CHAPTER THREE: AUTUMN IN DENTDALE..... The sweetest scent of all!

CHAPTER THREE:  AUTUMN IN DENTDALE

BY

ANONYMOUS DENT

 

Spanky Trenton and I were sitting at The Rail over on Clements Bridge Road the other night.   We were talking about some of the things that triggered our best memories in Dentdale.   There were ball games, and parades, berry festivals, fireworks, weddings and funerals that were all memorable.  We got to talking about the Boy Scout’s newspaper drives, and how we’d get up early on Saturday morning to load up whatever pickup truck, or station wagon with Dentdale’s used newspapers.  The Courier Post, The Suburban, The Penny Saver, they were all welcome additions to our recycling efforts.  But the mother-load of newspaper recycling resided at the homes of Dentdale citizens who had their Philadelphia Inquirer delivered daily with the super bonus of: THE SUNDAY EDITION!!! 

It was one of those moments where we both (Spanky and I) said: 

“You know you’re old, when you can remember newspapers!”

Followed quickly by:  "Jinx"

 

 

Well, I can remember both ends of the newspaper business.  I remember myself (Anonymous Dent), Toot Barrington, and Scooter Reamer, going down to Third Avenue to load up on the Camden Courier Posts!   The smell of rubber bands, newsprint, and on a rainy day; the smell of wet newspaper going into plastic wraps!  We’d load up those big canvas bags with our load of newspapers and hit the road.  Keeping our bikes on the road, and perfecting your paper toss was about as much multi-tasking as we were gonna do in those days, and frankly, over the course of time, I haven’t gotten much better at that multi-tasking thing!

Most of the folks in Dentdale knew that the Boy Scouts or some other organization would have a paper recycling drive, and so they’d just stack up their papers in the garage, or put them in the paper bags that they brought their groceries home in!   Way back then (the 1960s) we didn’t have little plastic bags for groceries, and no self-respecting citizen of Dentdale would even think of bringing their own reusable, canvas tote to the grocery.   I remember when Frisky Barrington came back from his first trip to Paris.  He had gone to the ‘Super Marché’ and stood there like a fool waiting for it to be bagged!  All the other Parisians thought he was a fool for not knowing that you brought your own bags…. Hehehe!

Back in the United States every super market had bag boys (and later bag girls) and for the most part, your groceries were taken out to the car for you.  Eventually the insurance companies tired of paying out claims for scratched and dented cars, and the supermarkets got tired of herding their carts from blocks or miles away.   That’s when those big barricades were put in place so that the bag boy held your cart at the front door while you pulled the car up to be loaded.   Of course, if you shopped at the A&P over in Denton Heights (which was in a really weird location), you had your coffee freshly ground at the register.  Man, did that smell good.

Well, you’ve probably noticed that this Chapter started off with Spanky and me chatting about the newspaper drive, and pretty quickly moving over to the smell of fresh ground coffee.  Smokey Haines was sitting with her friend Fluffy Nassau at the end of the bar having her Budweiser with her always present Parliament Light 100’s with the recessed filters.   It really isn’t too difficult to figure out how a nice girl named Karen Haines became known as Smokey Haines.   Anyway, Smokey and Fluffy chirp in about their favorite Dentdale scents!   Not surprisingly Smokey remembers her Mom’s first cigarette of the day and the smell of that, mixing with coffee and hairspray.  I don’t smoke, but I have to admit that on occasion, a freshly lit cigarette does take me back to the good-old-days when you’d walk into the VFW, Dentdale Firehouse, or Cinelli's Restaurant to find a thick haze of cigarette smoke.  Some writers describe that as a ‘fog’, but I recently saw that haze described as a ‘fug’!   A ‘fug’ seems to be a more apt description!

In that regard, nobody could forget the stanky stank, of Jake Barrington’s cigars.   Jake’s son Frisky told me that he’s gonna send old Jake to the crematorium with a box of El Producto Cigars so that Jake can have one last smoke!    

Carol Barrington allegedly gave Dr. Judson $10 cash to ban Jake from smoking inside the house!   They had the place on Barrington Avenue that’s just a few doors down from The Rail.   It’s the blue house with the big porch.  On a rainy day, while the rest of Dentdale smelled clean and fresh (that is, when the prevailing wind sent the Fiberglas smoke the other way) you could be at the corner of Clements Bridge Road and still smell Jake Barrington’s cigars as he puffed away in his forced exile on that porch!  

Fluffy mentioned the smell of Imprevu by Coty, which of course led to someone else mentioning Chantilly (which is still available at the Lady Fifth Avenue Boutique).  Mitch Edwards brought up the scent of Brylcreem and Old Spice that his old man used to wear.  Then Rusty Moore mentioned Hai Karate and Pet Rocks.  Of course you can’t smell a Pet Rock, but Hai Karate and Pet Rocks were pretty much what most of our Dad's got for Christmas back in 1975!

Pretty soon, the whole bar started chatting about this scent; that stank; this odor; that smell!  Which of course led to about ten of us marching out the front door to enjoy the exhaust from The Rail’s air conditioning system.  Between The Rail, and Mrs. Irwin's house was a patch of grass, and this is where the air conditioning always vented itself.  Whether it was a window fan, or window air conditioner, or the now existing central air conditioning that smell hadn't changed in at least forty years!  Seemed we couldn’t decide whether it smelled more of old beer, oregano, cigarettes, or pee from the guys (we assume it was the guys???) who decided it was time to take a wiz on the wall of the bar….  

We kind of came to a consensus… which I have since forgotten, but the next time we ran into each other (which was a SOONER , rather than LATER event) we all had a list of scents that took us back to memories old, memories not-so-old, and possibly a few memories that were quite mistaken!

 

At the second convening of the Great-Scents-of-Dentdale-Club, Snookey Albertson came in the front door wearing that Chantilly that was mentioned the previous week.  Actually, Snookey was about half a block away from the open front door of The Rail, and her Chantilly announced her imminent arrival. By the second or third beer, we were all just shouting out and tumbling all over one another with our lists of great smells.   Just when I thought we had exhausted the entire list, someone would come up with something new, and we’d be back at it again.

Most of us did conclude that autumn in Dentdale was the best smelling season.   It was agreed that autumn in Dentdale did not necessarily align properly with the Autumnal Equinox.   The smells of autumn began in August with the scent of fresh school supplies:

·         Brand new #2 Dixon Ticonderoga pencils and the smell of their fresh shavings from the first sharpening.   The first sharpening of those Dixon Ticonderoga’s happening about three weeks before the start of school!

·         A fresh box of Crayola crayons!  Only the Tavistock Hills kids had the 64 count box!

·         Being selected to clap the chalkboard erasers outside of Kingston School, and the resulting “Death-by-Chalk” that soon followed.

·         The smell of that Pink Pearl eraser, that you swore you’d keep clean.  Probably one of the only promises that we kept… because we lost the eraser, or just never bothered to use it!

·         Construction paper… all colors.   But best smelling when freshly cut and bonded with Rubber cement or that glue paste stuff!

·         Rubber cement

·         Elmer’s Glue

·         Glue paste that you could eat…… well, you shouldn’t have, but some of us did.   A quick hand-count of those attending this particular meeting of The Great Scents Club indicated that 100% of us had eaten Glue Paste at one time or another.   It was further determined that the eating of this paste had nothing to do with us ending up at The Rail for more nights then we could count!

·         Ditto machines.  Those early-day photo copiers that printed all of our tests, quizzes and other handouts!

·         Play-Doh:  again, 100% of us had eaten Play-Doh; and again, no correlation could be found between Play-Doh ingestion, and alcoholism!

·         Saw dust that the janitors used to sweep the floors at Kingston School, Avon School, or Woodland School This saw dust was especially useful after an unexpected bout of projectile vomiting (also known as 'P.V'. by children; or 'A.P.V.' in adults)..  

As several of the adults at the table had (just last Friday night) been afflicted with A.P.V.; an investigation was immediately launched into its causation and possible cure.  It was unanimously agreed (by the group) that the ingestion of large amounts of beer and wine, in combination with tequila chasers, and vodka stingers would be declared as an ‘unexpected’ and possibly ‘an always surprising’ precursor to Adult Projectile Vomiting (the accursed A.P.V.).   However, ‘room-spinning’ and ‘toilet-hugging’ were not declared as “Unexpected” or “Always Surprising” results of such consumption/behavior.

Stryder Newton had just walked into the bar to begin his shift as a mixologist at The Rail.   It was determined that Stryder was the designated driver for the field trip that had been voted on just minutes earlier.  This was a fortuitous choice, as Stryder had just emptied his Chevy Surburban of the equipment needed for his earlier commitment at the Softball Fields on Shreve Avenue.

 The committee had decided that a scavenger hunt needed to be organized and immediately acted upon.  Each participant was given one of the items on the sniff-list,  (not snuff list -after all, this is South Jersey, not South Philly) and it was determined that a quick drive down Clements Bridge Road to the Target store in Deptford would provide the group with the immediate satisfaction that the participants demanded.

So, onward they go: 
On Dasher, on Dancer....
on Smokey, on Fluffy...
on Spanky, on Michael...
on Stryder...

Anyway:

Tweety Timber and Queenie Lenton had walked into the bar just moments after the group left!  After asking Sam Trinity (the remaining bar-meister) where everyone had gone, they jumped in Tweety’s Camaro and sped down to Target to find everyone!  They didn’t see Stryder’s Suburban in the parking lot, but they had no trouble finding the group.   They just followed the scent of Chantilly mixed with Parliaments, and voila:  eight adults having a huffing party in the kid's school supply section of Target.  

Everyone gathers the items on their list, and heads to the check-out!  One item per person was the rule, which led to eleven slightly tipsy customers creating an urgent need for extra cashiers at Target.

However, Stryder did stop to stock up on tampons for the bar.   He also bought a fresh supply of felt tipped pens and markers, so that he could make fresh signs for the commodes in the ladies room (signs that would remind ‘the ladies’ that the aforementioned tampons really weren’t supposed to be flushed).   Stryder imagined using the vividly colored construction paper for his signs – but he knew that even hot pink paper was just another round in his losing battle against toilet back-up.  As a special surprise, Stryder used The Rail’s petty cash account to purchase some nicotine patches for Smokey Haines.   He figured that the less she smoked, the more she drank, and that all-in-all it was a good investment for the bar to make!

Back to the bar went everyone!   It can be safely said that The Rail has pretty much seen everything under the sun!  Whether it was Willie Mosconi making some incredible shots on the billiard table, or Jake Barrington taking some incredible verbal shots at Richard Nixon on The Rail’s television screen, there’s very little that hasn’t been done at The Rail.  However, The Rail had never hosted a Kindergarten Huffing Party.   These folks were acting like idiots!

 “Here, smell this!”

“No, smell that…”

…one after the other!

 

Eventually, everyone had a bite to eat, and things started calming down.  More than a few people mentioned that the smell of Fiberglas was a nice(ish) smell, but only when mixed with the scent of the fall leaves.

Dentdale’s deciduous trees are mostly Maple, and Oaks.  Here and there you'll a couple of Mimosa trees (like the big one in Dr. Judson's yard), some pine, and in some spots where weeds grow tall, there’s a scent of dried grass.  Even those little burrs that collected on your socks have a smell.  It was a unanimous decision that the smell of fresh-cut grass in mid-October was always a nostalgic smell, and for some, it was the smell of a burning pile of leaves that brought them back to a time that ‘once was’.

There’s a smell to football weather.  For those Dentdale citizens who played brass instruments in the Denton High School band, the smell of Noxon Metal Cleaner meant the beginning of autumn to them!   Even those who weren’t in the band knew the smell of that product, because their Mom’s used it to clean ‘The Good Silver’ for the Thanksgiving dinner.

It was too late for Webber’s Hardware to be open, and no one was particularly motivated to run over to Home Depot for some Noxon Metal Polish.   Of course, mentioning Home Depot brought about a reflection from Frisky Barrington about his brother Toot working at Channel Lumber, and Two Guys Department Store when they first opened.  

Well, you can’t mention Two Guys without mentioning the White Horse Drive-in that the Two Guys store was built upon.   With this, a bunch of remembrances about our folks putting us in pajamas to go to the White Horse Drive-in (or worse, making us change in the car), and the smells of the back of the car as we all struggled to (stay awake) and watch the featured film.   

Going to the White Horse Drive-In you immediately jumped out of the family car and ran to the playground.   The Drive-In’s popcorn and hotdog stands' vent system filled the air with the sweet treats, and delicacies that were to be had (for a price).  This was probably the first lesson that the kids had on how to keep ‘on-budget’.   Mom always loaded the car with snacks.   We didn’t have a lot of money, so the Drive-In offered us a budget-conscious way to have a family outing.   I trusted my Mom on a lot of things.  But, even as a kid, I knew that the fresh-made, Drive-in popcorn was ten thousand times better than the Jiffy Pop we had brought with us!  Why?  Because it just smelled better!  Sometimes, Moms are just plain stupid!

It’s getting late at The Rail, and we all make promises that The Great Scents of Dentdale club was adjourning for the evening!

By this point, we had all sobered up, and as we headed to our cars, or walked the few blocks to our homes, we could smell the best smell(s) of all:

Freshly fallen maple leaves, mixed with oak leaves, in piles small and large.

The remembrance of line dried sheets on a cool but sunny Dentdale afternoon.

 

The smell of…………

…well, it really didn’t matter what smell it was. 

 

It was the smell of home!

 

It smelled like Dentdale; and there was no better smell in the entire world!