For as much as I rely on my nose- to sense danger or fresh air or food or failing personal hygiene- I’m not sure I’ve experienced or conceived of the smell-version of vertigo, of a aromatic confusion so profound that it becomes dizzying. This is what happens when I step into ‘The New Car Cave,’ where new-car smell is mined and processed and sent around the world. It nearly floors me and I find myself trying to brace on a grab handle that just isn’t there.
‘Exclusive, maybe, and valuable in its exclusivity, the mineral deposits that produce ‘new car smell’ are found only in a single small cavern in northwest Nebraska. ‘The (New) Car Smell Cave’ presents something of a chicken/egg problem in the small communities where car enthusiasts and speleologists mingle. There is no clear record of the cave prior to the rise of enclosed cars- no clear record of the discovery of the cave at all in fact. By the time ‘new car’ had been identified as an olfactory experience, the cave’s powdery crystals were already being used as a paste to polish chrome features of then-modern vehicles.
Now, car-smell is like an addiction the world cannot shake. A new car without the smell just doesn’t hit right, and though the crystals are next to worthless, even in the scope of modern chrome polishing, the public requires their availability to signal newness in their purchases.
‘The (New) Car Smell Cave’ is not to confused with ‘The (Old) Car Smell Cave’ in central Idaho (which is, geologically speaking, newer than ‘The (New) Car Smell Cave,’ though both were discovered around the same time). ‘The (Old) Car Smell Cave’ smells like the family that rots inside it and would sell very few cars indeed.’
This is, as far as I can tell, the only reference to ‘The (Old) Car Smell Cave’ in the entire book and a small amount of subsequent research has not identified any caves in Idaho that might smell like a dead family for some reason (except for one article that suggests they all do). Something isn’t right in subterranean Idaho, that much seems clear.
‘The (New) Car Smell Cave’ is technically private property but is barricaded only in the loosest terms by a skirt of chain-link that was practically begging to be crawled under. A sign on the other side advertises very reasonably prices for daytime tours which, had I known about them, would have saved me a great deal of trouble. I briefly consider sneaking back out and returning in the morning, but if I get this over with tonight I can start the long drive up to Deep Dakota early and maybe justify a long lunch somewhere. My stomach grumble and then goes nauseous with the car smell. I put one of several hard-hats hanging on a crude iron bar nearby and step deeper into the cave.
For a mining operation, I’m surprised to find how little the natural cave has been modified. The floor is uneven and the ceiling drops close enough several times that I’m grateful for the helmet. I spy the first vein of ‘new car’ after about fifteen minutes and I pause to pull on a gardening glove that, as far as I’m concerned, just appeared in the camper one day. I drag my finger along the vein to break up the crystals and catch the powder in a little baggie as a souvenir.
I’m taking my long lunch the next day when the server, a woman in her forties, stops to observe my work.
“That’s a tree?”
I look down at the rough, stenciled cardboard in front of me and nod.
“And you’re going to cut it out with that knife?”
I nod again and look down at the hunter’s knife in my hand and then, for the first time, maybe, around the restaurant where several other people are watching me with what might be called interest but is, in some cases, fear.
“How about I get you some scissors?” She’s gone before I can answer.
“Making an air freshener,” I tell the man in the booth ahead of me. I say it loud enough so that everyone can hear. “Just making an air freshener.”
-traveler
