WordUp by Chad Gramling

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Rodney Olsen posted about odors and smells today. The good smells. Not the bad ones that disgust some of us where the rest of us find humor. He was talking about the morning breakfast smells from area establishments while en route to another destination.

It got me thinking about smells. For the last decade or so, I have had a very limited sense of smell as the result of a head injury. While I suspect that blow to my noggin is only one of many culprits (growing up in a tobacco smoke filled house, countless other hits to the head, genetics, etc.) that is not the point. The point here is that I have had a limited sense of smell since about September of 1995.

Since then, I have been able to catch a whiff of scents here and there, but for the most part; nothing. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I only know if someone is wearing perfume or cologne by the excessive mucus that starts pouring out of my nose when the histamines start acting up (boy do I hate perfumes because of that fact). I can almost always recognize coffee or tobacco smoke, but any other scent or odor that I am able to pick up on will most likely not be recognized as I have forgotten what most things smell like. Weird, I know.

Now here is the funny part. Odors have an ability to strike emotional bonds in us. I can remember going to The St. James Restaurant in Avilla, Indiana as a child. I would go there with my parents on occasion and most often, my grandparents went too. going here was a bit fo a drive and money was often tight, so this outing was a cherished event. It was a time in which my much fragmented family stood as a singular unit. That too was a rare event.

I would always get the chicken noodle soup (which the restaurant is known for) and would probably get a shrimp platter with fries (gut I don’t know for certain). Many years later, as an adult, my wife and I went to The St. James Restaurant.

While there was about 15-20 years in between visits, when I walked in, it was like walking back to a place of comfort I hadn’t known in a long time. The floorplan and the decor had changed. The people were not familiar - even the soup didn’t feel the same. But there was one thing that granted the solace I then felt.

“Do you smell that?” I asked my wife. She responded with a “What they hell are you talking about” look and told me she did not. It was a smooth blend of the cooking odors and a heavy seasoning of garlic (from the garlic bread) that I could smell. It took me back to being 5 or 6 years old again. It was an emotional bond that I couldn’t explain to you if I tried.

Tags: St. James Restaurant, smells, odors, emotional bonds, connections, head injuries