Before anything else, can you please show me that heartbreaker smile of yours, and smile with these road workers?
Now to our main agenda for today:
In one of her recent blogs, I love the smell... , Alyss admitted to being enamoured by the smell of thick, steaming black asphalt, and that she couldn't help but stop and inhale deeply, over and over again, while a crew prepared to re-lay a pavement with the asphalt.
I wrote a comment, saying that I loved the smell of asphalt, too, perhaps because I associate it with some memorable childhood experience.
Now that I think back on that comment, I realize that some childhood memories did create in me a special attachment for the smell of asphalt. Well, not exclusively that of asphalt smell, but a mix of smells that include asphalt.
My parents settled down in a coastal city, where I was born, and all of us four siblings easily took to beach and water. But, like I said in earlier entries, we also spent much of our childhood summers either in the quaint little upland riverside town where my mother grew up, or in a mountain resort city several hours ride away.
Both places were mountainous, covered with conifers, and with the local road system still underdeveloped. In short, there was much road-building and tree-felling activity, which children our age held so much fascination for.
Road-building and tree-felling weren't the only things we watched all summer long, of course.
We would roam the rural and suburban countryside, hiking all day either along the roads or cross-country -- jumping fences, fording brooks, climbing fruit trees, getting bitten by bees and big red ants, running away from angry dogs... that sort of thing.
And I particularly remember one of the best fun games we had -- running against the incoming fog as it swiftly crept along the roads. Always, at first we would race ahead, but inevitably it would catch up with us.
In my child's mind, the incoming fog seemed like a gentle and wild creature, a soft and mysterious giant white buffalo that ran after us, then blanketed us with its thick cold fur and peculiarly quiet breathing.
But my brothers and I came back, again and again, to the curiosities of road-building, watching road workers as they handled this bizarre material called asphalt.
Road workers would dump heaps of hot asphalt on a rough road, set up an oil drum (containing tar) on huge river boulders, and start a big fire fed by thick resinous pine logs. The smoke from the burning pine alternately drew us in with its aroma and warmth, then as the wind shifted direction, beset our eyes and noses and drove us away to watch again from another side.
Then, when the tar was melted, the road workers would use tin-can dippers on long poles to spread out the tar on the road surface, then lay the asphalt with spades and rakers. The tampers and steamroller machines came in last. It was mostly manual, unlike today's behemoth two-lane macadam paving machines.
I loved the whole ambience of it, but especially the combination of the tar boiling on oil drums, the smoke coming from burning resinous pine logs, and, quietly from the background, the thick fog coming in to dampen everything -- colors, smells, sounds -- like a soft watercolor wash on a Chinese painting.
That scene frequently replayed itself during the summers of my youth, so much so that when I first gained confidence (as a struggling young artist) in intaglio etched printing, I tried to capture the same feeling by drawing the road-workers as I remembered them.
I sketched direct, from my memory, to the zinc alloy plate covered by a thin film of ... guess what... tar, of course. And what did I use for giving a grainy texture to the etched intaglio piece? Why, powdered resin, of course.
So there it is, the art work I made. (Scroll up for a quick glance, please.) I made it when I was 18. It's a work I'm very proud of.
Come to think of it: A worker creates art on metal, paper and ink, using tar and resin, to remember other workers of his childhood, who created art on road, gravel, and asphalt, also using tar and resin.
I smile at the poetic rightness of it all.
Ain't it funny sometimes how we can so easily connect a seemingly ordinary smell, taste, or sound, a specific street scene, to some of our most cherished childhood memories? Thank you, Alyss, for making me relive that connection in my mind today.
(Psst. Diary. Hey. I hope you liked my story today. Sorry that I had to use Photoshop to deface the captions at the bottom of my work, which contains my name and the title of the print, which also contains the name of the place. I hope you understand. The original work remains as is, I assure you. Big smile.)
