Feed the Hippo

August 22, 2024

Almost no one in their right mind would call Elizabeth, New Jersey "heaven," but that's how I saw it in the late summers of my childhood. St. Rocco's Feast was held the third weekend of August in the section called "Peterstown." I'm sure it was exactly like every other city festival in the country: throngs of people would pack a few closed-off streets during the steamiest part of the year. But to me it was a blissful parallel universe: a land of music, carnival rides, games, and food. The heat would waft up from the pavement and heighten the smells from the stands: pizza and meatballs and sausage and Italian ice, and... zeppoles.

Zeppoles (ZEPP-oh-lees) are basically lumps of pizza dough that puff up when deep-fried. The vendors would sprinkle them quickly with powdered sugar and hand them over, and we'd eat them as hot as we could stand them. To me, the presence of zeppoles on the planet was almost proof of magic. Decades down the road, whenever I think of the end of summer, I can smell it in my mind's nose.

The Internet tells me that Elizabeth stopped hosting St. Rocco's Feast in 1988. But it lives on in the sense memory of all who experienced it, because we each have a hippocampus. The hippocampus is a structure in the center of the brain that is involved with long-term memory. It's also directly connected to our olfactory bulb, the brain structure that processes smell. Scientists aren't yet exactly sure how it works, but our sense of smell is deeply and intimately connected with long-term memory.

Late summer is a time for memories. And because memories are so intimately connected with smell (yay, hippocampus!), the best way to anchor the Summer of 2024 in your family's minds is to surround yourself with the special smells of summer, and point them out to your kids. Feed that hippocampus! Smell the flowers, smell the tomatoes, smell the beach, smell the sunscreen, smell the green humidity in the air before a summer storm, smell the special fragrance of your baby's sweaty little head.

And if you're lucky enough to smell some zeppoles, have one for me, okay? Thanks.

—Deb