You Smell That?

Dog shit is what I usually smell when I open the bathroom window while taking a shower. That's because I let the dogs out on that side of the house and I never clean up their mess. This morning though, when I opened the window, the aroma of my neighbor mowing his lawn came wafting through. Funny thing about smells, they can transport you back to an earlier time much like a favorite song. The smell of the cut grass brought me right back to my childhood home on Ravinia Drive. In my mind I could plainly see my dad mowing our large lawn. I reminisced about sunny Saturday mornings, the smell of the two stroke engine, and the sound of my dad cursing as he ran over one of our toys with the mower. Another smell that reminds me of my dad is fresh cut pine lumber. Once in a while I will wander into a place that has a stack of pine lumber, and I immediately remember being in I.N.R. Beaty Lumber Company with my dad on a Saturday morning. It's nice that these smells can bring my dad back into my life. As for the smell of that dog crap outside the window, that just reminds me of dog crap.