Snippet of Life - the Bike Shop

When I was about 4 years old, my father started a small business. He opened a bicycle shop in an old garage behind the stores on Main Street in the town we lived in. It was a small town, a bedroom community, a suburb far out on Long Island. The garage was not much to look at. If I recall correctly, it was a quonset hut with few amenities. It did not smell nice but it smelled like a place where work was done, honest work, mechanical work. It smelled of grease, oil, and sweat. It is a smell I still associate with work, real work. It meant working with your hands, building something, repairing something. He moved his business to a new location but that work smell moved with it. Fifty eight years later I can still remember it, still smell it, still associate honest work with it.