Watching an old color filmstrip set on the George Washington Bridge tonight I was suddenly lifted straight off the screen, and not to New York City, but to my childhood next door neighbor lady’s sweet smelling garage. The video, I forgot. The soundtrack stayed. I could hear the truck’s soft chugging, gas engine. Then the smell. I lifted out of New York to my Minneapolis childhood, and my neighbor’s ‘57 Bel Air idling softly on the divided driveway, moss growing between the parallel concrete strips. Then I was crouched in her garage with a stick in my hand, poking at oily black cardboard where her Bel Air would park. The smell of oil and soot. The smell of decades of labor, of her late husband, and whatever comfort she had of growing old in the sixties in her coiffed white hair. That was Mrs. Punch’s white and blue garage, her hinged accordion doors with French windows at the top. I loved the shadows and the oily smell inside. Those wooden doors rested open on the weeds at the edges, okay with wear and tear. I don’t know if they ever closed flush and straight with the world.
Memories in Kodachrome. I love this.