Napalm in the morning.
Magnolia. I miss that smell SOOOO much. I usually only go home to S.C. for winter break, so I’m not there during the blossoming time. I’ve not been able to find a scented candle or scented oil or anything that’s right - most of them aren’t even approximate.
Pinon smoke, although I have some pinon incense at home that I am now going to go light up.
Honeysuckle, until I moved into a new complex last year that has a stand of it growing on the rails of the bridge entrance. Now I get nummie honeysuckle, first time I can remember in years.
Yeast rolls baking at my aunt’s place. Thanks for the memory!
Leaded gas. I was born in 1971, and I remember when the changeover happened. Unleaded gas never smelled as good as leaded.
The Wonderbread bakery we used to drive by on the way into DC.
Silage at the farm, and the fresh milk from the cow.
HAY! I RESEMBLE THAT REMARK! (Really, it’s just 'cause I was more responsible than the other kids, sheesh…)
I’ll second leaded gas exhaust and ditto sheets. Mmm, purple papers. I also miss the smell of Jiffy markers - wait, we still have those. BRB.
I know thats what I came in here to say. I grew up in a very small district and we still had them, and I am class of 2001.
Leather, white pine sawdust, WD-40…
My first girlfriend’s hair.
I guess I miss the smell of sage somewhat, too, as my sister sent me some white sage in a bottle <to use for purification> but I’m just keeping it around to open once in a while and get a nice whiff.
BTW…after all the markers in grade school we WEREN’T supposed to sniff, did anyone else think it something out of BizarroWorld when SCENTED markers came out?
Fresh animal bedding on a childhood friend’s dairy farm.
The earthy aroma of horse stalls.
The mountains after a rain (I still get to smell this one about once a year).
My mom’s kitchen with cinnamon rolls in the oven.
Pan-fried chicken breast, with lemon wedges, on a warm spring day. Oh, it smells yummy at any time, but it has to be a warm spring day, with the windows open and a garden-growing smell mixed in, to make it really special.
My dad always smelled like lighter fluid and Vitalis. I miss that.
Yes, White Shoulders. I can’t wear any fragrance at all anymore as it gives me migraines. But if I could, it would be White Shoulders.
And honeysuckle. We used to have one in our backyard and it died. Every year, I say, we’re going to put in a honeysuckle. This year, we will.
My granddaddy’s hair tonic
The smell of cigarette smoke on a cold winter day, outside in the open air
The smell of my granny’s house
and her cooking
The smell of a mule
The smell of a wood fire
The smell of freshly turned soil
I guess I miss my grandparents a little
The grocery store my Mom and I went to in the late fifties. Grocery stores don’t have smells anymore.
Fresh mown grass, laundry on the wire, and honeysuckle and jasmine all mixed up. That, to me, is the smell of summer. Oh, and cedar after a good rain, and the ozone smell of lightning before a good thunderstorm. We don’t get good thunderstorms these days, not like when I was a boy. They were proper storms then, huge black thunderheads that loomed like they’d practiced it the mirror and would darken the sky so much you’d swear it was night. And the lightning, my friends, it would melt your face. Screw television, when a really good storm was coming we’d all go out on the patio and watch the light show for, well until it got a little too close and was a little to dangerous to be outside.
I miss too the way my granddad smelled, of menthol cigarettes and peppermint candies. He had a bunch of the candies and would eat them to hide the cigarette smell for when grandma would make him quit smoking and thought she wouldn’t notice. I really miss that grouchy old man.
When I was a kid…
… We used to put whipped Ivory Snow on the branches of our Christmas tree. That became one of the smells I associated with Christmas. It seems that the Ivory Snow formula has changed so that it doesn’t whip up any more.
… I used to go to this wooded area in our neighborhood that had a little brook running through it. In summer, sometimes that brook would have this earthy tangy smell that was incredibly intoxicating. Every once in a while I smell something like that when I’m near a brook or river in the summer.
… there was this other place, a big field, that I would also go to. It had some wild plant which I never identified that had a very strong spicy smell.
… we had lilacs in our front yard. Smelling lilacs will invariably take me right back to childhood.
… we had an unfinished cellar. The cement-y smell of that cellar was one of the major familiar smells of my childhood (and beyond – my folks continued to live in that house for the rest of their lives).
… my older brothers used to paint models with PLA brand paints. That enamel smell also takes me back instantly.
The smell of a fresh Marvel comic. They smelled different than DC’s.