Vinyl records, soup dumplings and Jimmy Carter appeal to the senses
Three is a Magic Number by Steven Uhles
Recently, I came across a social media query enquiring which of my five senses would I be willing to give up. Because I found the prospect of losing any frightening and, fortunately, because the question was strictly theoretical, I chose to ignore that unpleasant possibility. But it did get me thinking about the ways we experience the world and how that might differ in terms of perspective, based on our default approach.
Stick with me here. I believe I am a seer – someone for whom sight is the way I initially approach my world. I’m a reader, a watcher, and an observer by default. Now, if I were a chef, perhaps taste or smell might take lead position. For a musician it is probably hearing. Everyone initially leads with a specific sense. Everyone, I believe, has a primary.
That said, there are certain situations that I’ve found sight switched to secondary and when I think back on or forward to places and situations, it’s with another of the five senses. With that in mind, I thought it might be fun to think about the world immediately around me that, rather than triggering visual memories, instead activate other means of perception. Check out this week’s Magic Three:
This is what Broad Street smells like
I live in Columbia County, but when asked to describe the community I call home, I start on Broad. Much of who I am and the things and people I love are closely associated with downtown generally and the nine blocks of Broad between 6th and 15th specifically. What’s interesting however, is that my favorite places on Broad – and in any city really – are more connected by what I smell than what I see. That’s because a visit downtown, for me, always includes a roll through the Book Tavern bookended by stops at Grantski and Psychtronic Records. What’s interesting about those places is that although I stop to browse and read and touch, when I think about them, I think about how they smell. They smell like paper slowly turning to dust. They smell like the ethereal gases vinyl releases as it ages. They smell like an unexpected amalgamation of history and memory and nostalgia. I’m not one for wearing scents – with the exception perhaps of peppermint soap – but if someone ever found a way to bring bottles of Books n’ Records to market, I would be all the way in.
This is what I wish Augusta tasted like
A new eatery opening in Augusta is not uncommon. It happens a lot and, fortunately for the Food and Beverage community, most new spots are greeted with a fairly warm welcome. As someone that enjoys – perhaps even embraces – the idea of the meal I did not have to prepare, I count myself amongst that number. Still, despite scanning the culinary horizon for years, I’ve yet to see a personal culinary favorite finding favor in the Augusta area.
I love soup dumplings.
For the uninitiated, these small-and-simple snacks are a dumpling wrapper loosely wrapped around meat of some kind. When the dumpling is steamed, the meat releases broth – the titular soup. They are incredible.
Now it is my understanding that a good soup dumpling is something of an art – both challenging and time-consuming to produce. I get that can bite – or slurp as the case may be – into profit margins. Still, I feel certain that should some entrepreneurial dumpling master choose to set up shop locally, they would be both discovered and embraced. I know I would be on board.
What Georgia sounds like
I was not born in Georgia. My family is from Seattle. I was born in California and, until I was about 12, we lived in the suburbs outside of Houston, Texas. So, while I have chosen to call Augusta home, as a child it really only existed in the abstract. I knew my father would travel here some. I had seen “Smokey and the Bandit.” I was familiar with both peaches and peanuts. But beyond that, Georgia occupied the same sort of imagined landscape as Narnia, Neverland, and Xanadu. It didn’t seem real. Until, of course, I heard how it sounded.
For me, Georgia will always sound like the smiling, well-spoken gentleman I saw running for president in 1976. There was something about the tone of Jimmy Carter’s voice – similar in tone to the Texas twang I heard regularly, but more rounded and smooth. I didn’t understand much of what he said, but I enjoyed hearing him speak. My parents were pretty firmly for Ford, but I was happy to call myself a Carter fan.
What’s interesting is I had the opportunity to speak to him years later and was struck by the sense memory of having heard him for the first time. It took me right back. I was a child again.
Today, former President Carter is approaching his 100th birthday on October 1 and has been in hospice care for more than 18 months. The voice I heard as a child and as an adult is, I would imagine, very different. Still, for me, it is what Georgia – the place I choose to call home – sounds like.
