Old smells, that immeditately transport you back in time?

green papaya · May 16, 2017

Fading Fast said:
Walked by a guy smoking a cigar yesterday and, unfortunately, took in its smell full force. It was like an electric bolt hit and I was a kid back in the late '60s with my dad as he smoked cigars (and cigarettes) before quitting a few years later. It was amazing how that one strong whiff brought that memory front and center in my mind. It stayed with me for most of the day.

thats amazing how smells are also a part of memories, not just visual, smells can also bring back old memories

the smell of the school cafeteria making lunch brings back pleasant memories, sometimes it smelled like cakes, cookies, baking in the oven.

Trenchfriend · May 16, 2017

green papaya said:
thats amazing how smells are also a part of memories, not just visual, smells can also bring back old memories

the smell of the school cafeteria making lunch brings back pleasant memories, sometimes it smelled like cakes, cookies, baking in the oven.

Space-filling smell of gravy, made of instant-gravy. (East)-German canteens...

Hurricane Jack · May 20, 2017

The smell of Carter Hall or Half and Half pipe tobaccos always bring back memories of my grandpa & my dad. I honor them on certain anniversary dates throughout the yr by smoking some.

LizzieMaine · Oct 20, 2017

Not so much a "time traveling" smell as a very distinctive smell that I associate with a very specific slice of the Era -- in going thru a stack of 1930s "Ladies Home Journals" today I'm struck full force by the very very distinctive aroma common to all the Curtis Publishing Company's magazines. It's almost a cedary smell, but not quite, and it's not quite an inky-painty smell -- but rather a sort of combination of the two. Only Curtis magazines smell precisely this way, and every single prewar copy of the LHJ, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Country Gentleman that I've ever handled -- a number that's well into the hundreds -- has that distinct aroma. I don't know if it's specific to the paper they used or what, but it's an exceedingly pleasant odor.

There are a lot of things in the Curtis publications that annoy me -- I long ago learned not to bother reading the flat-footed NAM-propaganda editorials in the Post -- but they could put J. Howard Pew himself on every cover and I'd still gladly buy every issue if only just to put them over my face and breathe in the smell. The Boys have their insidious ways of luring in us all.

2jakes · Oct 20, 2017

Honeysuckle = Grandma’ house.

Spam meat = Military.

Fading Fast · Oct 20, 2017

LizzieMaine said:
Not so much a "time traveling" smell as a very distinctive smell that I associate with a very specific slice of the Era -- in going thru a stack of 1930s "Ladies Home Journals" today I'm struck full force by the very very distinctive aroma common to all the Curtis Publishing Company's magazines. It's almost a cedary smell, but not quite, and it's not quite an inky-painty smell -- but rather a sort of combination of the two. Only Curtis magazines smell precisely this way, and every single prewar copy of the LHJ, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Country Gentleman that I've ever handled -- a number that's well into the hundreds -- has that distinct aroma. I don't know if it's specific to the paper they used or what, but it's an exceedingly pleasant odor.

There are a lot of things in the Curtis publications that annoy me -- I long ago learned not to bother reading the flat-footed NAM-propaganda editorials in the Post -- but they could put J. Howard Pew himself on every cover and I'd still gladly buy every issue if only just to put them over my face and breathe in the smell. The Boys have their insidious ways of luring in us all.

In a similar vein, we bought a bunch of early 1900s wood bookcases with glass fronts for our apartment. We bought them on Ebay and from other private sellers to save on the very, very large markup antique and even used furniture dealers take. Most of them had been in their homes for decades if not since the early 1900s and, while none were filthy, they were almost all in need of a real good cleaning when we got them (dealers tend to "freshen" them up before putting them on their showroom floors) - which we gave them with Murphy's Oil Soap (inside and out) follow by a wax coating.

Despite that (and thankfully), some of them still have what I can only describe as the slightly musty (not at all mildewy) odor of old books, wood, wax and time. You get a faint scent of it when you walk in the room, but you really notice it when you open up the glass fronts of some of them. If it was overpowering, I'd want to reduce it, but as it is, it, IMHO, feels good and adds to the "warmth" of the room. Nobody in my family had money when I was growing up except a distant great uncle who was a doctor (not rich, but it didn't take much to seem rich by comparison to the rest of us) and I distinctly remember the same smell in his "study" which was lined with similar bookcases.

Not a great shot, but these are some of our bookcases in the background:

2jakes · Oct 20, 2017

@ Fading Fast!

Call me weird..., but I have oil & lube
cans from the 30s & 40s with the
contents still inside which I enjoy
the odor. The only high I get is that
it takes me back to days of long ago.

Same thing when I’m inside the ‘39 or
‘46 vehicles.

scottyrocks · Oct 20, 2017

Yes, I have a number of 1950s books, particularly science fiction collections, that have a very distinct smell that zoom me back right to my childhood.

Harp · Oct 20, 2017

2jakes said:
Spam meat = Military.

I enjoy SPAM-grilled, mixed with scrambled eggs. Easy to fix sandwich.

Inkstainedwretch · Oct 20, 2017

In the '50s-'60s the Grosset & Dunlap books, mostly YA (" juveniles," back then) had a distinctive smell that always takes me back to that time. Whether Tarzan or Tom Corbett, they all had that smell. Now, in a dealer's room or used bookshop, I can sometimes catch a faint whiff of that once-overpowering smell, faded with the decades.

HadleyH1 · Oct 21, 2017

Many smells take me back to my childhood. Dozens of them ...

Among them....my grandmothers and grand aunt's perfume...a kind of dusty rose....the sort you find in the rose petals you have been keeping for a long time among the pages of a book... dusty, dusty rose.

HadleyH1 · Oct 21, 2017

and this is even more intense....it brings me back on the spot....back to my childhood again

Turpentine.. to clean painting brushes....my father who is gone now and whom I miss everyday of my life....used that when he painted his pictures.... his studio reeck of turpentine....I miss that smell

I have a couple of Turpentine bottles at home.

They bring the past back to me.

2jakes · Oct 21, 2017

HadleyH1 said:
Turpentine.. to clean painting brushes....my father who is gone now and whom I miss everyday of my life....used that when he painted his pictures.... his studio reeck of turpentine....I miss that smell

I have a couple of Turpentine bottles at home.

They bring the past back to me.

You would have a “field day” here!

Oil painting from memory (no photos) my “grandma’s place” where I grew up.
I keep adding and removing. The honeysuckle was in the front.
That dog to the left is “2jakes”.
Best pal for a kid growing up. I pay him homage on this forum’s avatar name.

52Styleline · Oct 21, 2017

LizzieMaine said:
I've never been able to stand the smell of strong perfume -- I'm not allergic to it, I just ferociously dislike it. It reminds me of those suffocating old ladies at church who smelled like what my grandfather delicately described as "a French cathouse."

That brings back a memory. When I was in high school, I worked after school in the local Rexall drug store. We had a glass case of scents and they were very popular with the elderly female customers. The big seller was Evening in Paris. It was inexpensive and came in fancy blue and silver containers. The ladies mostly bought cologne and powder but a few went "whole hog" and bought the big gift boxes. Some of them overdid their application of the product. The pharmacist always made me wait on them because the smell caused him to have a sneezing fit. I saw it offered in the Vermont Country Store catalog recently.

TimeWarpWife · Oct 21, 2017

Wood smoke always takes me back to my great-grandmother's kitchen because she used a wood cook stove up until her death in 1979. It was hot as Hades in her house during the summer and my dad refused to visit her until late fall and winter.

2jakes · Oct 21, 2017

52Styleline said:
That brings back a memory. When I was in high school, I worked after school in the local Rexall drug store. We had a glass case of scents and they were very popular with the elderly female customers. The big seller was Evening in Paris. It was inexpensive and came in fancy blue and silver containers. The ladies mostly bought cologne and powder but a few went "whole hog" and bought the big gift boxes. Some of them overdid their application of the product. The pharmacist always made me wait on them because the smell caused him to have a sneezing fit. I saw it offered in the Vermont Country Store catalog recently.

Bottle of Jade East mens cologne!
Splashed it before going to the Saturday nite high school dance.
I was in charge of holding up the wall
while everybody danced.

HadleyH1 · Oct 21, 2017

Cigar and pipe smoke....love it...it never fails to transport me instantly, to that very happy past.

Bushman · Oct 22, 2017

I was talking to a woman the other day who smelled of menthol cigarettes, and it immediately transported me back to the days of my childhood when I would spend the weekend with my favorite aunt, who unfortunately succumbed to bone cancer when I was about 11 or 12.

BlueTrain · Oct 23, 2017

I don't know if I posted these memories before or not but if I did, maybe you didn't read it first time around.

The family used to have a cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It's been sold but my wife insisted on driving by it when we were there last. It was paneled on the inside with juniper wood, which had a distinctive aroma. So when you opened the door when you arrived for a week at the beach, you smelled that distinctive smell and it was like only then did you actually realize you were actually at the beach. Most of the time it was after dark when you got there and you could hear the surf most of the time anyway.

Another aroma (smell) that reminds me of my father-in-law's garage/workshop was that peculiar smell of grease and oil, together with sawdust and a touch of dog. That's what his garage, which never housed a car, smelled like. It was packed with tools and equipment, all manner of paints, lubricants, solvents and I don't know what all. And now, since some of that stuff resides in my garage, it has come to smell the same way.

Yet another aroma that invariably makes me think of something else is our dust collection system here at work. We have a custom shop in the back that produces trade show displays. There are a few fancy woodworking machines and because of that, there is a dust collection system that blows the sawdust, some of it, at least, outside and deposits it in a barrel. When I walk by outside, it reminds me of nothing else but a carnival, because carnivals usually have sawdust down on the ground where you walk. And I haven't been to a carnival in years.

BlueTrain · Oct 23, 2017

I had mentioned the smell of juniper paneling in the beach cottage. Although the aroma was very distinctive upon first opening the cottage, it either quickly disappeared or one got used to it and stopped noticing it.

Someone mentioned the smell of an army supply room, sometimes present in a surplus store. I agree. I think most of the odor came from canvas; tents, tarps, and seat cushions, all of which were treated with some kind of preservative. Over time, it's like everything in storage eventually absorb that odor. Not really an unpleasant smell but one that would also remind you of a garage. It could be an acquired taste, so to say.

Many things have a distinctive and usually strong odor when fresh, never entirely pleasant but by no means foul. Fresh paint, freshly laid asphalt, freshly cut grass (probably the most pleasant), dry hay or straw and newly plowed or spaded earth. They may or may not remind you of anything but they are very distinctive and easily recognized.

Old smells, that immeditately transport you back in time?

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