What “old time” smells do you find evocative and/or very difficult to replicate these days?
Mine:
-Cigarette smoke when diners allowed smoking, especially the intermingled smells of tobacco, eggs, toast, and coffee. Pretty much impossible to find in the U.S. today.
-Old houses with a slight mildew-y smell. One of the reasons I love my house so much is because it smelled like my great-gramma’s home when we walked in with the real estate agent.
I don’t miss it because it made me nauseous, but the smell of my mom’s purse when I was a kid. She smoked unfiltered Pall Malls and there was always loose tobacco in there. She would have me rummage through her purse for various items while she was driving. Lipstick, Freedent gum, coins and loose tobacco together made a heady fragrance.
I love that old house with slight mildew-y smell, it reminds me of a girlfriend I had that lived in such a house. Well I hope the smell was the house anyway…
The smell of my grandfather’s wood fired sugarbush as he made maple syrup.
Patchouli immediately takes me back to 1969.
Frankincense sends me to 1955-64, my Catholic go-to-mass years.
The smell of old public restrooms. The sort that were well-ventilated, usually with transoms and outdoor windows that were both open all the time. There was also an acrid chemical smell, like the toilets needed special sealant around their wax rings, or the smell of lead pipes leaching. Never any air freshener or even human smells.
The bathrooms in my elementary school smelled like that, and one set of bathrooms in an old building on my college campus.
perking coffee (the noise is nice, too)
The smell of fresh-caught trout sizzling in fat in a cast iron pan over a campfire.
Not so “old time”, I guess, but I love the smell of the post office.
I
Not so “old time”, I guess, but I love the smell of the post office.
I haven’t smelled one in eons, but the vinegary smell of old mimeograph copies is very evocative of my grade school days.
Sorry for the multi post. Blasted tiny keyboard.
Anyway, even though I’ve been a vegetarian for 25 years, the smell of pork sausage cooking in sauerkraut is a little preview of heaven. Smelling sauerkraut and sausage cooking in my mom’s big pot was a high point of my childhood.
When I was growing up in Northern Indiana, there were acres and acres of spearmint fields just south of us. When it would rain at the end of a hot summer day, the odor of fresh, damp, spearmint would permeate the air. I loved it. Most of those spearmint fields are long gone, but I still relish the memory.
I had my tonsils out over 60 years ago, and I still remember the smell of the ether they used as anesthetic.
And the aromas (scenery, makeup, etc.) of the theater I acted in as a kid.
Burning leaves. And freshly mimeographed papers.
Crayons
Lilacs take me back home.
I love the smell of burning leaves for about a minute. I have asthma now, and a minute’s my limit.
Old books
Unlike SeaDragonTattoo, I like the smell of loose Pall Mall tobacco. Your mom and my mom must have had a lot in common, because your description of your mom’s purse could be my description of my mom’s.
Coffee perking in a percolater. That’s the sound I woke up to each morning when I was a kid. I love the smell of that coffee, too.
The smell of eucalyptus evokes California for me.
The smell of burning diesel will always remind me of my grandfather’s tractor.
Not necessarily the smell of Autumn leaves, but the peculiar odor that emanated from ironing the leaves between big sheets of waxed paper.
My Aunt Mary’s house always smelled of coffee and anisette. She was always ready for company.
The clove-y smell of dentists’ offices, which seems to have disappeared.
Being able to smell the various aromas of “Sunday gravy” as I walked to church early in the morning.
The smell of my grandparents attached garage. I’m not sure how to replicate it or what it even was.