Time Warp

by Diane Baker Mason

This morning, upon traveling on a trip downtown to the Bay Street towers, I found myself involuntarily catapulted through an aromatic time-warp. I stepped off the elevator from those catacomb-like parking vaults beneath the TD Centre. Immediately my nose was full of the scent of car oil and concrete dust, and into the fairgrounds of the Canadian National Exhibition, circa 1967.

The summer day was hot and bright; the barkers wheedled, and the old Flyer rattled on its tracks. I was there for no more than an instant, but it happened: I was at the carnival. And with ten hard-saved dollars in my little purse, and the whole August day ahead of me, I had nothing to do but ride the rides.

And how had this marvel of physics been accomplished? Simple. When I got off the elevator, I smelled candy floss. One of the kiosks in the buried city beneath Toronto’s financial district was selling the delicious treat. It took one whiff, and I was gone.

Scientists recognize that our sense of smell is the sense most closely linked to our memory, correspondingly linked to taste. Mind you, I couldn’t taste the candy floss that dragged me back to a summer day in the ‘60s – I could only smell it. Had I been given a bite, it would have rotted my teeth. But the scent of it was a different thing entirely.

Which is not to say that someone like me – who’s been a tad food-obsessed since she was a toddler – doesn’t have a food-linked memory to just about every event in her life. The trip to Florida, when I was two years old? I remember the beach and the louvered glass door on our motel room, and the sticker book of Hanna-Barbera cartoons that my mother gave me. Even more, I remember the soft ice cream (a new creation in 1960), and the incredible good luck of eating Alpha-Bits for breakfast. My mother never allowed pre-sweetened cereals in our diets; for some reason, the Florida trip became a “special occasion,” deserving a decadent breakfast-cereal equivalent to a bowl of candy.

As a result, many “special occasions” in my life are linked to a food memory. For instance, the trip to Yorkdale Mall’s grand opening meant grape ice cream from a deli; seeing a special screening of Gunga Din at the Colonnade meant marzipan at the German shop.

My mother, who was not much of a baker, had a recipe for a chocolate cake with green mint frosting, made from whipped cream; to this day I associate mint and chocolate with my mother. She didn’t like baking and took a lot of flack for having a chubby daughter, but from time to time she would produce this magnificent mint-and-chocolate opus. I can still smell the peppermint extract when she uncapped its triangular bottle. It was a smell that came no more than once a year.

Now, I do not mean to imply that my sense of smell translates to a similar reaction on my taste buds. Sure, I’ve still got a vicious sweet tooth and a tendency to overeat, but I could live off carrots, peanut butter, toast, and chocolate (as long as there was a lot of it). I enjoy the taste of a frozen roast-beef dinner just about as much as I do a properly-prepared, done-to-perfection Sunday joint. Losing my sense of taste wouldn’t be such a tragedy – I could cope. But my sense of smell? How could I time travel without it?

So bring on the Alpha-Bits and ice cream and marzipan and chocolate mint. Bring on the roller coaster and the Florida beach. Bring on the August afternoon. I’ll meet you by the Flyer, by the you-must-be-this-tall-to-ride cardboard boy. We’ll have some cotton candy, and a soft ice cream.

Can’t you just smell it now?