Olfactory Memories

[Zenster]

We'll start with one of the most obvious:
[*]Baking Bread; Takes me back to my Grandmother's kitchen in the Berkeley Hills as she made her fabulous Danish style French bread.
[*]Chopped Chives; Same place as above. She would let me go outside and snip the chives from her big pot of them.
[*]Garlic; Back to my "Aunt's" kitchen in Hult, Sweden. My place at the kitchen table was next to this gigantic braid of garlic. It grossed me out back then, but now the smell is like a free trip to Sweden.
[*]Rubbing Alcohol; Takes me back to my childhood doctor's office in Walnut Creek.
[*]Sycamore Trees; We had several of these growing in our front yard at the house where I grew up. I can still remember climbing to the top of them and hanging on in terror as the wind would make the tree sway.
[*]Red Rubber Erasers; Right back to primary school at the beginning of the school year.
[*]Pencil Sharpeners: The smell of cedar wood shavings and powdered graphite returns me to my school days too.
[*]Violets; We used to have a bank of these at my childhood home. The aroma of them still takes me back.
[*]Moth balls; The walk in closet at the same grandparent's house.


We'll start with these. Everyone else, let's take an olfactory stroll down memory lane.

[TVeblen]

Probably far from PC but evocative...

* wood/leaves burning in autumn; mixed with cider-pressings, quarter-moons and chilly weather. Bliss!

* late summer harvest: the kitchen full of basil/olive oil and pesto-makin's; frozen for winter, delayed grace.

* bus exhaust: annoying but redolent of [i]travel[i], going places.

* dust/must/book mold: refuge, libraries, peace; mental stimulation, purpose, home; lasting bliss.

* sorghum pressings: loamy earth, woodsmoke, sweet/pungent steam from the pressin's; tobacco smoke from the hard-bitten, careful farmers reducing the sap to tarry goodness;
blessings condensed for use.

Veb

[rjk]

Yes, Veb, that old-book smell takes me back too: a cupboard in the house where I grew up, filled with all sorts of adventures, freedom, fascination, ...

Another is the range of smells on the wind off the prairie, season by season, back to Saskatchewan.

[TVeblen]

Originally posted by rjk
Yes, Veb, that old-book smell takes me back too: a cupboard in the house where I grew up, filled with all sorts of adventures, freedom, fascination, ...

Another is the range of smells on the wind off the prairie, season by season, back to Saskatchewan.

You put it much better, rjk: freedom, fascination, adventure...entire worlds unfurling.

And, oh yes, winds/rains/storms off the prairie. It's a mixture of ozone, the purest air ever and earthy fertility. An Alberta Clipper blowing through; slashing lightning, rain and cleansing out the dust, humidity and stirring things up. It's by-God living close to the planet.

Thanks.
Veb

[Race Bannon]

Lilacs and or Juniper bushes take me back to a Richardson Court, between the dorms on the campus of Iowa St. University where I walked a million times on the way to classes.

Add the sound of Boston playing thru someone's window and I'm there.

[annalamerino]

I love my husband's cherry pipe tobacco, even though I want him to quit. Reminds me of cherry pies Mom used to bake.

[salinqmind]

Oooh, add to the smells of autumn, ripe Concord grapes for making wine or jelly. Lightly cooked asparagus and chicken fried in butter reminds me of a dinner I cooked for a dear friend in the spring, years ago. The smell of new cut grass in summer. The smell of snow, I don't like much else about it, but I adore the smell of snow, and melting snow and icicles, takes me right back to my childhood. Nantucket
Briar, a scent from the Crabtree & Evelyn Shop at the mall, reminds me of a romantic weekend at a nice hotel in Niagara Falls. And the smell of anything baking with cinnamon takes me right back to Grandma's kitchen where she made the best apple pie and I have tried all my life to duplicate it...Odd how odors seem to make us nostalgic for our younger days.

[magdalene]

Smell of feta cheese - takes me back to my childhood when my Yia-Yia used to make me scrambled eggs with feta for breakfast. Yia-Yia was my daycare.

Smell of a certain kind of B.O. -not healthy sweat, but long-term unwashedness - takes me back to when I lived in Czech Republic. My roommate would shower but once a week, I could smell when she was home. Getting felt up by dirty old men while riding trams so crowded that I didn't need to hold onto a strap or pole to stay upright. The crush and feral scent of human beings without American's inhibitions about space. Adventure!

T-shirt "borrowed" from an former lover - Sometimes I'll catch a whiff of someone who wears his cologne or deodorant or whatever it was that made that smell on the eL, sometimes I'll come across the T-shirt in a drawer and inhale the smell and remember the first time I kissed him, also remember sitting on rocks on the edge of San Francisco Bay when he wrapped his jacket around me to keep me warm.

The smell of cheap hairspray takes me back to Junior High, when the tough girls used to spray it in the locker room.

[Zenster]

Try to remember that the human nose is capable of distinguishing more smells than the eye can detect different shades of color.

Keep 'em coming folks...

[AuntiePam]

Wow, these are good. Especially the old books smell.

I'll be cheap and superficial here. I love Yankee Candles, esp the little melty wax tarts. The Hearts and Flowers scent was in the burner when I brought hubby home the first time. Very evocative now.

Grandma and grandpa's house always smelled like his pipe tobacco.

I love the smell of garages -- must be the exposed wood.

[Zenster]

When I was a kid, I loved the smell of gasoline. Now I can't stand it. Go figure.

Some others:

If I hadn't worked in movie theaters for a year, the smell of popcorn popping would take me back to my childhood.

The wood inside a cigar box takes me back to my grandfather who smoked them.

As an aside, since I had two older brothers, they would frequently get the empty cigar boxes. Since that time I've collected almost 10,000 empty cigar boxes. (Sheesh, talk about overcompensating!). I now see the boxes sell for two or three bucks each at flea markets. Since I got most of them for free, I think I'm ahead in the game.

[THespos]

There's a Sniglet for this... "Nasalstalgia"

I was walking down 48th Street the other day and smelled a perfume that my ex-girlfriend used to wear. It really wigged me out because I hadn't smelled that smell in years.

[JavaMaven1]

Count me in for another one who loves the old book smell. Reminds me of my childhood summers, where I spent probably every other day in the neighborhood library. I still go to second-hand book stores now and again to not only find a good book, but just to take a few deep breaths.

Aromatics Elixer perfume--this is my mom's favorite perfume and is a very comforting scent whenever I catch a whiff of it.

Cooking onions--another scent that reminds me of childhood.

Sunny Delight--can't stand the smell of it, because it was one of those things I happened to drink right before getting terribly ill. Ever since then, the scent of it turns my stomach.

Strawberry Jam--reminds me of Saturdays in summer, making batches upon batches of jam, filling the house with the smell of cooked fruit.