To an olfactologist, it’s a smell world after all

I was in a waiting room at LAX during my vacation, three hours prior to taking a flight, when I noticed that the man next to me smelled like Campbell’s tomato soup.

I can’t describe the smell exactly, but if you have ever eaten Campbell’s tomato soup, you know what I mean. It isn’t an unpleasant aroma. To the contrary, it is a soft reminder of my childhood, evoking memories of the many times I rode my bike past a tomato cannery hoping to see a girl named Gertrude who lived about half a block away.

My best friend, Ronnie Enos, who seemed to know everything, informed me one day that she often wore dresses you could see through when the sun was at her back, an assertion I knew only by rumor but that I never stopped thinking about.

I became aware of my olfactory abilities after reading that loss of smell was one of the first signs of Alzheimer’s disease. This worried me. Among my many fears, in addition to flat-out dying, is mental degeneration, although critics might argue that it probably wouldn’t interfere with my ability to write a column.

Nevertheless, I found myself becoming odor-conscious. Researching the subject, I discovered that we have about 5 million olfactory receptors in our nostrils, compared with 220 million for dogs. That’s why bloodhounds and not, say, unemployed actors, are used to track missing persons. Dogs can tell by just a sniff who we are, whether we’ve been hanging around other dogs and whether we’re inclined to dig up their bones.

After becoming aware of the soup-smelling man, I began to wonder why the aroma triggered a memory of Gertie and her transparent dresses. Later, I read why on a website from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute: “Memories survive because the axons of neurons that express the same receptor always go to the same place.” I see.

Glancing at the soup-smelling man at LAX, I realized that he looked the part of a person who might smell like Campbell’s tomato soup. He seemed rumpled and warm, possibly a little overweight, but tidily so.

He may have become aware of me studying him, or maybe even sniffing him, because after a while, he moved to another location in the waiting room. I didn’t follow, even though I appreciated his aroma, because in these days of heightened awareness, I might have ended up in a military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

I was at the airport early. I am always at airports early, no matter where I’m going. I am as early flying to Oakland as I am to Auckland. I take seriously the admonition to allow plenty of time to be interrogated, strip-searched, put on a lie detector and, if necessary, beaten.

After smelling the soup man, I began sitting in different chairs, sampling other scents, attempting to pierce through the obvious aromas of perfume and after-shave to identify the person’s basic odor. I cell-phoned my wife, Cinelli, to share my experiment in the new science of olfactory identification.

She said, “You’re beginning to sound like that nut colonel in ‘Dr. Strangelove’ -- the one who thought the Communists were stealing his precious bodily fluids.”

“Well, they laughed at Einstein.”

“I don’t think anyone laughed at Einstein. But I do think that if you go around smelling people, someone might take offense and bust you in the sniffer.”

“I have a cover,” I said. “For instance, I sat next to a woman who smelled like asparagus. I asked if she had eaten some lately.”

“You asked her?”

“She said no and then wondered why I cared.”

“And you said?”

“That I was an olfactologist studying airport odors. I made up the word. She didn’t know the difference. I thanked her for her smell and moved on.”

“Do me a favor and don’t tell any of our friends you’re doing this, OK?”

“I don’t know why not. They might even like to join me. We could have a smellathon.”

“It’s been fun talking to you, and hearing of your latest pursuit, but I have work to do. Go smell someone and don’t call me again until tomorrow.”

I had barely clicked off when I caught a whiff of cheese. It belonged to a woman who was rushing by, leaving a wake of cheddar fumes. Then I smelled a man who reeked of wet soil, and a woman who bore the faint aroma of a horse. She had a way of galloping as she walked. I had to tell Cinelli.

“You keep calling me,” she said, “and I’m going to stop answering the phone. I don’t share any interest in your disgusting new hobby. I find it bordering on some kind of neurosis.”

She had a point. I quit sniffing the crowd and began re-reading my boarding pass when a woman passed who wore a thin, summery dress. I immediately began thinking of Gertrude, which unnerved me so much that I hurried into a cocktail lounge that adjoined the waiting room and smelled a martini. And then I drank it and couldn’t smell anything.

There went my career as an olfactologist.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.