I smelled Pond's Cold Cream. My grandmother smelled like Pond's Cold Cream.

My grandparent's house was located in Shreveport, La. on the corner with a creek or ditch running along the side behind what I remember to be plum trees. They were trees with firm branches because I was assigned the task, by my mother, of choosing one for her use on my buttocks on occasion.

My grandfather was mechanical. His shop behind the house smelled of tar from the road that ran beside the place. All sorts of transistors, t.v.'s, t.v. tubes, little colorful pieces of wire were all over. He seemed to wear the same clothes everyday, greenish blue shirt and matching pants. A work outfit. He liked white bread frozen hard and stiff. I believe he ate it at every meal.

My grandmother kept in the house a cereal called "Concentrate" which my sister liked. It came in a smallish gold-covered box.

Their beds were high. I use to pretend I was a wrestler entering the ring to rescue my tag-team partner from the masked, bad wrestler. The bed was the ring. The bedspread was knobby and soft.

There was no air-conditiioning. The nights were warm while I laid high on the bed next to the raised window. There was a light blue oscillating fan clicking back and forth, side to side blowing toward the bed from its perch on a chair. The night began warm so the sheet was all that covered me, but by morning I had pulled the bedspread over me because the night air had cooled. I would lay there next to the open window listening to the night, sirens, cars, horns, distant thunder, eventually falling asleep to the clicking fan.

I smelled Pond's Cold Cream.

I am going to look for a light blue oscillating fan that clicks as it moves.