I took a sip of my cold coffee at work today and the taste of it gave me a powerful memory of motor oil. I was at the garage in Storrs, Connecticut with my dad getting the oil changed on our VW Bug. There it was up on the lift. The wheels, relieved of their burden at last, hung down on the axles. Now the mysterious bottom was revealed. You could see the weight of this thing. The potential danger. And yet the mechanic strolled around under the car, unconcerned. He rolled up the waste oil drum, unscrewed the plug from the pan. A stream of thick, black liquid arced into the funnel as he wandered away. All there was for a while was that smell.
I took another sip of coffee and it didn’t taste the same.