I was part of a mass Zoom call several weeks ago, and the presenter broke the ice by asking us to share a smell we remember from our childhood. What came to mind for the people who responded were the kinds of positive things you might imagine: favorite cooking smells or beautiful odors from nature. Me? I thought of the way the mosquito truck smelled as it spewed white DDT smoke around my Levittown neighborhood, with me and other kids chasing after it.
I did not share this that evening, since it didn’t seem to be in keeping with the positive tone of our meeting. But it did remind me that the nostalgia so many older people feel for the 1950s and 60s has more to do with selective perception than with the reality of the good old days. Don’t get me wrong.
I have lots of wonderful memories from those times, too. I was a straight, white, Protestant male in a nice, middle-class neighborhood, with loving parents and good schools. My dad had a steady job, and my mom stayed at home and took care of me and my sisters.
If she wanted something more from her life, she never let on, at least to us. The American Dream was alive, for some of us. Our house was tiny, but it was affordable, and my parents had every reason to expect that their kids could have a better life than they did, something I’m not at all sure about today.
For that matter, as far as I know, the DDT didn’t harm me, although we later discovered it wreaked havoc on birds. But I have enough empathy to recognize that the.
