Old smells, that immeditately transport you back in time?

[Atticus Finch]

I was setting fence posts down by the water late yesterday evening when three guys in an older motor boat came by. Their motor looked to be a late 'seventies or early 'eighties Evinrude. After they passed, the smell of the engine's exhaust wafted over me and I was instantly transported back to my kidhood in Beaufort. I know engine exhaust shouldn't be on anyone's list of pleasant smells, but there is just something about the smell of an old two-cycle outboard motor that always reminds me of summer.

AF

 

[Renault]

Throw in the Coleman lantern smell with that old two-cycle outboard, and I'm with dad again running trot-lines at 2:30 in the morning down on the river!

 

[vintage.vendeuse]

I was setting fence posts down by the water late yesterday evening when three guys in an older motor boat came by. Their motor looked to be a late 'seventies or early 'eighties Evinrude. After they passed, the smell of the engine's exhaust wafted over me and I was instantly transported back to my kidhood in Beaufort. I know engine exhaust shouldn't be on anyone's list of pleasant smells, but there is just something about the smell of an old two-cycle outboard motor that always reminds me of summer.

AF

In a similar vein, the smell of diesel exhaust always takes me back to London 1974. We visited family in England for two months that summer and I'll never forget the smell of all those double-deckers when we were touring the city.

 

[sola fide]

The smell of Jet exhaust brings me back to the USS Midway watching flight ops, parking in Subic Bay, Hong Kong harbor, Fremantle Australia,etc...
Those were exciting times, but life today is soooo much better.
Mike A

 

[ChiTownScion]

The smell of creosote from railroad ties on a hot day. I don't believe that they still use it to treat the ties, but that scent always reminds me of the trains that I experienced as a kid. The interior of the old passenger coaches and parlor cars also had a unique odor- somewhat musty, many likely would find it offensive.... but to me it triggers the exhilaration I felt when embarking upon a rail adventure.

Oh, and I won't even get into what the smell of coal smoke from a steam locomotive does to me..

 

[HudsonHawk]

The smell of creosote from railroad ties on a hot day. I don't believe that they still use it to treat the ties, but that scent always reminds me of the trains that I experienced as a kid.

Creosote is still the dominant preservative in railroad ties and utility poles. I can't say I care for the smell, though I've worked at more than one creosote-contamination remediation site. It gets a little overwhelming.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Someone earlier mentioned a scent worn by a former girlfriend. I had a similar experience. 20-plus years after I dated this girl, right out of high school, I was on a crowded subway car and some other woman was wearing it. It immediately triggered those old, wonderful memories.

 

[newsman]

Certain perfumes take me back to certain times in my life. I've actually SAVED all my old perfume bottles with little bits of perfume still in them just for nostalgia.

I remember learning in my psychology class that smell is the one sense that is most connected to memory.

Yeah. There are certain perfumes that instantly remind me of former flames. Elizabeth wore poison. My wife, not Elizabeth, wears Romance. Red Door is another.

Funny how that works. It sure did make me smile.

Basil always reminds me of my mom.

And for those who know. Hopes number 9 cleaning solvent. Brasso makes me smile. So does the smell of boot polish. London Dock pipe tobacco.

I instantly know certain bad smells instantly.

 

[Stearmen]

A few years ago, I was at the hobby shop where a guy was building a model using the old liquid cement that you apply with a fine point brush. Wow, when I got a whiff of that, the memories came flooding back! My Dad and I built model airplanes using that cement.

 

[GHT]

Not a very nice one, but the smell of rancid **** (for Londoners think of downstairs in Bradleys Spanish bar on Hanway Street - after the smoking ban!!!!)

In the early eighties I worked in building off Carpenters Road E15. Better known as Stinkhouse Lane, because of the fertiliser factory that made their produce from fish and fish bones. And just up the road, The Abbey Pumping Station used to treat London's raw sewage, what a ripe smell that produced on a hot day. Incredibly, Abbey Pumping Station has been restored and is now a museum. It may no longer be a sewage treatment works, but like the fertiliser factory: I can still smell it!

 

[newsman]

This was a really great thread. I net a lot of us said, "Oh yeah! I remember that smell!"

Someone said pine wood. They should put that in a spray can.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've been doing a lot of painting lately, and the odor of mineral spirits is never far away. And every time I smell it, it's 1987 again and I'm working on the line at the t-shirt factory. Every day at the end of our shifts we'd spray our hands and clothes with mineral spirits to get off as much of the ink and grease and filth as possible, but we never managed to get the smell off.

 

[2jakes]

Mineral spirits & I'm in commercial arts class in my senior high school.

 

[Atticus Finch]

When I was growing up in Beaufort, Ottis Purifoy had a boatyard where The Harvey Smith Watercraft Center is now located...and that's a half a block from my house. During the summer months, when the wind was from the southwest, I would sit in my bedroom and smell the pungent boatyard smells...freshly cut juniper, linseed oil, turpentine, copper naphtenate. It was almost like I was sitting on Captain Ottis' dock. Several days ago I used copper naphtenate on a door I was building. The moment I opened the can and smelled that unique odor, I was a kid in Beaufort again, hanging around the docks, aggravating the workers and getting into whatever adventure I could.

Here's the HSWC. Beaufort sure didn't look like this in the 'fifties and 'sixties. I wonder if there's even a can of copper naphtenate in that building.

AF

 

[HudsonHawk]

If you grew up in the South, nothing smells like summer more than the mosquito truck and the sweet fog of DDT.

 

[dh66]

The smell of kudzu always takes me back to my childhood, as do honeysuckle blossoms and magnolias

 

[Bugguy]

Formaldehyde... dissecting a pickled dogfish in high school biology class.

 

[Gregg Axley]

If you grew up in the South, nothing smells like summer more than the mosquito truck and the sweet fog of DDT.

And to think, many of us played outside while the truck was driving by.

DH I have honeysuckle in my front yard, attached to a large bush. It's a nice reminder of when I was in the 1st grade, and the school yard had some running along the fence.
While we didn't have Magnolias personally, a neighbor had one and yes it smelled great when it bloomed.
Other than that, the dern tree was 20ft high after it tapped into his water line, so it had to go.
One other smell that is so familiar to me, is the bloom of a Desert Mimosa.
A neighbor had one, as well as my grandparents.

 

[vintage.vendeuse]

Formaldehyde... dissecting a pickled dogfish in high school biology class.

We did fetal pigs in 8th grade, then cats in 10th grade Anatomy (an elective). Formaldehyde... ainkiller:

 

[dnjan]

Yesterday I was bringing the yard-waste container back from the street (we get weekly pick-up of yard waste, which can include anything compostable such as table scraps, etc.). Before brining it back, I opened the lid to make sure it had been emptied and I was immediately transported to an uncle's dairy farm in Wisconsin. Somehow, the combination of windfall apples, table scraps, lawn clippings and miscellaneous brush had exactly reproduced the smell of silage!