Old smells, that immeditately transport you back in time?

[2jakes]

I love the smell of lube from my Texaco can from 1950s.
Also the sulphur from my Henry .44 cal.

The smell of fear is the worse of all!

The natural scent of a woman is the best.

For me!

 

[basbol13]

The smell of chickens reminds me of when I was a small child and my grandfather would take me to the poultry store on Fullerton Ave in Chicago, There would be cages upon cages of chickens and rabbits. My grandfather would take his time looking for the choicest one. He'd pick it out and the store would prepare it. Talk about fresh you couldn't get it any fresher.

 

[basbol13]

the Old Butcher shop smells

the smell of dry Salami hanging on a string, the sound of the saw while they cut the meat

the butcher shop use to have saw dust all over the floor for easy clean up, I remember the smell and sliding through the thick saw dust all over the floor, this was behind the counter for the workers, but I was allowed to go back there as a child

and they would give me a free hot dog [cold]

Where I grew up they even had it on the floor where the patrons stood, so I didn't have to go behind the counter, all I had to worry about was the butcher yelling at me to "Stop It !!!"

 

[LizzieMaine]

Butcher shop smells = the smell of the bone saw I got to clean in the meat-processing place where I once worked. Congealed masses of fat, bone, and blood blasted out into the room by high-pressure steam, a smell like you'd expect if you fed a macerated steer into a commercial laundry. Ah, happy days.

 

[Fading Fast]

Perfumes that were once employed by former girlfriends or female associates. I can be on a subway train, take a whiff.. and the image of a particular face is immediately on my mind. Decades after the fact.

Or shampoos - I don't know if they still make it, but for decades the scent of Prell shampoo brought to mind a college girlfriend and fun afternoons between classes. It is/was as basic a shampoo as they come, but to this day, is fully linked in my mind to that one girl. Another one had a strawberry scented shampoo - don't remember the brand, but can almost smell it now thirty years later just thinking about her.

 

[Fading Fast]

Made worse when applied to cover-up for not bathing!

That's a bad tactical move trying to cover up a flawed strategy. A complete start-over is needed.

 

[2jakes]

The smell of the ocean....

 

[green papaya]

the scent of HAI KARATE AFTERSHAVE brings back memories of these old ads / commercials

 

[2jakes]

High school:

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Christ, English Leather. It was the go-to scent of my high school days in the early 60s. A couple of years ago I found some in a Dollar Store. I had no idea they still made it. I bought some just to smell that scent again. I spritzed some on my arm this morning (just before taking a shower, didn't want it following me around all day) just to take me back. And that's why we talk about all these smells. Not that they were good, but because they remind us of when we were young.

 

[Killick]

Christ, English Leather. It was the go-to scent of my high school days in the early 60s. A couple of years ago I found some in a Dollar Store. I had no idea they still made it. I bought some just to smell that scent again. I spritzed some on my arm this morning (just before taking a shower, didn't want it following me around all day) just to take me back. And that's why we talk about all these smells. Not that they were good, but because they remind us of when we were young.

Are you kidding me?? 9th grade a date with Vicky Wildimooth. I must have dumped half the bottle on me. Something I'll never forget. Too funny!

 

[green papaya]

the smell of fresh brewed coffee use to remind me of elementary school, the school office usually always smelled of a pot of fresh coffee, and if you were sent to the office that usually meant your in trouble, so the smell reminds me of a place of authority

like the school office, the police station, the base Commander's office "the Man".

 

[St. Louis]

Frankincense. To this day that fragrance immediately makes me feel holy. These days it's only used on the highest holy days like Christmas Midnight Mass, but I remember it as a weekly thing when I was a child.

 

[Bushman]

Black powder never fails to transport me back to my childhood when my father would throw extravagant Fourth of July parties, complete with a 40ft 2x4 of fountains, mortars, and rockets that would serve as the finale.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Smell of the inside of machine-parts factories or metal-workshops and so on...

Oily, stinky, greasy, smothery, warm, ...

 

[Trenchfriend]

If I would have been a teenager in the 80s, with too much testosterone:

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

The smell of "Sea and Ski" suntan lotion instantly transports me back to summers at the beach, half a century ago.

 

[Fading Fast]

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.

 

[Haversack]

The combined smell of low-tide and roasting coffee as one approached San Francisco on the Bay Bridge. In the 1960s & 70s, a couple time a year, we would drive to San Francisco for shopping and site-seeing. The smell meant we were almost there. (Back when San Francisco had a working waterfront, MJB, Folger's, and Hills Bros. all had their roasters and docks right below the bridge. The coffee beans would be shipped up from South & Central America in big jute bags and left to season on the docks in the cool, salty air for a week or two before being roasted.)

 

[green papaya]

The combined smell of low-tide and roasting coffee as one approached San Francisco on the Bay Bridge. In the 1960s & 70s, a couple time a year, we would drive to San Francisco for shopping and site-seeing. The smell meant we were almost there. (Back when San Francisco had a working waterfront, MJB, Folger's, and Hills Bros. all had their roasters and docks right below the bridge. The coffee beans would be shipped up from South & Central America in big jute bags and left to season on the docks in the cool, salty air for a week or two before being roasted.)

Do you remember the strong smell of SOUP or possibly Onion Smell? I think it was from CAMPBELL's SOUP factory?

and those art pieces people use to set up along the side of the road made of drift wood and other misc junk? some looked like robots or scarecrows, etc.

the low flat marshy area before arriving at the toll booths / Bay bridge.