Nothing can evoke a memory as strongly or as suddenly as the sense of smell, but it is not always easy to persuade others that the smells you cherish are as wonderful as you make out. Cow dung is an immediately identifiable smell, and one that makes most people roll up the windows of their cars as they speed past farms and cattle lots. For me, however, it is more than that. For me it is a smell rich with promise because it was always the prelude to summer at the beach. Others may, in fact, cherish the promise of crops to be fertilized, dairies producing milk, or the mere sight of placid, friendly cows. But none of these reasons has the same sting of anticipation that accompanied the smell as it wafted into my father's big car as he delivered us for the month of August to my Grandmother's big house at the lake.
I suppose that to experience the smell as I did one would have to be a child, filled with excitement over the biggest annual change in what I took to be a very humdrum existence. During the first three hours of the trip my brother, my sisters and I would not allow ourselves to think about where we were going. It would have been too much. As the car left the highway and circled down to the first county road, however, it was impossible to suppress the excitement. We were there! But this road went on for four miles before we took the turn and headed straight out to the lake that was still some twelve miles away. Although it must have rained sometimes and the sun could not always have been shining I cannot picture these twelve miles any other way than as filled with a baking heat and bright light that meant a cool lake and cool woods would enfold us while the baking sand and hot, dusty country lanes would prepare us for more of the same--again and again.
Shortly after turning onto that last road the farms began and the smell would hit us. My sisters, selfishly I thought, would insist on windows rolled up. My bro...