A Whiff Brings a Memory from Long Ago

On my walk this morning along Tampa Bay, as two guys passed by me, I caught a whiff of what smelled like Borkum Riff tobacco.  It brought me back to the summer of 1966.  After I graduated from high school, I had a summer job as a stock boy at Hall's Drug Store at Westgate Shopping Center.  (40 hours/week.  $60 gross, $48 after taxes)  Once a week we would unload incoming stock from a big tractor trailer.  After taking inventory, we would distribute the items to the shelves in the store, with extra placed in the storage room.

When stocking the tobacco counter, I always loved the smell of this pipe tobacco.  I didn't smoke, but this smelled sooooo good!  So, as I walked along today, I was thinking back on that summer.  It was lifetimes ago!

Then, that memory brought up tons of other memories, all flooding back in rapid succession.  It reminded me of something a counselor had once said, about memories being stored in "stacks" in our brain.  And that if a smell or a sight or a sound triggers a memory, all of the memories in that stack can surface.  That comment really hit home.  When I first started work after graduating from college, I was a computer systems analyst with a NY State agency.  Our mainframe computer was a Burroughs.  It's memory was arranged in 'stacks'.  I guess that's why the comment made sense to me.

So, as I walked on, various memories popped into my brain, all seemingly random.  My grandmother, in her kitchen, saying she had the blues because she was thinking of her mother.  Pulling into the driveway of my home of 31+ years.  My children as babies.  Plus what seemed like a myriad of other visions from the past.  Maybe someday I will write them all down.  But for now, I will enjoy the aroma of Borkum Riff in my memory.