Mary Belk: Fall has its own scents

“You’d better wear a jacket,” my daughter hollered as I headed out the door for my nightly constitutional. “The air’s chilly tonight.” I’d been waiting to hear those words for a long time.

Fall always gets short-changed. I’ve known long, cold winters and longer hot summers. I’ve seen springs that linger, but it seems I’m always waiting for autumn.

Autumn never comes soon enough for me as summer drags on for an eternity. After Labor Day, I start marking days off the calendar. I realize, of course, that the first day of fall never resembles the real thing. But on that day, summer is officially over, and that’s important to me.

This year, the morning of the first day of fall was hot and humid. The sun was scorching. People were still wearing cotton dresses or shorts and sandals. I sniffed the air and said, “That fall smell isn’t here yet. It’s still summertime.”

Every season has its own smell, and the scent of autumn was still absent. But three weeks later, there was a definite nip in the air when I took my evening stroll, and I filled my nostrils with that early fall aroma.

Certain fragrances trigger memories. As surely as a photograph in a tattered scrapbook makes me remember, a single autumn smell can take me back in time. I get a lung full of autumn air, and in a heartbeat, I’m transported back to grammar school. We sit at our little desks coloring pictures of orange pumpkins and funny black pilgrim hats. Red, yellow and gold leaves. The spicy smell of crayons fills my head as I think back.

In the fall, football was all-important in the Loveliest Village. Most women had a lemon-yellow mum to wear to the Saturday afternoon game. The mums were bigger than a bagel and had a blue pipe-cleaner AU in the middle. Coeds stood on Toomer’s Corner holding cardboard boxes filled with the game-day flowers, and the dry peppery tang saturated the air.
The stadium at gametime had its own odor.

Shakers made of thin strips of crepe paper were so dry that when they were waved, a cloud off sour smelling dust hung over the student section. And there was the stifling scent of cigarette smoke mingled with the sweet, fermented smell of cheap bourbon. Sorority girls smelled of expensive designer perfumes, while older women wore the drugstore brands.

If I’m driving in my car when I catch that first whiff of fall, I turn the radio to the nearest oldies station and pump up the volume. I’m nineteen again.

My world doesn’t contain piles of dirty laundry, leaky faucets or grocery lists. I suppose the smell of fall makes me feel that I, too, am fresh and just beginning.

The smell of fall is new-sprung. So I still have plenty to look forward to — spicy pumpkin pie and hardwood smoldering in the fireplace. It doesn’t get much better than this.

Mary Belk lives in Auburn and writes a column for the Opelika-Auburn News.