Tobaccoland

This dispatch comes courtesy of my dear friend John, an entrepreneur and former Marine. He is a fitness enthusiast and training guru who grew up in Richmond, Virginia in the 70s and 80s. At the time he was the only child of professional parents who emigrated from communist Hungary in the late 50s to Richmond, a US town with a controversial colonial history. In his formative years he experienced bussing, which was an attempt at implementing school desegregation by taking Black and Latino students to white schools and bringing white students to schools made up of minority students. The program was intended to create more inclusive high-schools and it involved literally moving kids across towns by bus every day to attend school in other neighbourhoods. John’s memories of Richmond scentscapes shed light on the city’s industry, location, and the habits of its inhabitants.

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, a historic town on the East coast of the United States, by the James River, between salt and fresh water. The tides come all the way up to the city and the smell of water is really something that is strong in my mind. The river is full of wildlife, it’s rocky, in some places there would be rapids. We used to hang out by the river, you got the fresh river smell together with the grass, truly intoxicating. On Saturday mornings I sometime went fishing with my friend Tommy and his dad and I remember as if it was yesterday that saltwater smell, oily saltwater smell. The river would bring ashore dead starfish and seaweed and it reflected in the way the water smelled. Saltwater air it’s clammy, sticks to you, you can smell the salt, the water and whatever it’s in the water.

Down by the riverside

The other scent I remember well is that of tobacco. Richmond was a tobacco town, between Richmond and Williamsburg there used to be tobacco plantations. When I was a child in the ’70s there were probably some 15 tobacco factories and the smell was permeating the air – a sweet, honey smell.  The factories were next to downtown where the air smelled of freshly cut, pure tobacco. Philip Morris used to have and still has its large factory there, it’s where they make all their Marlboros. I worked there briefly, and I remember the factory as the one place where smoking was not only allowed but encouraged. The only place where someone couldn’t smoke was by someone else’s desk, if that someone requested so. Otherwise, the whole factory grounds were smoking places. They even had ashtrays in the toilets. Workers were given a free pack of cigarettes every day and every other Friday they were entitled to a carton of cigarettes on top of the packets. Smoking cigarettes from other brands was automatic ground of dismissal and the workers had to sign a paper acknowledging this. I didn’t smoke much back then, neither do I smoke now, but I made a pretty profit selling the cigarettes I got from my job at the tobacco factory. I remember though that I smoked a cigar in an airplane on a flight to Europe once, it had a nice taste, there was no filter, and it got you dizzy. I was escorting my grandparents back to Hungary and I was smoking cigar in the plane…those were the days.

Grilled cheese and sweat

Other scents I recall from my time in Richmond have to do with my daily life: The freshly cut grass from my neighbours’ lawn because I was making some money cutting an old lady’s grass. The sweat in the boys’ locker room, before the guys could go into the shower. Richmond is very hot and humid and those moments when young sweaty boys crowded the locker room were intense from an olfactive point of view. We also used to crowd into Sal’s pizza parlour, after the football game, where you’d have 200 kids storming a place suitable for 50 patrons. Food-wise, there was also the smell of grilled cheese sandwiches available twice a week in the school cafeteria, costing 50 cents.  At the beginning of the week, I’d get 2.50 dollars to cover my school lunches and sometimes I’d spend them on the grilled cheese sandwiches. I also remember the smell of burger from local burger chains like White towers where one could smell the burgers or the pork barbecue from the parking lot. The smell of crispy duck at Christmas was so great that it would lure me from my room. To wash it all down, kids would drink Limeaid, like lemonade but made with lime. Richmond was famous for its Limeaid.

Old spice and roses

In terms of commercial fragrances, there was the omnipresent Old spice deodorant and aftershave which everybody was wearing. I first got mine as a gift for Christmas and then I bought it myself, usually from a drugstore called Rexall. At high school prom, the smell of flowers from corsages and room decoration would mix with the Old spice everybody was doused in.

My dad did not wear fragrance, but my mom did occasionally though I don’t recall the brand. I don’t think she ever got perfume as a gift from my dad. She got roses for Christmas to celebrate their wedding day and the bouquets would get larger by the year because he’d add an extra one with every year of marriage. One only realises how different places really smell when travelling and being exposed to different city scents. I recognised I landed in Budapest immediately because in the 70s and 80s the city had a distinct olfactive footprint: a combination of diesel and sweat.

Photos from Unsplash: Erik Skof, Derrick Brooks, Jay Gajjar