My return to apartment living continues. Almost every week provides an encounter with les temps perdu. This week's engagement with memory was positively Proustian, although baked goods were not involved.
Earlier this week, I stood in the hallway and wondered if I was sniffing something vindaloo or saagwala. Hard to tell through the dominant smell of broiled steak. Low notes of something burning. Breakfast-for-dinner toast? Pizza-saturated cardboard near the garbage chute?
By cracky, I can remember when the olfactory options for New York City apartment hallways were limited to pot roast, corned beef and cabbage, and spaghetti sauce ─ or what the cognescenti call gravy. Being slammed with one or all of these aromas depended on location, location, location. Was the building in Manhattan or one of the provinces? Was the Manhattan building above or below 14th street?* These distinctions made a difference. Then.
Now I live in Baltimore and the cooking aromas in this apartment building's hallways are as richly varied as its residents. Such abundance!
* Before Soho was invented, uptown began at 14th street.
