Item

Lionel Trains & Billy Joel

Title (Dublin Core)

Lionel Trains & Billy Joel

Description (Dublin Core)

Last Saturday night, my folks came to visit, bringing beef stew and, yet another birthday gift for our now 3 year daughter Lennon (her birthday was a week before and they’d already showered her with gifts at that time). Of course, we’ve kept a very close circle since March last year, and that has become increasingly more important since, now my wife is 8 months pregnant, son on the way. Our reality being quite different from the norm this past year is of course, not unique to us, but had Covid not been a thing, last Saturday night, it can be counted on, that we would have been at a boisterous gathering, hosted by family members of one side or the other. My wife’s family and my own; they’re strong in numbers and lack modesty, but not volume. We miss that, but the small, quieter gatherings that the necessity of the moment has brought moments that might have been missed. That’s too much of a lead in, so I’ll make the point more brief, When my parents came, the oven cleaner was burning off. My wife and mother brought attention to it. But the smell brought me back to my childhood. That’s exactly what I said, and I looked at my dad, because I knew that he’d be the one that knew what I was talking about, though I wasn’t necessarily sure what I was talking about. This briefly interrupted our trying to construct a Troll castle (with way too many tiny parts!) or something, that my parents had just gotten for their granddaughter. But then, dad said, “Lionel Trains” That was it! The toy trains on the track that my father, brother and I used to do when we were kids. It brought us back, that was the smell. It’s probably not healthy, but it was a really nice moment. Ok, that made me think of a time that my brother recognized a smell from childhood. I was like 12, my brother 14, I think it was my first concert. My father had taken us to see Billy Joel at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, we had fun. After the show, walking through the parking lot to the car, my brother said, “What’s that smell? I remember it from when we were little.” My dad said, “That’s pot.”
Story of experiences with smell

Date (Dublin Core)

January 9, 2021

Creator (Dublin Core)

Gabriel Staino

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Gabriel Staino

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST643

Partner (Dublin Core)

Arizona State University

Type (Dublin Core)

story

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Home & Family Life
English Emotion

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

birthday
smell
burning
train
toy
memory
concert

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

sensory history
COVID-19
Lionel Trains
Bill Joel
South Jersey
Philadelphia
spectrum
small gathering

Collection (Dublin Core)

Children

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Sensory history submissions and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

1/15/2021

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

1/20/2021

Item sets

Covid 19
Arizona State University

This item was submitted on January 15, 2021 by Gabriel Staino using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive

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