The Scents of My Hometown

There is something I wish I had. 

Among the thousands of photographs I have stuffed in boxes, envelops and hard drives, I wish I had more photographs of my hometown from 40 to 50 years ago. I have some family photographs taken from that time and the intervening years since, but I don’t have many of the town itself. As my years increase, it is sad to have only memories of what something looked like.

I was born in Sikeston, Missouri. Sikeston is north of the boot heel in southeast Missouri, and is nearly half way between St. Louis and Memphis. While it may be known for a few things, it is largely just a spot on the map as one drives north or south on Interstate 55.  It has not grown much in the years since I was born and like most other towns the years have brought change. I suppose some of this is good, but for one looking nostalgically to his past, change can be an enemy. Even so, it is still my hometown.

It was where my grandparents lived and where I’d go for visits as a child, a teenager and an adult. It was where my mother graduated from high school and where father got his first job as newspaper writer. It is where my family would spend their holidays and where I learned what homemade ice cream was. I learned to climb trees there and how to get soaking wet playing in great puddles of water after a rain. Looking back I feel that it was a simpler and freer place.

It was also where I learned about aromas. My grandparents house was filled with aroma. Whether it was mothballs coming from the large box of quilts and blankets in the back bedroom or the smell of the white vinegar my grandmother would use to rinse our hair, there was never a time that you’d step into their house and not be greeted with something interesting. In the kitchen there would be the smell of bacon or sausage cooking in the morning, just beside a big pot of simmering oatmeal. The steam escaping from the pressure cooker told you what was for dinner that night. The back porch harbored smells of laundry detergent and pickling lime sprinkled on potatoes laid out on newspaper. The living room air was hung with the smell of my grandfather’s pipe tobacco and cheap aftershave. I even think his transistor radio gave off a slight hint of something as he tuned in to the Cardinals ballgames. My grandparents house was a playground of competing aromas. 

There were also aromas to be experienced outdoors. If the paper mills just over the state line in Kentucky were operating and if the winds were just right, the smell was enough to drive you back indoors. But there were pleasant scents as well. A nice breeze from the southwest would bring with it the smell of fresh baked bread from the Sunbeam Bakery on South Main. When there was no breeze, I could walk to end of the sidewalk. Beside the sidewalk leading up to my grandparents house were two large Japanese Boxwoods. I loved the aroma they gave off. Sometimes I would bend my head down just so that my nose was right on the shrub and then I’d breathe deeply for a moment or two. 

One particular aroma lingers in my memory. It is the one aroma I miss most and wish that I could rediscover. It is the one I most associate with my childhood. Just three blocks from my grandparents house was the Sikeston Cotton Oil Mill. The mill produced cottonseed oil that was used in cooking. It was probably not the best oil to use, but back in those days we didn’t care as much about those things. Not like we do now. When the oil was being produced it gave out a strangely sweet aroma that filled the neighborhood. 

As I got older my trips back home became fewer and fewer and I wasn’t there to appreciate the smell. In time the mill, like many landmarks of my younger years, was closed and demolished. I suppose this is what change does. Yet the mill closing was just that; a mill closing. It didn’t stop the memory of those pleasant summer afternoons of breathing deeply and enjoying the fragrance of the air.

These many years later I still search for the aroma. It is very illusive. Once I was walking down the hallway of an office building and just the right amount of scents combined to give me a brief hint of the mill. Then too, there have been times when my wife and I would be driving east on Interstate 40. Near the overpass of US Highway 231 at Lebanon I could almost smell the oil in the air. When this happened, I’d slow down, wishing the  moment to last.

I went looking for a photograph of the oil mill, but couldn’t find one. As I said, I wish I had some pictures of the old places; the oil mill, Barkett’s Big Star, the Malone Theater, or even the Cotton Carnival when it was downtown on the square. But I don’t and that is a little sad.

My hometown is a place of many wonderful memories! The aroma of cottonseed oil is one. Along the way, I will share others.

Greg