smelling a memory

I used to scrub toilets for a living in the not-so-distant past, relatively speaking.

But I had completely forgotten about this one place, until I poured a good dose of Pine-Sol in my kitchen sink and before I knew it, I was back within those cinderblock walls.

It wasn't jail! Not those kind of cinderblock walls, although at the time it felt like it.

It was a summer, maybe 2004 or 2005, and it was in Kentucky. It was me and my three sisters and we found work just down the road from our house at a couple different Kentucky Lake resorts. Me and my two sisters were cleaning ladies; our other sister was the cook in the little resort cafe.

This is where people spent their money to spend a week or ten days in cinderblock barracks. Or poorly decorated cabins. But they were on the lake and daddies got to fish with their sons and mothers got to lay out with their daughters. More power to ya.

While the over eager youth groups camped out in the barracks, rows and rows of shady, Pine-Sol drenched hotel rooms were available for the single person or couple.

And we, the cleaning ladies, sped around on golf carts with our industrial-strength Pine-Sol, which is now on my kitchen floor.

We didn't last there very long. The owners of the joint were aggressive assholes. Cleaning ladies and cooks we may have been, but respect we will deserved.

We migrated just a bit farther down the road to another resort with actual condos and rustic cabins with hot tubs and whirlpool jets.

And a higher grade of golf cart.

"Hey, do you remember that shady resort we used to work at? And () was the cook?" I texted my sister.

This was in the midst of a rapid fire texting conversation that involved her telling me she couldn't bring an orange snack to our all-orange Texas Longhorns watch party this afternoon. As a matter of fact, it's a red snack.

"Where was this? I don't recall," she replied.

"In Kentucky. It wasn't Tracy's place; it was the other one. They tried to not pay () one time so we all quit. It had nasty-ass cabins and huge barracks with cinderblock walls."

"Yessss!!!!! Haha, I remember."

What is it with us and cinderblock walls jarring our memory?

"What about it?" she followed up.

"I remembered it this morning because I poured pine-sol in my kitchen sink and my whole house smells like it."

"Ahhh, the memories!"

A few seconds later:

"Do you remember the toilets we cleaned at Riverside RV park for $1 a day?"

No, no, I do not.

That, dear sister, is a memory I am not privvy to. I will leave it to you.