BS: What smell jogs your memory?

Subject: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 04:58 PM

A discussion in the Chatroom threw up this little gem.... the smell of warm cow, warm milk and red carbolic soap... my most favourite smell in the world.

It takes me right back to when I was between 6 and 9, and spent half my time on my grandfather's dairy farm. It reminds me of long summer days doing nothing but playing in the garden or on the beach, of a fireplace that held an Aga, an armchair and still had room for a child and a box of kittens.... of spanking cold frosty Christmas mornings when what seemed like half the village would come to breakfast on a single table that would sit 20 people... of uneven flags covered in rush matting that lead down the dark hallway into the blaze of light that was my grandmothers' room with the window that came halfway down the pavement so you sat in the seat at ankle height to people walking past.....

What smell jogs your memory and how?

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 05:03 PM

The light fishy smell of a lake.
The underarm musk of semsimilla.
Cloves, cloves and more cloves.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Cluin
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 05:08 PM

Irish Mist in coffee always takes me back to winter nights at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, circa 1981, great friends and good conversation, while the silences were nice too (Except for Mike Oldfield's "Ommadawn" or "QE2" playing softly on the stereo...

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 05:12 PM

Each Boxing day, all the men..that's around 10-12 altogether, would go shooting on my Uncles Farm...The ladies would prepare a dinner fit for a King (as if we had not had enough on Christmas Day).
Walking back into the house after a mornings shooting and smelling the goose, duck, pheasant and pigeon cooking intermingled with sage and onion stuffing,various hot sauces etc etc which made up such fare....filled me with anticipation and my mouth literally watered. Yummmmmmmmmmmmm.
I love that smell when a woman comes freshly from the shower or bath and has anointed herself with all the products which are made to make her feel better about herself....certainly gets my attention.
I love the smell of woodsmoke and food cooking at my way-out-in-the-wilds campsite.
I feel sorry for all those people who are afflicted with a lack of the sense of smell!!
Best wishes, Mike.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Cluin
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 05:15 PM

Black Currant Tea reminds me of the camp teas we used to make out of various wild berries and leaves in a tin can on the fire while camping in the summer. Not to drink it, just to smell it.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: kendall
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 05:16 PM

New mown hay.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 05:17 PM

A smell of burning has been known to remind me something's on the cooker ;-)

I think wild garlic would always take me back to one particular wood.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Cluin
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 05:23 PM

A similar smell-memory was the source of a fine song by Ian Tamblyn when he opened a backpack to embrace the smell of "Woodsmoke and Oranges".

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: KT
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 05:56 PM

Fall.
The fresh cool air, complimented by the scent of dry leaves fallen upon the sun warmed earth.......Ahhhh...inhale deeply..........

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Janie
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 05:59 PM

The smell of boxwood takes me right back to childhood and the home of my beloved grandparents. I think it was the smell of boxwoods that had me saying "We'll take it" within 5 minutes of seeing the house we now own.

The smell of parafin takes me back to Christmas. Mom would always make candles for our teachers, using cardboard quart milk boxes for molds. She would whip some of the wax to make it white and frothy and, "ice" the candles with it, and then press on holly leaves and berries while it was still soft.

I do not like cologne or perfume on men or women....eyes water and I sneeze....but in my senior year of high school I briefly went out with a boy who always wore 'Brute' cologne or aftershave. He was the first male I was powerfully sexually attracted to. We didn't date long, but both of us ended up at Marshall University. Our sophmore year, he was killed with the rest of our football team in a terrible plane crash. Occasionally, I will get a whiff of that cologne walking along a busy sidewalk, and am immediately swept back in time to that excitement and sadness.

When my sister died of breast cancer, someone sent a blooming basket of forced hyacinths to the house. To this day I can not abide their aroma.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 06:04 PM

"The light fishy smell of a lake." Donuel, just last night when I went to an outdoors salmon bake where a friend was singing for hundreds of tourists I suddenly realized that the pond that I was passing smelled like something out of my childhood, a smell I had thought of as being that of frogs. It must have been algae or something like that because I've never seen a frog in Juneau.

My brother and a friend once came upon a farm that had fresh cut hay and drove in to ask the farmer if they could help him make hay just for the "smell of it".

Tthat large lily that has pink freckles- don't remember its name but it smells like a campfire, and campfires trigger a dozen memories. Especially of when I was a kid and the family went to the river for an outing. Dad would build a fire where we'd roast hotdogs and toast marshmallows.

Lilacs - after 55 years - still bring back my first boyfriend. And I never was particularly fond of him. Memories are weird.

The most overwhelming and ambrosial smell I've come across since I left home was that of a horse stall. My father was a horse trainer so we always had lots of horses on the place, and I started riding so early I don't even remember the first time. A few years ago at the lone "farm" we have in Juneau I stepped into a horse stall and wanted to stay forever. It was wonderful.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 06:10 PM

Apple Pie... takes me back to my grandmothers kitchen

Fresh Cherry Tomatoes.... reminds me of a girl I had a wonderful summer fling with (don't ask me why)

CK1... My wife, the day I first clapped eyes on her...

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 06:21 PM

The rich girl, she wears the best perfume
the poor girl, she does the same
My Girl friend, wears no perfume at all.























But you can smell her just the same!

She'll be comin' round the mountain, charmin' Betsy!
......

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Cluin
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 06:26 PM

The smell of ass reminds me of an uncle.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: bfdk
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 06:42 PM

The smell of flowering elder mingling with the smell of timber framing recently painted with tar paint, both enhanced by the sun, will take me straight back to childhood holidays spent at my uncle's old farm - which also used to be my father's boyhood home.

I used to rush there for a one or two weeks' visit every year as soon as school was out for the summer, and as this coincided with the flowering time for the elder, in my memories the elder is *always* flowering there, just like the timber framing is always recently painted and the sun always shining ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 06:44 PM

McIntosh apples make me think of fall... probably because of "Apple Day" when I was a Boy Scout...

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Deckman
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 06:48 PM

"Rich girl, she smells like her good perfume,
Poor girl, she'd like to smell the same,
My girl smells like a ... billy goat,
But it's her smell just the same!" (Walt Robertson)

CHEERS, Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: open mike
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 07:45 PM

i lvoe the smell of pine tar..
in Sweden they made soap out
of it, and use it to weather
proof wooden rooves and posts.

They say they will have to stop
using it because the fumes are
dangerous. I imagine they could
be if you inhaled them day after
day, but for some reason I breathe
in extra deeply when i smell that
fragrance. I wish there was a way
to transmit fragrance3 over the
internet so i could share it with
all of you!! scratch and sniff?
jfrag? I usedc to use it for my
horses' hooves, dressing them to
keep them moist, prevent cracks &
prevents infection. Grandpa's soap
made from pine tar also claims to
have insecticidal qualities against
lice and other skin and hair bugs.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Janie
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 08:16 PM

I think our sense of smell may be the most evocative of them all in terms of emotional memories.

Ebbie--I almost mentioned horse barn myself--hanging out in the hayloft on rainy fall afternoons--spying a nest of tiny hairless mouse babies in the corner of a stall. The soft feel of a horse's muzzle blowing against your cheek.

I love the smell that rises on a blistering hot summer afternoon right after a sudden rain shower.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: frogprince
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 09:06 PM

The smell of booze breath and barf brings back nights when shipmates returned from liberty.
Any smell of home baking brings back much better things.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 09:17 PM

The smell of peanut brittle and McIntoshe's toffee bars takes me back to the halcyon days of my childhood. Yum!

The smell of dog shit takes me back to the last 850 times I have stepped in it outside the house! AAAARGGGH!!! Stupid dachshunds! It's particularly treacherous at night when you can't see it.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 09:17 PM

"No matter how old you live to be, the first 20 years will always be the longer half." I read that once.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 09:31 PM

That's for dang sure! A year seemed to last forever when I was a kid.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: bobad
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 09:40 PM

Hash

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: frogprince
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 09:42 PM

Corned beef hash, or roast beef hash?

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: bobad
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 09:48 PM

All of the above.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Nancy King
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 09:59 PM

The scent of a mimosa tree in bloom brings me up short every time. There are precious few of them around any more, for some reason, and their blooming period is only a couple of weeks in the summer, but every now and then I catch a whiff of one and my kidhood comes back in a rush. We had a huge mimosa tree in our front yard when I was young, and I loved it dearly.

Nancy

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: jimmyt
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 10:11 PM

The smell of burning tooth and cloves...........ah,,,,,,,,,,,,,that smells like $$$$$$$$

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: jimmyt
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 10:12 PM

Sorry, that was insensitive and innappropriate






but then...........






I am a Conservative, what can you expect! grin

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 10:30 PM

Ack! A conservative! Batten the hatches! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: bobad
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 10:31 PM

I've smelt that smell too and it smells like $$$'s flying out of my wallet.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: jimmyt
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 10:47 PM

I guess it could be worse..........

I could be a proctologist.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: bobad
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 10:52 PM

And you could call yourself Dr. Ben Dover

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: jimmyt
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 10:54 PM

actually all kidding aside, this is a beautiful thread and I have truly enjoyed the descriptive writing, especially Liz! Smells are really interesting in their ability to evoke long forgotten stories from our past. I will have to ponder this a bit and possibly write a serious answer.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: bobad
Date: 18 Aug 05 - 11:04 PM

Duvall: "Smell that?... Do you smell that?"

Sam Bottoms: "What."

Duvall: "Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that... I love the smell of napalm in the morning... Ya know, that gasoline smell... It smells like... victory."

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Metchosin
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 12:39 AM

Soil, moss and rotting bark. Early childhood when most time playing was usually spent in close proximity to the cool damp ground.

And horse sweat. My friend Dusty the pony with the cataract in her eye.

The pungent sweet smell of carpets of fir neeedles on hot summer days. The long walk to the lake along the abandoned water pipeline or swooping on a bicycle down and around the slanted concrete sides of the old empty water reservoir.

Lifeboy soap. Aunt Maggie's bathroom and the windows that rattled in the wind.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Amos
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 12:54 AM

Horse-smells never fail to evoke. Likewise Old Spice,redwood forests, and my grandfather's tobacco, or my father's, or the smell of ozone on a rising tide, forest rains, lawns after thundershowers, certain kinds of musk, the smell of a wet dog, the smell of Ouzo at sunset, Gruyere on fresh French bread, gunsmoke, turpentine, and the strange whiff of an anchor chain breaking the surface bringing bottom mud with it. New welds in steel. Certain kinds of perfume just transport me. Good brass. Good Scotch, inimitable, and likewise real French chicory-coffee and Hennessy brandy. Certain exhalations from energized damsels' lungs, very well-made Bolognese sauce, and a peculiar odor of steam, oil and steel in a smoothly running steam engine. I also love the smell of good hemp rope when it is new, wood shavings, especially from cedar, wet clay and dark forests in moonlight. The smell of compressed air at 50 feet below the surface. And freshly varnished spars.

These are a few of my favorite things.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Metchosin
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 01:33 AM

Ah, hemp rope. Not good. With hemp rope comes the smell of Unguentine ointment and the burns on my hands and wrists, as a kid, when one side of the rope swing in the back yard let go. I was standing on the seat at the top of the arc, when for a moment, you can make the rope go slack and take in the view. The down swing was not as anticipated.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,shanghaiceltic
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 02:01 AM

Believe it or not just getting on any ferry/ship and catching that odour of oil, paint and salt. Takes me staright back to my days in the RN.

Above that the smell of wood being cut or sawn. My dad was often away for long periods when I was a lad (navy too), so when he came home, which was infrequent, he would get on with all the jobs around the house, he especially loved doing woodwork and carpentry. So the smell of fresh cut wood was always a reassuring sign he was at home.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Kaleea
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 02:25 AM

The scent of campfires = the Walnut Valley Music Festival every September in Winfield, Kansas, when about 15,000-20,000 of my closest friends "come home" for a reunion.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 05:48 AM

The smell of brickyard chimnneys on the Fenland wind. I grew up in Peterborough (UK)on the edge of the Fens. The smell of the (then) numerous brickyards was always associated with winter because the smoke from the tall chimneys was blown across the city in the prevailing wind. When I was a small child I thought that the brickyard smell was actually the smell of winter.
To me it is an old, hard, grey 'flinty' smell, redolent of ancient things. The fact is that it is, literally, the smell of ancient things burning. The clay around Peterborough was laid down, on the seabed, during Jurassic times. The residual organic matter in the clay is burned off to form the bricks.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 05:54 AM

The smell of woodsmoke on a clear winters day.
It means working outside, doing something with trees, on one of those wonderful days when the sun tries to come out, and the air is still, and you know you'll be working out here until sunset or so, and the kettle by the fire is just about boiling for tea.

And then you can head home properly tired, and have a hot shower and hot soup, Hot anything in fact, and collapse in front of a fire of the logs you cut last year

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 06:22 AM

Stale pipe tobacco and damp: Mother's parents' house in Salford.

Coal and oil burning: me aged 8-9 at Colby Station, Isle of Man.

Sewage works: the derelict railway line where we used to go to play at making canals, catching tiddlers and frogs, and being occasionally menaced by strange men.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: John O'L
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 06:24 AM

Old gramophones. A lovely unique aroma that I associate with opulence. It takes me straight to Aunt Winifred & Uncle Max's place when I was maybe four or five years old. They were the only people I knew who could afford anything like that in those days.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,DW at work
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 08:40 AM

The smell of leather and hot tar. Takes me right back to the days when I had a Hog and would go down to Daytona.

Good thread Liz the Squeak.

DW at work

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,weelittledrummer
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 08:53 AM

loves the smell of a new acoustic guitar when the inside still smells like the workshop - go on disillusion me, tell me they spray that smell on.

condor pipe tobacco reminds me of my uncle harold and his house and doggy houses remind me of my auntie edith's house.

love the smell of Spanish cooking and Spanish cigarettes - reminds me of visiting my father when he retired over there.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 09:53 AM

I'm with those who mentioned horse smells. They bring me back to my days at camp when I taught riding-best days of my life.

Chocolate smells remind me of the apartment I lived in Milwaukee while in college. It was near the Ambrose chocolate factory, and why I'm quite sure I'm addicted to the stuff today.

And on occasion when I get a whiff of some maryjane in a park...lots of memories (and lost brain cells I imagine) from my Hippy Days (Years, really).

Smell of campfire...anytime I've been blessed with sleeping out in the woods.

Yes, smells evoke the best memories for me.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Moses
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 10:12 AM

In the 1950s my father was caretaker of a TA (Territorial Army)centre where we lived on site.

There was a large area of rough grass which he cut with a sythe so he could use the hay as bedding for his chickens and rabbits but sometimes my brother and I would gather the grass into mounds to play in. If it had not had time to dry the grass would begin to "turn". The delicious new-mown-hay smell soon became one of musty fermentation. That smell reminds me of being 7 years old.

Dad, before he got his electric clippers, would spend several hours cutting the tall privet hedges with hand shears. It is a sound rarely heard nowadays, that steady clip clip of a hedge being cut by hand. But I still enjoy the smell of flowering privet on a sunny evening. It takes me straight back to the treasured time of my early childhood before he had his stroke and was unable to do manual work again.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 10:19 AM

Vinegar.

Phenol from charred Bakelite.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: To be born is to fall down the chimney of a strange house. :||

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: MMario
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 10:27 AM

The scent of turkey and stuffing in the oven.

Salt air with just a whiff of rotten fish

Juniper/pine/Evergreen

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,Fullerton
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 10:32 AM

The smell of wet dogs.

This smell evokes so many happy memories that I actually LIKE the smell of wet dogs.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: jeffp
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 10:35 AM

Burning coal alway takes me back to my grandparents' house in Ohio. For this reason I love blacksmiths.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 12:51 PM

Man. These memories - and more, more, more!- should be collected in a book.

"To be born is to fall down the chimney of a strange house." Joe F

More like being stuffed down a too narrow chimney by someone you don't know. The first betrayal.

Unless- maybe we remember the other times we had undergone the experience?

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: number 6
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 12:57 PM

The smell of diesel exhaust reminds me of London.

The smell of Tabasco reminds me of New Orleans.

The smell of Tropicana brings back memories of a bygone summer.

The smell of bacon and eggs reminds me of a Holiday Inn in the midwest U.S.

Six

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: moongoddess
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 01:12 PM

The smell of a good cigar brings back memories of my grandfather sitting on the porch swing in his pants, undershirt, and felt slippers, smoking a big old cigar. He would even let me try it once in a while, as we sat there listening to operas and/or polka music.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Micca
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 01:47 PM

Plasticene…….. strongly of Primary School and can take me back there instantly to Miss Matthews class and all of us filing in to the tune of "the Road to the Isles" played on a harmonium

Apple pie…. Childhood maybe about 6 years old and my Auntie Mays house, also my first visit to New Hampshire, its what Animateras house smelled of when we arrived.

Diesel and lube oil on Hot steel…. A certain tanker I served in years ago, it was the smell in the engine room where we dried our jeans (Levis) next to the boilers, you could wash them when you came off watch and they would be dry ready to go on the next watch

Old books ( like you get in old Second hand bookshops in Hay on Wye and Charing Cross Road) ….. To the Public Library of the town where I grew up My haven from the world and the harsh realities of growing up in a world where you were among the Have-nots. The last thing I did, on the morning of the day, when I left that town to move to London when I was 14 was to give up my Library card.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Mingulay
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 02:42 PM

Leather from my years in the shoe trade, bacon cooking on a camp fire, the malty/hoppy smell of a brewery, steam engines, red hot steel in a forge, the smell of a woman's hair. The list is endless and each one evokes memories from 50 years ago to 50 seconds ago.
I do like some of the threads on here, and this is a good one.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Cluin
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 02:56 PM

Memories rekindled by smells IS an often used device in songwriting.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 03:25 PM

This is true---and I will not elaborate!!

burning starfish sperm

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Amos
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 04:05 PM

Art:

How did you ever find out what burning starfish sperm smells like?

Or are you recalling a past lifetime?? :D


A

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Cluin
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 05:33 PM

That's a lotta friction.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: John O'L
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 07:05 PM

The smell of yeast always reminds me of the brewery accross the road from (what used to be) Platform 23 at Central Station in Sydney.

I am a young boy standing on that platform waiting for a train with my father. I don't know where we'd been, but we were going home, and the sickly-sweet smell of yeast from the brewery is all-pervasive.

Writing that has now reminded me of the neon sign from a different brewery that could be seen from the train somewhere quite close to Central - A happy smiling face endlessly raising a tankard of beer and saying "Afore ye go..."

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Catherine Jayne
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 07:36 PM

The smell of baking...whether it be bread, cakes or scones reminds me of my Grandma's house. She taught me to bake and it reminds me of many happy times with my Grandpa saying quite innocently "remember the currants dear, you don't want one currant wonders do we?!" when we were making scones!

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 10:35 PM

JimmyT, haven't you noticed the smell of Southern pines growing in red (Georgia) clay on a hot summer's day? ;-)

There is lots of Googling to be done using the words smell, memory, brain, olfactory sense, etc.

One link is here.

In a Proustian Memory, an unexpected smell from your past, such as baby powder, or the smell of your first lover, can unleash in you a raging torrent of realistic and graphic memory.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Scoville
Date: 19 Aug 05 - 11:14 PM

Balmex--from when we were very small and my brother was still in diapers.

Cold air--when we lived in Pennsylvania & Colorado

That old-car smell (combination of dust, motor oil, vinyl, etc)

Fresh basil--college years when we used to go to our friend's house (he was a good cook and always smelled like food, in a good way) to play music.

And there was an antiseptic ointment we used at the vet's that smelled a little like bergamot. It was one of the few things in a vet's office that smelled good and it was a pretty, pale, ice-blue color.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: JennyO
Date: 20 Aug 05 - 08:42 AM

John, you were talking about memories around Central Station. Do you remember a billboard near the railway somewhere round the area of Redfern or Macdonaltown I think. It was for bread.

"Teagues Bread. What you eat today walks and talks tomorrow."

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Metchosin
Date: 20 Aug 05 - 11:12 AM

The first days of school when I was small were a wonderful world of olfactory sensations. Everything new had to be smelled and quite often tasted. The slightly peppermint flavour of white paste, the acrid glue on the backs of stars we got to stick on our notebooks or the smell of a new pink pearl eraser.

The clean fresh smell of new Think and Do books or the overwhelming, heady aroma of mimeographed sheets with purple blue print still damp from the gestettner. And.... the remarkable collective experience of everyone opening their lunches at once, with the pungency of unexpected sandwiches and the almost tropical sweet smell of fruit that had spent 4 or 5 hours in a hot tin box.

All signify hope and new beginnings tinged with anxiety to me.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,John Gray in Oz
Date: 20 Aug 05 - 10:53 PM

My freshly bathed baby boys dusted with talcum powder. Now they're great big lumps of flesh & bone. But now my grandchildren are being born and that beautiful smell is back with me again.

JG / FME

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 20 Aug 05 - 11:00 PM

Amos----O.K.--You asked for it!

In 1967 Carol and I were living on the coast of Oregon---in a house up top of a cliff overlooking a lovely cove. Quite early on mornings when the tide was going out, we'd descend the bluff and marvel at the whole other alien world that was revealed to us there.

A friend visiting from Chicago decided he wanted to take a starfish from down in the cove back to Illinois. On a minus 2 foot tide, while I was sleeping in one day, he went down and got his starfish.

Now, when a starfish is out of water, it assumes that the tide is out---and that is when it releases it's precious bodily fluids onto the surface it is on at the time---. The incoming tide will mix the substances together to make some new baby starfish.

This fellow decided he wanted to dry out the starfish----so he put it on top of the grate over the oil burning stove that was our source of heat for the house. Nature took it's course, and the fluids dripped down onto the red hot stove where they proceeded to sizzle ans spatter and fizzle and spatter and sizzle some more. The result was a unique and aromatic cloud of steam that rose into the confined atmosphere of our good domicile to impinge upon and otherwise discommode our olfactory recptors. I remember saying to Carol something like, "Now, there's a smell I've not ever smelled before. --- I do believe it's burning starfish sperm, at best! At least, it's scrambled eggs a la starfish!!"

Rest assured it's an aroma that brings back memories that truly run the gamut of human emotions.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: KT
Date: 20 Aug 05 - 11:48 PM

Micca, I konw exactly what you mean about the old books. Takes me right back to my elementary school library. And what a sweet image of you turning in your library card!

The deep freezer at the grocery store. I stick my nose in there to buy some frozen something and it takes me back to 6 years old, picking out an ice cream treat at the corner store.

Certain new plastics will take me right back to that Christmas morning so long ago, and the new doll that was left under the tree.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 12:03 AM

Two things that are absolutely the same as they were when I was a young'un: the smell of a drug store (a pharmacy) and the taste and touch of a toasted marshmallow.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: rock chick
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 12:45 AM

the smell of face powder, a coal fire just lit, marsh mellows cooking over the open fire, the sweet smell of my grandmother hair, all remind me of when i used to sit on her lap as a very young child.....oh just wonderful memories of her.....now i am feeling sad as i miss her terribly. :.o(

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Peace
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 01:38 AM

Garlic.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 03:58 PM

Oddly enough, Peace, I don't think I ever even smelled garlic until I left home. My mother never used it. I love it now.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Janie
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 04:06 PM

Have you ever noticed that wet plywood smells like cat pee? In my poor and crazy twenties we used those plywood spools that electrical cable come on for patio tables. Wet plywood or a dirty litter box--either smell takes me back to then;0)

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 04:25 PM

Walking past a farmyard and smelling fresh cow dung, beautiful.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 05:38 PM

And the air-diluted smell of a skunk from pretty far off--is like fresh coffee being made.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Jeri
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 06:17 PM

I still love the smell of semi-glossy paper some books are printed on, and, like Mets, mimeograph ink. AlsoL plasticene. I haven't smelled it for decades and I can't remember the scent, but I loved it. Especially the green. (Yes, I know and KNEW the green didn't really smell different, but the visual augmented the olifactory.) Micca, you can have the other colors if you like.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but there's the crisp and lofty smell of a hemlock forest after a good rain. The 'low tide' smell of salt and seaweed. Ancient books that hid in a dusty attic where late afternoon sunbeams filtered golden through the motes. Dank, concrete floored basement with its cobwebs and permanently shadowed places. There was the smell of my father's tools there, steel and oil, and sawdust.   In the yard, just poking up through the lawn every year were creamy pink peonies that had been planted by my grandmother as had every other flower at the house. She died before I was born, but these plants connected me to her in a way. There are many more smells, I'm sure, but I have to stop sometime.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Janie
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 06:23 PM

I think Honeysuckle has already been mentioned--heavy on the evening air of a summertime.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,Peter Woodruff
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 07:14 PM

The smell of a tomatoe plant on my fingers after pinching off the suckers and horn worms.

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: bobad
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 07:21 PM

Peter

I can relate to that.

I'm also always amazed at how much of the green (chlorophyl?) washes out of your hands afterwards.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,Peter Woodruff
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 07:29 PM

I had to wash my hands three times to get the essence of tomato out of my hands today... I could not get rid of that smell. OoOO that smell! The smell of salsa all around you."

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Scoville
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 09:02 PM

I also remember, from school, the smell of pencil shavings from the insides of the wall-mounted sharpeners. Oddly, the taste of whiskey reminds me of that smell now.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 09:03 PM

I'm reminded of that great saw... "who first milked a cow and just WHAT did they thik they were doing?"

"the air-diluted smell of a skunk from pretty far off--is like fresh coffee being made."

Ahhh, now we know how they came up with that idea for the coffee...

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Peace
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 10:08 PM

Also elk guts.

Attended a MVC--elk and small truck. Blood and guts all over everywhere. Took two washings of my bunker gear to get the odor out. Blood and poop--lots of it. Yes, it took lots of guts to do that. LOL

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 11:47 PM

Ellenpoly's smells bring back a lot of memories to me, too. I remember that same Ambrose Chocolate factory from my college days in Milwaukee, and horse manure and campfires remind me of working at a boys' camp in the Kettle Moraine outside Milwaukee. I also remember the awful smells of the glue factory and of the Patrick Cudahy Bacon packing house on the south side.
But I didn't know what marijuana smelled like until I was 40 - it reminds me of what the lobby smelled like at intermission during Sacramento Symphony concerts.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: number 6
Date: 21 Aug 05 - 11:49 PM

Elk guts ..... Jeeeeeezuz !!

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 01 Sep 05 - 11:13 AM

Turkey Shit.

[it reminds me of turkeys].

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: KateG
Date: 01 Sep 05 - 12:05 PM

Old fashioned hardware stores with sawdust on the floor and nuts and screws in small wooden boxes and barrels had a perfume all their own. Home Depot and the others of their ilk just don't have that magic aroma.

Low tide on the mud flats -- pungent but full of life.

The yeasty, winey smell of the air on summer days in autumn once the leaves have begun to fall.

The smell of my dog's and cats' fur when they are sleeping, especially around their paws and tummies.

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: GUEST,Sandra
Date: 01 Sep 05 - 12:06 PM

The smell of Coppertone suntan lotion...one whiff and
I'm young, carefree, and don't care WHAT I look like
in a bathing suit..!

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Seaking
Date: 01 Sep 05 - 07:18 PM

Th smell of fresh garden mint and a certain type of tomato transports me back forty years or so to my grandfather's greenhouse.

Slightly bizarrily (sp ?) a recent walk round my son's chemistry lab at his new school had me right back in the visitor centre at Kennedy Space Station

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Seaking
Date: 01 Sep 05 - 07:22 PM

Sorry, that should probably be Kennedy Space Centre...

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Crystal
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 10:46 AM

Woodsmoke outdoors on a spring evening always brings me back to childhood memories of taking part in historical re-creations.

The blue stuff in re-circulating toilets makes me think of folk festivals, especially around November time when I long for some warmth and fun and it's such a long time until christmas and even longer until IVFDF.

The musty smell of blankets and air beds stored in a loft for a year. It sends me right to sleep!

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: LilyFestre
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 04:58 PM

The combination of Tide and Head & Shoulders remind me of my first boyfriend...

A certain Estee Lauder scent lingers on the stairs of my grandmother's house....it reminds me tremendously of her...oddly, the smell is still there...but she has been gone for over 10 years.

Walking through the hospital, the x-ray department smells bring back happy memories of years spent in the darkroom.

The smell of new linoleum reminds me of my grandfather's "mole-hole"...his basement workshop, so named by my Nana.

The smell of a snowstorm in the air brings back childhool memories of playing outside in the winter until I was soaking wet, pink all over and extremely happy. :)

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: Amos
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 05:12 PM

I just remembered another -- the smell of mothballs in cedar chests and storage trunks. An olfactory note from childhood in Connecticut. And another -- there's a crisp cold smell peculiar to new-fallen snow. It is not easy to remember but when you smell it you remember. And the dust of autumn leaves when you kick a big pile of them, or go jumping into them.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What smell jogs your memory?
From: LilyFestre
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 05:52 PM

The smell of a new clarinet/bass clarinet reed makes my teeth just shudder....goosebumps too! YUCK!

Michelle