Old smells, that immeditately transport you back in time?

[Twitch]

There exists an "old car" smell that is present in original vehicles up to the early 1950s. I have no idea what ingredients of the interior materials combine to make it but my 1950 Packard has it and people at car shows actually stick their heads in the open window in order to inhale the nostalgic aroma. Really.

 

[gluegungeisha]

My Indian clothes smell like the air and water in India -- I can't really explain that smell. Sort of old and dirty, but not unpleasant. A lot of really strong city smells reminds me of New Delhi, too, but it's never nearly as strong as it was over there. I'm never going to forget the smells of burning sugar cane and open sewage. There were a lot of amazing smells, too -- lotus and opium oil (I brought some back home in a beautiful perfume bottle), chai, the delicious Indian and Tibetan foods cooking, fresh cardamom carrot cake, Himalayan mountain air after a rain storm...etc. etc.

The smell of a lot of antique shops brings me back to my grandma's house.

Patchouli reminds me of one of my friends from high school.

Chalk reminds me of gymnastics when I was really little.

Fresh-cut grass reminds me of many things -- my soccer games (I played for six years), Jew camp (my grandma would only fund camp if it was Jewish, hehe), my old house in New York.

 

[Daisy Buchanan]

Old books. When I was a kid my sister and I would sometimes go to my Grandparents house for the weekend. It was a big old colonial. One of those real solid homes with very steep, sturdy staircases. I used to stay in what was once my Aunts room. I loved this room because it was in the back of the house of the top floor and it had a balcony attached to it. But, she had this bed that had bookcases behind it. I remember pulling all the books out one by one. They hadn't been opened in years and they just had this smell to them. Whenever I open an old book now, I'm transported back to that room.

The smell of the morning on a hot summer day reminds me of my childhood summers on Block Island and Newport. I remember getting up early, the sun would just be starting to warm the air. You knew it was gonna be a hot and humid day, but their was still a damp coolness in the air. The air smelled like th ocean and was still a little thick with fog. On humid mornings here in Boston I can smell the ocean from the roof deck. I'll go out there nice and early, sit at the table and close my eyes and a can transport myself back to when I was a little girl taking a morning walk with my Dad through the empty but soon to be filled streets of Newport.

The smell of L'Oreal lipstick transports me back to the 7th grade. The first lipstick my Mom let me wear was a very sheer shade of pink by L'oreal. It has a distinctive smell to it, like no other lip product. So now when I wear that brand it brings back a lot of memories

 

[Daisy Buchanan]

Jew camp (my grandma would only fund camp if it was Jewish, hehe), my old house in New York.

Oh my that's so funny. I honestly thought that was only a northeast thing!! I went to one of these summer camps too, for many many years. Oh, the memories

 

[gluegungeisha]

Oh my that's so funny. I honestly thought that was only a northeast thing!! I went to one of these summer camps too, for many many years. Oh, the memories

Haha, well the camp was actually in the northeast, so it might be. I liked camp, but a lot of the girls where very, er...stereotypical. I didn't fit in to well. lol

 

[imoldfashioned]

What is it about lawnmowers? That gassy smell combined with warm, cut grass always makes me think of being 5 years old, balanced on the crossbar of my newly retired grandfather’s old Schwinn bike. He’d pedal through the small rural Minnesota town where my mother grew up, past all the men in short sleeved shirts and baseball caps from the local grain elevator. They were all mowing their lawns in the evenings because everyone kept up their property then. We’d stop at the Tender-Maid, the tiny local hamburger shop my grandfather had been patronizing since 1938, for a bite to eat. He’d lift me onto one of the impossibly tall stools and the cook would tease me while we ate and watched baseball on the black and white television. It was always cooler and quieter on the way home, but that pungent moist scent of earth and grass was still present. I’d usually lay back a little on the return trip, feeling the warmth of my grandfather’s chest, and the rumble against my shoulders when he spoke. Despite the periodic wobble of the bike I felt so safe and contented, as if the days were endless and nothing would ever change.

 

[PADDY]

.Grand dad's bike...

Is there room for another one on your grand-dad's bike? I just adored reading that, so much so that I'm going to read it again...

 

[Viola]

[Jewish camp] Oh my that's so funny. I honestly thought that was only a northeast thing!! I went to one of these summer camps too, for many many years. Oh, the memories

I went one year. So so so out of place. I'd gone to Girl Scout camps before that...not at ALL the same thing.

-Viola

 

[Hemingway Jones]

Ah, the smell of Mac's Pizza! Wildwood Boardwalk.

You wash it down with Pennsylvanian Dutch Birch Beer.

I'm ten years old again.

God, I love Jersey.

 

[LadyStardust]

If I say the salty ocean air, is that valid? I have so many blissfull memories associated with the ocean/beach, that the very second I'm assaulted by that scent, I am transported to an almost alternate reality.

 

[Viola]

For me its garden smells. Butterfly bush blooming. Mowed grass. Irises that don't even smell particularly great but remind me of being seven and moving rocks around the yard to find new and interesting insects.

-Viola

 

[LizzieMaine]

If you combine kerosene, Half and Half pipe tobacco, and Fels Naptha soap, it's the smell of my grandparents' house. It was heated by a big kerosene stove in the living room, which gave off a powerful odor that got so it permeated everything in the house. The pipe tobacco, of course, comes from my grandfather, who liked nothing better than to sit in his favorite chair puffing away while cursing at the Red Sox. The soap bubbled forth from the washing machine in the kitchen, where my grandmother would chip a bar of Fels Naptha into the water with a cheese grater until it whipped up a lovely head of suds.

To this day, smelling any one of those three things instantly takes me back to childhood.

 

[Spitfire]

This thread is SO poetic! Thank you all for sharing.:eusa_clap

 

[warbird]

If I say the salty ocean air, is that valid? I have so many blissfull memories associated with the ocean/beach, that the very second I'm assaulted by that scent, I am transported to an almost alternate reality.

Very valid. It certainly has its own scent and its own allure. Yes many memories. I find not only personal memories when smelling the sea, but also a sort of historical and vast acknowledgment of the enormity of the ocean and what it has seen, in effect.

 

[Mildred]

old smells that thrill me

Lemon oil-oatmeal cookies-Yardley lavender-is my great Aunt Grace's house.

Pipe tobacco- my Dad. His car smelled of it too.

Coffee, Bacon and eggs, Jergens hand lotion, Channel perfume-Mom

White Rain hairspray, Roasting chicken-Granny Em




I am sure I will think of lots more.

 

[Miss.Beast]

I love the smell of the Guinness factory.

It reminds me of 2 streets, Thomas Street and Meath Street.
They are both near where the Guinness factory is situated.
And on these 2 streets are a lot of markets and stalls. When I was about 5 years old - 8 years, perhaps; my mother and I would come here all the time and wander around endlessly searching for something good to buy.
Thus, why I love this smell!
Guinness tastes horrible though

 

[Harp]

Guinness tastes horrible though :
(

I couldn't agree more! lol

 

[Spitfire]

...nonsens. Guiness is good for you! :beer: lol

 

[warbird]

Guinness tastes horrible though

Heresy heresy. Say it ain't so. :cheers1: Love Guiness. :beer:

 

[pretty faythe]

Lemon oil-oatmeal cookies-Yardley lavender-is my great Aunt Grace's house.

Pipe tobacco- my Dad. His car smelled of it too.

Coffee, Bacon and eggs, Jergens hand lotion, Channel perfume-Mom

White Rain hairspray, Roasting chicken-Granny Em




I am sure I will think of lots more.

ooo and Jergens has came out with their original formula scented lotion!