Stale memories wafting about

The other day I was walking out of this house in Clifton and was hit by the overwhelming scent of stale beer. Sick as it is, I thought of Athens. Athens, like most (fun, cool) college towns, wears the scars of too many parties. Intermingled with kids walking to an from class are hippies with the trail of pot smoke following them like a bride’s train and frat boys with sweat that has a higher alcohol content than your grandpa’s whiskey.

This past weekend I was sitting in a baby shower talking to a high school junior who has started college shopping. She said her father had driven through Athens and based on what he saw of the party atmosphere it was not on her prospective school list. That’s fine, but she will never know the pleasure that can be extracted from a nasty smell.

Sometime during my first few years of college I went to a party in some huge house with rooftop access. That was before I could hit bars and raiding random parties was the cool thing to do, and, frankly, the only thing there was to do on the weekends. I was never good at the whole party-raiding thing, but free drink is free drink. As my friends and I tried very hard to be cool and fit in with all the other people, we stumbled into a smoke-filled room. Me, with all my class and tact, said very loudly, “Geez, what stinks in here?” Of course, it was the signature scent of marijuana, which one of my friends hissed at me as she yanked me out of the room. The mortification. We hurried up to the rooftop where I was able to coolly watch people pass around a joint, as if this was something I saw everyday, and watch streakers run around the block.

Many years ago I was taking a walk with a woman I worked with who was from New Orleans. While we walked about we caught a whiff of some trash sitting out in the hot sun. She sighed and said it made her miss home. She felt the same way, she said, when she drove past the trash yards around town. I thought it so odd at the time that she could associate something so gross with some place she loved so much. Maybe not.