Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Mothballs
Weird how smells can take you back.
No one uses moth balls anymore — at least, not anyone I know. I don’t think we used them in our household when we were growing up . . . but my grandparents did. I never knew that until now.
On the way back from the grocery store, I stopped off at a local Thai market. I had been meaning to check out this store for the last few months, but hadn’t gotten around to it. But, hey, I want to get back into cooking Thai food, so no time like the present.
I bought three different kinds of rice noodles: the circular wrappers for making cuon, the thin vermicelli used to stuff the cuon, and the wider noodles for making pad thai. I bought red, green, and masamun curry paste, some coconut milk, two different kinds of squid snacks, a mix for making satay chicken (because I’m lazy), and pre-made sauce for pad thai (see last parenthetical). I went up and down the aisles twice so that I wouldn’t miss anything important, and it was the back of the store that brought me to a halt.
Actually, it was the huge crystals of alum that caught my attention. I wonder what it’s used for? But when I got closer to examine that bag, I found another bag labeled “naphthalene balls.” You can smell them right through the plastic. I stood there for a few minutes, smelling the bag, and even after I moved on, I kept smelling my fingers. I was back in the house on Atlantic, and it seemed a small matter to close my eyes, step forward, and enter that forever-dark living room with its shmatte-covered sofa, the chair wrapped in plastic that No One Must Ever Sit In, the TV no one ever turned on, the cabinets of tchotchkes. I can see my grandfather sitting in his recliner, I can hear my grandmother yelling from the kitchen. (The GM: Off your ass, useless! The GF: Shut up, you toothless witch! Half in English, half in Yiddish.) A few steps further and I’m sitting on the wooden bench of the kitchen’s dinette. My grandmother gives me a slice of my grandfather’s bakery’s rye bread mit shmear (margarine, never butter) and her signature beverage, watered down RC Cola, or something very much like it.
Something tells me that smell was everywhere. Something tells me you only need to bring a bag of naphthalene balls into your house and leave it there one night, and your house will forever have that smell.
The package said: Covers odor of mildew and decay with sweet smell.
I wonder what my grandparents were trying to hide? Maybe the odor of that monkey my grandfather kept hidden in the attic, the one he would never show me.
D.
my freshman year roommate used moth balls at home and our room often smelled of them when she brought clothes from home. it always reminded me of playing hide and seek at my maternal grandparents’ old house, hiding in the closet by the stairs with all the old coats, waiting eagerly for one of my cousins to find me. Or roaming their old attic, poking into boxes and bags to see what treasures they held. good times.
I read somewhere a long, long time ago that scent memory is one of the longest, strongest memories we have. A scent can put us back into a time and location we wouldn’t even think of otherwise.
One big smell for me is stewed tomatoes with saltines. My crazy Aunt Charlene seemed to ALWAYS have a pot of them on the stove. I can’t stand the smell to this day. There’s a chicken/pasta/tomato thing I cook sometimes that my family goes crazy over, but I can’t hardly stand to smell it, let alone eat it, because the smell is so, so close to my aunt’s stewed tomatoes.
Bill and Laura love it though, so I cook it every month or two. Or three. 😉
Oh!
How do you make pad thai? I LOVE pad thai and there isn’t a decent Asian restaurant around here! When we lived at the old place, we used to go to this teeny – the dining room had three tables and was maybe 12′ on a side, if that, and the kitchen was maybe 12×15 including the coolers, a SERIOUSLY teeny place – where the owner (Sam) did all the cooking and his wife served the food and it was OH MY FREAKING GOD good. Kung Pao Chicken was the best I’ve had, anywhere – that was my favorite, Bill was into Mongolian beef or mushroom chicken – and his spring rolls were like salad in tubular form and OMG I loved going to Sam’s. One time he came out and said he was starting a thai menu and would I try something new. Sure!
Pad Thai seriously ROCKS! lol But I have no idea how to make it.
college life? have you not read my blog at ALLLL recently? i’m GOING TO ISRAEL IN LESS THAN 10 DAYSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. for five months. yeah. so i’ll be 10 hours ahead of you instead of 3 🙁
Have you not read my blog at ALLLL? I’m commuting three hours a day! I scarcely have the energy to check out Dean’s flickr babes!
Yes, I admit it, I’ve been remiss in my blog-reading.
Have a great time in Israel. I expect you to solve the Gaza problem while you’re there.
That’s because it was only there while he was spanking it.
A Rule to live by: Don’t watch your grandfather spanking the monkey.
I’m impressed you could find moth balls! My grandmother too used them. I had a serious moth problem (took out one rug, a bunch of scarves, a couple of sweaters, a fur hat (from my Russia days – now I’m not a fur person), and injured a coat. How I looked for moth balls! None available. I suspect that they aren’t good for you. Not at all. (This may explain some aspects of various grandparental behavior.) So instead I have to make due with a spray that needs to be renewed every six months. Yuck. I’d ask you to send me some moth balls, but suspect they are covered under the Basel Convention on transhipment of hazardous waste.
My grandfather owned an Oriental rug store and had a HUGE vault in the basement for storing rare pieces and his personal collection of inscribed pieces. I’m not sure, but off the top of my head I think there were at least sixty to seventy rugs rolled up and stored in long cubbies. Each rug was loosely wrapped in brown paper, and a sprinkling of naphthalene crystals went in every cubby. Not touching the rugs, but near to it.
When you swung open the door, you got this wave of moth ball scent. Eventually they stopped using it as long term exposure to the vapors causes anemia, cancer and cataracts, along with nausea and vomiting. But for a while there, when I was a kid, that vault just reeked.
My cousin once famously picked up a package of mothballs in the grocery store, put it up to her face, inhaled deeply, and said, “Mmmm. Daddy.” Freaked my grandmother right the heck out.
I meant to say above that although the crystals were used in the vault, my grandfather was from the old country and was VERY suspicious of chemicals. Therefore he never used them in his house or anywhere else in the store.
For me the smell of my grandparents is the smell of lanolin and lemon oil. The rugs in his house were mostly rustic pieces, with a few exquisite fancy rugs in the dining room and front living room. The front living room and dining room smelled of lemon oil (furniture polish) and the rest of the house smelled of lanolin. His hands always smelled faintly of lanolin too.
I live out in the sticks up here in Bears-Wear-Snowshoes, Michigan, and we use good old mothballs(though they are hard to collect because it irritates the moths)to scatter under our porches as an effective deterrent to skunk and racoons taking up residence under them.
We used to use mothballs in the storage bags for our winter clothes. Had to hang everything outdoors in the breeze for half a day to get rid of the smell. Mothballs also keep away squirrels and other varmints from your attic if you can stand the smell.
It is amazing what memories smells can evoke. Loved the portrait of your grandparents, I felt as if I was there.
So it IS possible to get rid of the smell! I had my doubts.
Thanks for checking in 🙂
I took my clothes to college with mothballs in the hanging bags for my winter clothes, having learned at my Grandmother’s knee the goodness of the mothball.
I remember when they were declared “pizen” and couldn’t believe I had escaped unscathed as I was in and out of those smelly closets all my life.
Memories!
Thanks for them.
Suzan