Sawdust

AWW, 5/30/12
non-subject ~ going back
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Mid-spring, 2012

I went by Bruce's apartment, probably to pick up checks or secure a key or drop off a key. Maybe I was stopping by to check on Barnum and Bailey while Bruce was at the beach. Barnum and Bailey are basset hounds; Bruce is their human pet.

I don't recall my exact purpose for stopping by.

I do recall the overwhelming aroma of sawdust.

Trees were being cut down within the greens that separate the apartment buildings. I guess there were too many getting ripe for falling or tall for toppling during heavy winds and storms. There are still plenty of trees standing in spite of clearing the too-many ones


What is that smell?, my nose asked my brain.

It took me a moment to exactly identify the aroma.

Ah, yes, sawdust.

Carol, remember when you couldn't smell. It's nice to be able to smell; yes?

Yes.

Why is the aroma so very strong for me. I feel something from this sawdust smell. What is it I feel? What does it relate to?

It took a moment for the memory to pinpoint.

Balls Creek Campground...from when you were little. Scuffling down the dirt road between the shacks.

Us kids playing with our paddle balls that we'd bought at the snack shack.

Remember the weird gummy-like stuff that you would put on the end of the thin, rigid straw and then blow into the straw to make the weird gummy-like stuff on the end blow a bubble? I'd bet you'd be able to recognize that smell too, if you ever run across it.

And that one cousin, or rather double or triple cousin or some sort of relative, that you had a crush on at 5-years old? What was his name? Dean?

But mostly I recall Mom walking into our shack when I was masturbating. It seems I was upstairs in the loft laying on one of thin mattresses that laid on one of the cot-like wooden beds that had no boxsprings. I remember immediately stopping because I didn't want Mom to catch me. I felt I was doing something shameful. I was around 5 years old that August. Campmeeting was always held In August; still is.

That's what sawdust means to me, at least at this moment in mid-spring, 2012, as I walk the small incline to Bruce's place.

Barnum and Bailey are excited to see me.
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Links re Balls Creek Campground:
Photos
History Snippet
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