Scent Memories
December 8, 2008 at 12:18 pm
While I was in college I worked as a laborer during the summers at the same company where my father was a civil engineer. He designed buildings, managed all the on-site work, and also ran a job site most weeks himself. I spent my time as a grunt working either on a job-site or in the plant producing the pre-cast, pre-stressed concrete beams, columns, wall panels, and roof pieces for the buildings. We pulled 1/2″ steel cables through the forms, then set up steel rebar, reinforcing mesh and tied in any other metal-work that needed to go into each piece. The steel cables were then put under tension and the forms were filled with concrete. After that was done, we set up risers and styrofoam sheeting as insulation and covered it all over with long tarps to hold the in the heat. Steam was run through the forms overnight to speed the curing process so we could extract the newly created concrete pieces first thing the next morning. I will never forget the smell of hot, wet concrete.
I was taken back to my time in that plant this morning when I walked into the basement of the Old Chemistry building where I work. That hot-wet-concrete smell was just noticable in the air. Someone in geology was messing about with concrete or perhaps the steam heating system had a small leak. Who knows? I hadn’t thought about such things in quite a while, and it’s interesting how a smell can transport you back to an earlier time.
Categories: Personal
