I had just gotten back to my barracks from the base exchange at Clark Air Base in the Phillipines with a box of 35mm camera film.
I had bought an Olympus 35mm camera from a buddy and this was the first roll of film I’d bought to run through it.
In fact, it was the first roll of 35mm film I’d ever bought, and I was plenty excited So, I ripped the top off thecarboard vbox and popped the plastic form the canister and - Oh, Wow!
What a cool smell. I learned later that was the emulsion on the film that gave it that distinctive chemical smell, but all I knew at that moment was that it smelled like possibilities and a limitless future.
There was no telling what kinds of pictures I might take with this camera and roll of film.
They were like an empty canvas or a blank piece of paper and a sharp pencil. Only the lack of imagination could limit the possibilties, especially in an exotic locale like the Philippines.
I took quite a few photos during the rest of m y tour, including my favorite - one of a hog tied up a telephone pole. Every roll of film that I bought had that same chemical smell of possibilities and it became linked in my head with a sense of time and place.
This particular roll was Kodak Tri-X black and white film, which is still made today but doesn’t smell quite the same.
I still shoot a lot of film, but these days I buy 100-foot rolls and load it into canisters myself. Way cheaper that way, but it doesn’t smell like the Philippines in 1974.
And I miss that. I like to play guitar, too, and have a favorite one. It’s a 21-year-old dreadnaught with Spanish cedar kerfed lining on the inside.
Play it for a few minutes and suddenly you get the aroma of the cedar drifting through the soundhole.The scent is coming from pieces of an old dead tree, but it smells like music and the joy of making it.
When I’m playing, I often pause to sniff the soundhole and get that musical smell of the cedar. I often offer Kindra the chance for a whiff, but she usually declines.
I suppose we all link specific smells with specific times and places.
Today, 60 years later, bacon smells like my grandma’s kitchen when I was 10 years old.
Dried leaves smell like earning money for the first time, rooting around on hands and knees to pick up pecans.
Cut grass smells like Saturday afternoon and rushing to get chores done before Dizzy Dean and PeeWee Reese came on tv with the Game of the Week The more distance and time that comes between me and those memories, the more I appreciate the sensory anchors that keep me connected to them.