Anyone who doesn't believe in time travel hasn't yet been instantly whisked back to his childhood by a smell from years past. Growing up in the deep hollows of the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia I had no idea, nor concern, that I was poor. All my friends were exactly like me except for the ones whom I knew were less fortunate than us. But we were all poor. The one advantage that, looking back I realize, was we heated our house in winter with natural gas. No one else did. Gas had been piped over the mountain and the line had ended at our house and daddy had tapped into it. All the other houses on the hollow still used coal to warm their houses. This is where a particular smell comes into this story. I still remember the smell of burning coal as the smoke from many houses drifted low along the creek bed. It was a pleasant smell to me and a reminder that in the front rooms of my friends and family along the creek there was a warm and comforting coal fire to shelter beside on harsh cold days and nights. At times now even the suggestion of the smell of burning coal smoke takes me back to my childhood.
There is however one other smell form my boyhood that never fails to transport me across the miles and the years instantaneously. When I smell it now I am in another place and time as though I've been energized in the transporter room of the Enterprise and beamed backward in time to my youth. Once a year on the Sunday before Christmas the Free Will Baptist Church would bless all the country families and children in attendance with a Christmas "treat bag". We'd wait impatiently through the singing, the testimonies (lots and lots of testimonies), the sermon and finally the invitation; hoping no one would decide to be saved, and then at long last the benediction. Then the long awaited Christmas bags were handed out by the deacons as we all filed out of the building. I will never forget if I live a hundred years the aroma that greeted me on that one special yearly occasion as I opened my brown paper bag. For to a poor child it was not a treat bag, or a Christmas bag, it was a treasure bag. I'd open it slowly, put my face in the bag and breath in the delicious scent of an orange. I knew that it had come far away and that it would be the only one I'd see until next year. And the smell was like heaven to me. That signature smell of the round golden Florida fruit then would mingle with the apple beside it. It was a Red Delicious, polished and shined. It was nothing like the small knotty ones we collected from our trees. This one was special and fancy. But these two once a year treasures wasn't all; for the bag also contained hard candy with indescribable odors of sweetness and colorful coconut bonbons and chocolate colored cream drops. I hesitate to start eating it for I couldn't decide which I loved best the taste or the smell.
I wish I was a boy again. If I was I'd attend the Christmas Sunday at the Free Will Baptist church and when it ended I'd happily accept my treat bag and I'd open it and smell again that heavenly aroma. I think I'd have a deeper appreciation for it now. Now that I have a life time of living behind me. A lifetime of experiencing the good and bad, the pleasant and unpleasant, the sweet and the sour oranges; and the polished and shining red delicious of my life.
