# Smells that trigger memories

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smells-that-trigger-memories/577402>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [April 6, 2011, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smells-that-trigger-memories/577402 "2011-04-06T15:49:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2020, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smells-that-trigger-memories/577402/61 "2020-03-03T22:00:42Z")

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I hadn’t thought of this in years. In high school, the popular scent for girls was Bonne Bell’s Skin Musk. Everyone wore it. I had a little bottle of it on my dresser for years and years, keeping it around even after they stopped making it. Every now and then I’d open it and take a whiff, and I’d go right back to 1974.

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**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2020, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smells-that-trigger-memories/577402/62 "2020-03-03T22:07:13Z")

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> [@aruvqan](#):
>
> opened up a sea bag that had been closed since mrAru retired back in 2003 - could still smell ‘sub funk’ - I really miss that [machine oil, diesel, ozone and body odor and that cheap Navy laundry detergent]

Right, I mentioned this before as well.

> [@Sub Funk](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sub-funk/812036/3):
>
> I know that smell. It mostly comes from the amine (from the CO[sub]2[/sub] scrubbers), along with diesel fuel, hydraulic fluid, and BO. 😉
> 
> Last year, I went on a submarine tour with my son’s Boy Scout troop…some two decades after last serving on a sub. As soon as I got near the topside hatch and smelled the air blowing out, old memories just about overwhelmed me…

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**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\
**Post date:** [March 3, 2020, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smells-that-trigger-memories/577402/63 "2020-03-03T22:16:43Z")

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Two scents come to mind, both of which trace back to when I was around 10 years old. At that time, my family moved from suburban Chicago, to Green Bay, where my parents (and my aunt and uncle) had bought a True Value hardware store.

1. There’s a sulfurous smell, sort of reminiscent of sausages, which was commonly in the air in Green Bay at that time, due to the paper mills. That smell occurs far less often up there these days (better environmental controls, I’m guessing), but on the occasion that I encounter that sort of smell now, it takes me back to riding around Green Bay as a kid.

2. The smell of incompletely-combusted gasoline, especially if there’s a little motor oil in the exhaust, summons memories of the repair shop in our hardware store, where we repaired small-engine tools like lawnmowers and snowblowers.

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