Hey, what smells?

Is that my past I smell?

Come on, it occasionally happens to you, too. Admit it.

You walk into a hardware store and, somewhere down aisle 7, your nose begins to pick up a familiar odor. Try as you might, you just can’t place it, but you know you’ve smelled it before. The odor finally reaches the innermost part of your brain, the place you store all those insignificant thoughts you never need.

Slowly, the image of your grandfather’s garage, complete with soiled workbench, greasy tools, and an open paint can, begins to come into focus. Then, seconds later, the image switches to the wrinkled face and hands of Grandpa himself.

When you got up that morning, Grandpa, who has been gone for years, was the farthest thing from your mind, and, yet, you were able to spend a few precious moments with him in the hardware store.

What an amazing gift of memory we have.

If you were lucky enough to visit the Alpena County Fair the past few days, your nose and, hopefully, your memory were in overload. Every turn around every tent, building, and grandstand we are bombarded with odors. Some pleasant, some not so, but, with each one, our senses were triggered and old memories took shape.

When we wandered by the machinery and smelled the fuel, I instantly remembered Lloyd Miller.

Lloyd, dead now for over 35 years, was a jolly old farmer friend of my parents. He owned a small Cessna he would fly to check his cattle in a pasture about 60 miles from his home. Occasionally, he would invite me to go along, although I was only about 12 years old.

Old Lloyd would bank his plane in a tight turn about 500 feet above his pasture and let me fly — or, actually, steer — his plane while he counted cattle. If all the cattle were there, he knew his fence was still up, and we would head for home. If a few were missing, he would land in the pasture and we would fix fence, which was the real reason he took me along.

I recall the times when Lloyd would pass a little gas (if you know what I mean) on the fly home, immediately followed by the same utterance every time: “Damn cats!” He would grin, look at me as if I knew where the cats were, then say something like we need to get rid of those damn cats someday.

While in the fair’s cattle exhibits, I was treated with the memory of Paul Laier.

Paul died after a bout of illness nearly 30 years ago. He actually paid me to drive his riding lawn mower. I was about 9 years old at the time, and a riding lawn mower! … It was near heaven.

I would have mowed it twice for free in the same day if he’d let me. But it seemed I never mowed close enough to the barn. Maybe because it smelled so bad and Paul — never timid — would shake that long, bony finger at me, then use it to point out the grass I had missed. Then he would slink out back to his shop, where kept his proverbial “medicinal-purposes-only” elixir, well hidden from his wife, Bernice, and tend to his illness.

Oh, then there’s the food … “Fair food,” like the cotton candy. Don’t tell me that doesn’t conjure up some old, cobwebbed memories.

I was immediately taken back to the carnival midway, where, in my home town, it was set up on the downtown streets that yesterday were filled with cars and pickups but today it was tents, arcade games, bumper cars, and — my favorite — the shooting gallery, always right next to the cotton candy trailer.

For hours, I would plink those tiny .22s into moving ducks, spinning circles, and traditional targets. The fedora-clad attendant shoving me different rifles as fast as I could dig quarters out of my pocket.

Smell the cotton candy and the gunpowder? I still can.

But the smells of summer don’t start and end at the fair.

As I got older, I met and instantly fell head over heels with the love of my life, Josie. With the car windows down and the eight-track under the driver’s seat playing Tommy James and the Shondells, I can still smell the perfume she wore as we made our way to the Saturday night dances at the National Guard Armory. I miss you, Josie.

I suppose there is a 50-letter medical term for that nasal-memory condition, but why spoil one of life’s simple pleasures with some scientific theory?

Pleasure. Isn’t that what fairs and summers are for, to let go of the day’s worldly pressures and return to the child in all of us?

Take a good look around, and, most importantly, take in a few long inhales. Enjoy the memories and let new ones come to rest alongside those rusty, trusty thoughts that make us the individuals we are today.

Nice to see you, Grandpa. Good to see you, Lloyd and Paul. And you, too, dear Josie, till we meet again and can share the smells of summer together once more.

Relax … enjoy the summer, what’s left of it.

How sweet it is!

What smells conjure up memories for you? Share them with me at gregawtry@awtry.com.

Greg Awtry is the former publisher of the Scottsbluff (Neb.) Star-Herald and Nebraska’s York News-Times. He is now retired and living in Hubbard Lake. Greg can be contacted at gregawtry@awtry.com.