Sometimes the smallest thing can trigger the most intense memories

You know what associative memory is, right? It’s where a certain song or some such triggers a memory that you have attached to it. Perhaps a song takes you back to a specific event in high school. Or maybe there’s a movie that triggers memories of who you were with the first time you saw it. Ever had that happen and suddenly found yourself unexpectedly walking down memory lane? Happened to me the other day because, of all things, an air freshener.

As we were going through boxes and putting stuff away, my daughter came across a brand new Little Tree air freshener, still in the package. Pine scented, of course (is there any other kind?). My wife rolled her eyes as I took it out to my Jeep. She hates those things, says they make your car smell like you just washed your floors or the toilet. Bah, what does she know? As I cracked open the plastic, the scent came wafting out instantly. I hung the little string around my e-brake (never liked hanging them from my rearview mirror for some reason) and went back inside the house.

The next morning I climbed into my Jeep for the grueling drive to Anchorage. As I threw my faithful chariot into fifth gear and settled in for the ride, I started thinking back to my childhood. I thought about all the different cars my step-dad had and the countless times I was driven to or picked up from school in them. I remember the looks on my friend’s faces (and sometimes mine) when he would pull up in a VW Karmann Ghia convertible, a Model A truck, a ’50s-vintage International Metro or perhaps a ’40 Plymouth. The man literally had hundreds (yes, hundreds) of cars over the years and there was never telling what he would be driving. But one thing was the same; he always had a pine Little Tree air freshener in his rigs. He would buy them, rip them all the way out of the plastic as soon as he got in the car, and hang it up.

So as the miles ticked by on my daily Anchorage commute and I bounced down the road in my favorite possession (love my Jeep!). I felt nostalgic. Just like my step-dad — enjoying the experience of driving some old rig that I loved dearly with my Little Tree air freshener prompting one memory to lead into another. All those rides to and from school. The trips all over the state to look at and buy another old car. Running over to Ken Sturman’s house to see what new car he had, then watching he and my step-dad laugh and joke while talking cars. Or driving to D&W Auto where Dad would talk to the owner, Wayne.

D&W was a German auto repair shop, and even though I was just a little kid, I would go into the shop with dad and watch the mechanics working underneath a VW bug, bus or Ghia. I loved cars, so it was heaven for me. There was always a radio in the shop, so when I think of those times I can hear “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” “The Rubberband Man” or “Magic Man” in my head. I remember watching Wayne’s head mechanic, Dave, with an old Bug up in the air teaching me why the wheel on the driver’s side spins backwards while you’re manually spinning the one on the passenger side forward. Pretty cool stuff for a 6-year-old.

So that got me thinking about Wayne. Wayne was a single guy, no kids, who owned his own repair shop. He met a co-worker of my mother’s, a very attractive lady who drove a beautiful sea-foam green 1963 VW Beetle. They got married and Wayne dumped a lot of money into transforming his home into something beautiful. A long, paved circular driveway around a landscaped rockery. A 60-foot by 40-foot shop with matching paint and curtains to the house. And since they never had any children, inside the shop were a few Mercedes, a Rolls Royce, a Porsche 356, the shop race car and a late ’50s Ferrari.

Oh how I loved visiting Wayne’s house. Sadly, by the time I was in high school, their marriage hadn’t worked out and they separated. Wayne lost a lot of weight and was never the same. One day he went out to that big garage, fired up all those cars and shut the garage door, where Trudy found him the next day when she stopped by the house. A real tragedy. I had spoken with him only a few weeks before at D&W Auto when he had donated the money for me to buy trophies for the high school car show I had created.

His house was sold, but a few years later it came up on the market again. My parents had always admired Wayne’s place so they bought it and moved in. A few years after that, my parents sold it to me and it was the first house Glenny and I owned together. My kids spent their young years there playing in the deep woods and hacking trails through the blackberry bushes that surrounded the property. But I always thought of it as “Wayne’s shop” when I went out to work in the garage.

By the time I was thinking back on those memories, I realized I was sitting in the parking lot at work. I could barely remember my drive into town, so deep was I in thought over all these memories; my step-dad’s cars, driving around visiting his friends in those cars and finally Wayne and what a nice guy he was.

And it’s all because of a pine-scented Little Tree air freshener. Wow. I quietly chuckled at myself, shook my head and walked into the office.

Ben Compton is a Palmer resident and publishes his column as “Compton’s Corner,” the same title used by his grandmother, Phyllis Compton, a longtime Frontiersman columnist.