The smell was always the same. He thought he could smell it from the bus as it rolled to a stop at the main gate. He definitely could smell it as he approached the guard check point. As he exited the safety of the base fence with its razor wire cap the smell was for a moment overwhelming.
Most likely the smell would stay with him the rest of his life. The first time off base he wondered if he would ever get used to it. But he did. Quickly. He was barely conscience of it any more, but sometimes it would flash across his face as a frown, because it spoke of the abject poverty of the town, and sometimes it revealed itself in a smile because he was coming to love this rough and ragged village they called Angeles City. Pronounced Angul-leeze. Soft g.
How one who had lived such a sheltered life with the comforts and luxuries of living in America could come to love this place was something even he did not understand. But sometimes he wondered if it was because of, instead of despite, his background that he liked it.
There was a distinctive element of danger to Angeles City. One could be, and many frequently were, robbed at knife point or gun point or even by being quickly surrounded by many local thugs if he was not being very careful of his surroundings. It was the element of the exotic. No where in America did he know of a place where the smells, and sights, and sounds were repeated like here. And the element of adventure was certainly a factor. The spits of dog meat for sale by two wheeled cart vendors. The sounds of young salesmen selling everything from trinkets to velvet paintings to their mothers. The freshly on site killed and butchered meat hanging in the open air markets with no refrigeration but an ample supply of flies. The ample array of strings of lights like Christmas lights hung to whatever would support the weight, covered with dust and grime of being up for years. The shrill voices of the vendors calling into the dark streets in rapid pigeon English mixed with Tagalog words when it was easier.
A few blocks from the main gate, on streets of rock and dirt which had never in history been paved, bordered by the open ditches with sewage running in them, was a small hamburger café run by a retired American GI. Like many GIs, he had been half a world from home and lonely, and found a local woman to attend to his needs and married her.
Because family was even more important in her country than his, he found the only way to keep her happy was to stay in the military and keep rotating back to this place so she could see her family. Then retiring and staying for good.
The walk to that café was always filled with children dressed in dirty torn clothes and mostly barefoot on the sharp rocks and bits of glass. They would run up to the GIs and thrust their hands in the GI’s pockets and dance away screaming "You have my money." Most GIs would certainly have money in their front pockets. It was the safest place to carry it. Most of children said they had dropped 50 cents or a dollar’s worth of coins in the GI’s pocket. Carrying American money off base was illegal, but done by most. American dollars were worth far more in purchasing power than the few Pesos they got for them at the base bank.
One evening a young boy ran up to our GI and shouted, “Hey, GI. You want my momma? She’s a virgin.”
Now that seemed pretty funny to the GI. But the other GIs explained that to many of these young pimps of local prostitutes a virgin was any woman who had not had sex since the birth of their last child. Being in a place of no enforced prostitution laws, protection was seldom used making new babies a fairly frequent outcome of the action.
But it was the smell that buried a memory tag in his mind. Like the taste of his grandmother’s tart cherry pie. And the smell of his first real girlfriend’s perfume. Sometimes, just out of nowhere, he would suddenly smell it. Even after 40 years. The taste of cherry pie, warm from the oven, the top crust sprinkled with sugar, would suddenly stop him in his day and bring a flood of memories.
So it was with the smell. He was only 19 when he first smelled it. But at 60 he could get real still, and bring it back from the folds of his memory. There is no way to accurately describe it. A mixture of sewage, rotting food, leaded gas fumes, charcoal smudge pot smoke, dust and grime. It had to be smelled to know.
The smell was sometimes remembered in similar smells in other countries. Kenya, Ethiopia, and parts of Argentina. Peru in certain places had similar smells. But each are unique. And none of them remembered like the smell of Angeles City. But then again, he was in Angeles City very regularly for 15 months. It only takes a short while to capture memorable smells, sights and sounds in a young and supple mind.
