Scent of the Morning

I've often read that the sense of smell is out most primitive, and therefore most compelling when it comes to memory.

This morning, as I walked though the neighborhood, I smelled the unmistakeable essence of mellaleuca, a tree from Australia. Mellaleuca was brought to South Florida to help drain the Everglades, because of its unmatched thirst. Over the last 20 years, ecologists realized that wasn't such a great idea, and set about destroying the trees. Most seem to be gone from Dade, although I always see huge stands of them along I-75 in Broward. I guess one or two escaped the ax around here.

At dawn and dusk, the things smell like --mashed potatoes! Of all things.

The scent brought me back to the Spring of 1980, when my Dad came to visit me at the U Miami campus. We took a long walk around, and the smell was everywhere. We kept looking for a restuarant or cafeteria, but none were around. My Dad, a meat and potatoes guy if ever there was one, got very hungry, and I recall us going to the Rathskellar for a couple of hamburgers with fries (they didn't have mashed potatoes). He left for home, with both of us puzzled by that mashed potato smell.

A few days later, I was walking around with one of my roommates, a prodigious pot smoker from Ohio, and also a Botany major. "Dude --smell the mellaleuca?" The mystery was solved --the scent came from a tree.

That night I called my Dad, and he was fascinated. "What a place we live in --the trees smell like mashed potatoes --with butter! Can you eat them?" I didn't know.

So, I thank that maverick tree or trees this morning. They brought me back to a nice place and time.