Every now and then, I'll catch a smell that takes me back 50 or 60 years before I even realize what's happened.

The other day it was soap.

Not some fancy soap with a name you'd remember. Just plain soap, the kind a working man kept beside the sink.

And suddenly I thought of Daddy.

My daddy worked on heavy equipment most of his life. He worked on the strip mines of Eastern Kentucky and later for the state highway department. Wherever there was a bulldozer, grader, loader or some other big machine that needed fixing, there was a good chance Daddy would be somewhere nearby with a wrench in his hand.

His days started early. Sometimes he'd leave for work at 4:30 in the morning and wouldn't pull back into the driveway until 6 that evening, or whenever it got too dark to keep working.

He came home carrying the day's work with him.

Diesel fuel. Grease. Sweat. Dust.

Before he ate supper, though, Daddy washed up.

We didn't have a bathtub when I was little. That came later, probably about the time I was in high school. What we had was a wash basin at the sink.

Daddy would fill it with water and go to work on himself. He'd dip his hands into the water, scrub them, wash his arms and splash water over his face.

He did it religiously.

A man who had spent 12 or 13 hours working around heavy equipment wasn't going to sit down at the supper table until he'd washed away as much of the day as he could.

And then there was that soap.

I wish I could remember what kind it was. Maybe someday I'll smell it again and the name will come back to me.

But I remember what Daddy smelled like afterward.

Clean.

Even now, somewhere deep in my memory, that smell means Daddy's home. Supper is about ready. Everything is where it's supposed to be.

There were other smells that belonged to him.

Pall Mall cigarettes were one. Daddy smoked them for years. You don't encounter that particular smell much anymore because there aren't nearly as many smokers around.

But every once in a while I'll catch cigarette smoke a certain way, and there he is again.

Then there was his old truck.

Lord, that truck had a smell.

I don't know that I can describe it properly. There was dust and old tools and grease and tobacco juice. Probably a little dried Kentucky mud on the floorboards. The seats had spent years baking in the summer sun.

It was the smell of a truck that wasn't anybody's showpiece. It was a working man's truck.

Nobody would ever put that smell in a bottle and sell it.

But I'd know it today.

That's the peculiar thing about memory.

We think we remember our lives in pictures. The house where we grew up. The people around the supper table. An old pickup sitting in the driveway.

But sometimes our strongest memories aren't pictures at all.

They're smells.

I couldn't tell you what I ate for lunch last Tuesday. There are whole years of my childhood I can remember only in scattered pieces.

Then some ordinary smell comes drifting past, and a door opens.

I'm a boy again.

Daddy has just come home from work.

He's standing at the sink, washing the grease and dirt from his hands and face.

Supper is waiting.

And for just a moment, if the smell is exactly right, so is he.