Mary Ann Fitzmorris / L’Observateur / November 18, 2000

My car now offers the same kind of heady olfactory sensations you could get from a nineteenth century ethnic neighborhood in New York. Right now it smells like a popcorn delivery truck, which it currently is.

This is Cub Scout popcorn time, and we must distribute the product to other den members, and to all our customers. I like it when the car smells like popcorn. Good smells are good. Good, strong smells like the popcorn overpower small bad ones, of which there are many in my beloved vehicle.

Dueling smells. Olfactory tournaments abound in my car. “What’s that smell?” is the question which begins an embarrassing number of car trips. The popcorn overtook the Italian restaurant smell from the day old meatball we had brought home for the dog.

The meatball made its’ presence known only by odor, since we hadn’t unpacked the car from the camping trip over the weekend.

Even after we tracked it down, the sensation of the Italian restaurant lingered. But soon another smell contest emerged.

One of the challengers was a coffee pot that my husband took home without washing, so the very pleasant smell of coffee permeated the air in the automobile. Two days after arriving home from the camping trip, the car was still cluttered with some gear, and a decidedly unpleasant odor emerged. It was definitely mildew, and it became strong enough for me to completely excavate everything.

Under some books my daughter needed for the camping trip, I found some hairy shoes. That’s right…hairy shoes. These were not rawhide; the shoes were actually growing hair in the car! They were smooth black leather with a new crop of moldy long white fur.

This became scientifically interesting to us. Did they sprout just because they were completely drenched, or was there something in the inches of mud I was trudging through on the river batture that was so fertile? I’ve heard that river sand is best for growing things. Even hair, I suppose.

Nevertheless, the shoes and everything else I saw was removed from the car. But I did not look beneath the seats. Slowly, quietly, under cover of the middle seat, a half-eaten satsuma had begun the natural evolution to the end of its life cycle. The refreshing fragrance of citrus from my daughter’s satsuma gluttony had morphed into an aroma of fermentation that would make wineries jealous.

I searched the car more completely this time. Nestled in a pile of satsuma peels was the offending over-ripe fruit. The entire pile of satsuma peels was immediately removed from under the seat.

But still, the fermentation lingered. Bad smells, like their more pleasant counterparts, good smells, sometimes hang around after the source of the odor is expelled. This overpowering air of yeast was puzzling. The car was empty; it could be coming from only one place. Time for a full-fledged archaeological dig.

The extreme rear of my car is a mysterious place. Since it is rarely opened, it has become more of a storage area than anything of actual use. What is stored there is nothing we would likely use: in other words, garbage.

In searching for the yeasty odor, which could be its own dueling smell (sinceyeast, to me, smells good and bad at the same time), I found old school uniforms and petrified socks. There were used soda cans I intended to recycle, brand new, uncomfortable shoes I intended to give away, and my son’s social studies project, and I don’t know what I intended to do with it.

That was just the first layer. Digging deeper, I found the swimming pool torpedo and the one left fin we needed last summer. At the bottom of this pile, I unearthed a bag. It was bread for ducks, now black and moldy. We’re talking dead ducks now.

After throwing it away I climbed into the driver’s seat. On the floor of the passenger’s side was a small sachet of potpourri. Months ago, I purposely left it in the car after a friend’s wedding shower, thinking it could help us out.

For a while there the car smelled like a garden. But it’s been a long time since we’ve noticed it. Potpourri fatigue, I guess. But really, it never had a chance.

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