the smell of the burning coke, but I'm not sure. I do know that it can't be mistaken for anything else. Blindfolded and dropped at a blacksmith shop anywhere in the world, you would only need to take one breath to know where you were. Over time it gets into the very wood of the shop so that long after the fire is out and the blacksmith is gone, the smell lingers still. Next door to the smithy was the bottling plant. If we behaved ourselves, we could watch from the doorway as an endless stream of glass pop bottles marched in single file along the conveyer belts to be filled up with the flavour of the day. All day long there was the soft clinking sound of glass bumping gently against glass, followed by the swish and thump as the cases of glass bottles were loaded on the trucks for delivery. Stacked in the back of the warehouse were the shiny aluminum barrels filled with pure coke syrup, ready to be mixed and bottled. Now, there is a rich smell! Of course, we do still enjoy the smell of the autumn leaves, although we can't burn them anymore (never on Monday, when washing was on the line) The apple orchards smell as sweet, the peaches littering the ground smell just as delicious, but I can't help believing that it was better then - when we were young. Pat Archibald, Editor

 

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