Not five minutes ago, I survived a car full of teenaged skateboarders. They were tired so they didn’t talk much except to say, “Food. Drink. Now.” They were polite and calm and even thanked us for the ride. The ride was a test of wills and endurance for one reason only: they stunk.

This got me to thinking about other things that smell, like houses. When I was young, I don’t remember noticing house smells unless they were distinctive or really bad. Maturity brought me a more refined, more educated sense of smell. At least it did with me, if you can call me mature. It might have been the only thing maturity brought me.

Lots of homes have distinct pet smells. People who own indoor cats usually have a hint of litter box to their home odor. Dogs bring to a house a smell like the woods, or worse, depending on the priorities of dog over cleaning. Some houses have an indistinguishable musky pet smell. You want to ask, “Do you have pets?” but you don’t want to hear, “No, why?” You don’t want to continue that conversation.

We met up with one of Charlie’s childhood friends a while back. After finding out where we lived and what we did, he asked Charlie, “Does your Mom still spray Lysol on everything?” He said, “You’d pick up the phone, it’d be dripping with Lysol. You’d get blown back by the smell when you’d open the front door.”

Charlie says the only house smell memory he has is of his Grandma’s house. “I hated going there. It smelled like mothballs.”

My Mom’s house smells like baking cookies. It always smells like this even though she’s in her garden seven hours a day around this time of year. I think she runs from the garden to the house, gardening and baking, gardening and baking. She‘s prepared for anyone to drop by anytime, even if she doesn‘t believe it.

My house smells great right now. Charlie’s been sawing wood, and if there’s anything which smells better than miter-sawn wood, I don’t know it. I make a special detour when I’m out walking or running just to go buy houses in the middle of construction. It’s nice to see the progress, but it’s even nicer to breathe in the smell of building. I hope one day my favorite smell doesn’t somehow give me cancer.

Other smells will give you cancer. Why do people try to sell their homes when they’ve got twenty years of chain-smoking tar and nicotine dripping off their walls. I like the color yellow but not everywhere, even the windows.

A friend of a friend knew a woman who was interested in selling her fixer. We contacted her and she said, “I’ve got plenty of people interested. If you want to see it, you have to come today.”

My Mom and Step-Dad were only visiting a few days, so they joined us. This is how my Mom and Step-Dad, who’s house always smells of baking cookies, were exposed to an hour’s worth of second-hand smoke.

There were other smells not so easily explained away.

This woman lived in a home which had rooms built on stilts inside other rooms. “My husband was a real genius,” she said. “This house is an original. I won’t sell it to anyone who wants to destroy the integrity of the structure.”

Integrity of the structure to me doesn’t mean rooms so dry-rotted and moldy weeds were growing in the corners. It doesn’t mean outdoor suspension footbridges, which were the only way to get from one bedroom to the rest of the house. It doesn’t mean smells so thick and nasty you could only take little whiffs of air at any one time. I was afraid if I took a big breath, I’d faint.

Not only was everything awful, but it was coated with several decades of tar and nicotine. It wasn’t just a chain-smoking for forty years’ smell. It wasn’t just a moldy, weed-growing, dry-rotting smell. It was as if she was doing experiments with durian, the Vietnamese fruit so stinky it isn’t allowed on airplanes. Being drunk, it smelled like she forgot about her experiments for a few years.

A day in this house and I’d be drunk, too.

When we went to the historic homes tour in Independence, Oregon, there were a few houses which brought me back to that drunk woman’s tar and nicotine palace. One house in particular was the oldest house in town.

Given over 150 years, any house can develop a good, strong original smell. This one was split into a duplex. Both sides seemed to be fighting to see which one smelled worse. I’d say they both won.

The first side smelled like 150 years of old, wet dog. The renters were polite, and gratefully kept their front door open the entire two-room tour. Good thing, because even with outside air not ten feet from me, I had to take breaths in small whiffs.

The other side smelled like 150 years of dust mixed with 150 years of hand-rolled cigarette smoke. The renter on this side shut her front door to keep it cool inside while we toured her two main rooms. Thank God these old houses were so small. I couldn’t have stayed standing much longer. I’m glad my Mom and Step-Dad weren’t visiting.

You don’t have to contend with smells when you go on the showcase “Street of Dreams.” You might encounter a fellow sightseer’s strong perfume or, if it’s a hot day, a bit of body odor. Many of the homes have cookies, or at least cinnamon baking in the oven to give the house a homey smell. They use every trick in the book to make you feel good about their homes.

When you go looking at fixers, you don‘t want to know what‘s cooking in their oven, if they have one. You feel lucky if you can breathe without taking small whiffs. If you buy it, you know soon it will be filled with the wonderful smell of miter-sawn boards.

It’s best if you don’t have to bring your Mom. The less people you have to expose to your project in the before stages the better.

Next time she comes up, I think we’ll stick to touring the “Street of Dreams.” We’ll definitely leave the skateboarders home.