The Scent of Long-Gone Lilacs

Susan Cameron, copyright 2013


Shut your eyes the next time you smell freshly-cut grass -- shut them and let that scent take you back in time and space. Where does your memory take you?

As for me -- there I was, pushing the rusty old lawnmower through the ankle-high grass on a warm, humid summer's day in Detroit. We didn't own the fancy kind with an engine. Who would waste good money on an expensive thing like that when there was a healthy twelve year old girl to push the old one? It was my job to mow the lawn, and I (sometimes) liked it. The front lawn was pretty basic, just two patches of grass flanking the front walkway to the stoop, but the garage-less back yard was a different thing entirely. I'd push the mower down the skinny walkway alongside the house and enter a world of scent and color.

I had to be careful not to mow too close to the border of lilies of the valley, so aromatic, their waxy creamy blossoms arching over the edge too near my whirring blades. I'd mow around the sun-dappled Rose of Sharon tree just as carefully; I didn't want to bump into it and disturb the bees humming deep in the pinky-purple trumpet-shaped flowers. There was a patch of wild violets hiding in a hollow next to the Rose of Sharon, beautiful tiny visitors my grandmother forced me to evict from the premises (I'd asked for special dispensation for them, but the judge said no). Further back, the snowball bush was in full bloom too; each snowball was comprised of hundreds of tiny white flowers, and every snowball was bigger than my fist. The bush had been there so long, it wasn't a bush any more. It was gigantic, so big you could barely see past it to the lilac bush in the corner.

The lilac bush was old too, and huge -- it had become a lilac tree. The dowager lilac tree draped her purple robes over the rickety wood-and-wire fence that separated the yard from the alley and hid the telephone pole that secretly propped her up. The individual blossoms were every color from almost blue to lavender pink to deepest purple, and the scent of the lilacs in bloom was so strong it could make you woozy. I'd cut the grass around her, then come back with shears, and fill one aromatic vase that would scent our entire small house.

I was thinking of those lilacs when I looked up the old house on Google. Detroit's bankruptcy is big news at the moment -- a million people have left, and so has hope. They say one picture is worth a thousand words:

https://www.google.com/maps?q=&layer=c&z=17&iwloc=A&sll=42.424350,-82.981418&cbp=13,182.0,0,0,0&cbll=42.424581,-82.981407&sa=X&ei=B1L3UYXwE8XgiwKi6oG4Dg&ved=0CC4QxB0wAA

I wonder if the ghosts of flowers haunt the ghetto?  Do the gangbangers and block bosses ever lift up their heads and sniff the air, confused by the scent of lilacs?

Memories...light the corners of my mind... :)

• • by Susan Cameron

    Another day, another semi-rant. I'll be taking a break from the Brit blog I've been contributing to and working on my own again, but meanwhile, here's a modified version of the cautionary tale I posted to them about my old home town...

• on August 24, 2011 at 10:42 pmSusie C.

  Ah, Detroit, my home town. Former Arsenal of Democracy, economic powerhouse, Paris of the Midwest — tree-lined boulevards, stately mansions, working-class neighborhoods full of clean and tidy homes, one of the top educational systems in the nation, beautiful parks, world-class museum…

  It took less than fifty years to turn into a shithole.

  You can find what they call “Detroit ruins porn” on the internet — the graffitied burnt-out remnants of fabulous buildings designed by famous architects. You can find virtual tours filmed by thrill-seekers from their car windows, taking their lives in their hands by driving through streets no sane person would walk on. You can type in “Detroit City Council” and listen in disbelief at what passes for urban governance.

  Or you can take my word for it when I tell you about the time I had a sawed-off shotgun stuck in my face, or the time two men with hatchets chased me out of my seat on a city bus, or when another man pulled a pistol on me while robbing my place of work and told me to take off my blouse (I refused and lived to tell the tale). Yes, I do have a peculiar sense of humor, which is one of the many reasons I hang out on this blog. Gallows humor is one useful survival tool, as most of you are all too aware.

  Anyhow, I took a final tour of my old stomping grounds years ago. Houses I’d rented flats in — burned to the ground, basements filled with soil, grass growing where they’d been. Trees busting through curb and gutter. Quail and rabbits spooked and running in front of my car. Urban prairie and gutted houses. I drove downtown. A skyscraper I’d worked in was boarded up with plywood. The Ford Auditorium on the riverfront — boarded up. I parked the car and walked to Woodward Avenue, walked to the middle and stood there, hands on hips. Where I was standing would have been the equivalent of Trafalgar Square. Traffic lights blinking red and green — no traffic anywhere as far as I could see. A tumbleweed rolled past me. The twelve-story department stores were boarded up. The only businesses open were pawn shops and stores with platinum wigs and such for hookers. I must have stood there for five minutes, watching the few people on Woodward being very careful not to look at me. Of course! Crazy-ass white woman, hands on hips — obviously a cop sent out as bait! I drove away, flew away, and haven’t been back since.

  So why am I posting this? It’s not self-pity, believe me. I have a life that’s so great it’s almost beyond belief. I’m saying very few people in Detroit fifty or sixty years ago would have imagined what it is today, and very few people in England have a clue just how bad bad can be.

  Just all of you cops.

  Actually, there are young white hipsters moving downtown these days, artists and musicians, restauranteurs and urban farmers, attracted by low commercial rents and housing so cheap it’s almost free. I wish them all the best, and hope they make it. But me — I still remember defensive driving, Detroit style. See a red light way up ahead? Slow down, keep driving, try to time it so the light is green when you get there. That way snipers on rooftops can’t pick you off easily at the red.

  You can buy a three bedroom house on the street where I grew up for $3500 — about 2100 pounds. Other streets on the east side have houses for sale for a couple hundred dollars. You could emigrate there and help be part of the repopulation effort, but I don’t think you’d find a club you’d like to belong to.

  I just figured I’d throw in a boots on the ground perspective. Erm, please excuse me, I feel that twitch coming back…
• copyright 2011 Susan Cameron
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Another One Bites the Dust

by Susan Cameron

I patted my old Saturn goodbye yesterday.
I loved that car. It was
Hard-working, reliable and fun –
The perfect partner, yes?
But car years are like dog years.
So at fifteen,
Unless there was costly life support,
My Saturn was at the end of the final road.

The air conditioning fan had failed, so
I listened, window down, as we squeaked
To a halt at the stop light –
Listened to the death rattle of the exhausted engine,
Clattering despite the half-quart of oil it drank a week –
Smelled the faint whiff of sulfuric rotten egg
From the failed catalytic converter
Making its way through the rumbling muffler
And out the rusty tailpipe
As we headed to the junkyard.

But it was a good car, a great car, a noble car,
Even as it struggled and gasped –
A dying car
From a dead division
Of a near-dead car company
In the dying city of Detroit –

My Saturn, tough and gutsy to the end,
Knowing this was a good day to die,
Sang mariachi music at the top of its lungs
And I saluted
As it headed to the crusher.

copyright 2010, Susan Cameron