What Make You Nostalgic?

[deadpandiva]

I love old buildings. When I was in California I lived near The Ambassador Hotel and Perinos. I could never go into any of those places but I loved to just stop and star. I also lived in an old building and often wondered about who might have lived there before.

 

[imported_the_librarian]

Books in my basement--especially LIFE
college libraries built in the fifties with the chrome
Coffee from a stovetop percolator
Sinatra-anytime-anywhere!
Jack Benny on the radio!

 

[mrswheats]

Any old movies with dancering--Fred and Ginger, Danny Kaye or Gene Kelly, for example. There's nothing like an old musical with lots of dancing in it to make me feel 7 years old at my grandparents again.

 

[staggerwing]

Christmas time, since my earliest memories are of my first Christmases, in almost (mid 50s) vintage times.

 

[KY Gentleman]

I associate music with a lot of memories, too. When I hear certain songs I often get a mental picture of the time that song played during a significant event in my life.

 

[Dixon Cannon]

Every time I hear the roar of those four Wright-Cyclones in the distance. As Boeing B-17G, "Sentimental Journey" comes over the houses and appears in the sky above Phoenix, my mind goes back to 1944 imagining 1000 planes in the sky at once! I want to immediately run inside, don my Class A's and salute that magnificent machine and the men that crewed her.

A Flying Fortress turns me nostalgic everytime.

-dixon cannon

 

[pgoat]

I totally agree with all who said smells are the top of the list. But I'll add that when I come across vintgae sounds I get pretty emotional. By that I don't mean old music (although I get as charged up by big bands or acapella doo-wop as the next guy), I mean sounds from my own past. I guess I'm old enough now to have lots of that, but we all have those from childhood and so forth. For example I used to love sneaking a cassette tape recorder around and playing people's voices back to them for a laugh. Some of these survived, laying around in a drawer or box until I discovered them decades later. It's pretty powerful to hear someone's voice again long after you lost them at far too young an age to a terminal illness, or hear your father singing (with perfect intonation!) when you don't recollect him ever singing at all.....

Whatever it is, nostalgia can be so sweet....bittersweet, but where would we FLers be without such a soft spot for memories?

 

[Warbaby]

Smells. For example, whenever I smell kerosene, I'm transported back to childhood and my grandparents' house -- which reeked of kerosene because of the stove in the living room. Most people think that's a terrible odor, but for me it's the scent of happy memories.

That's a big one for me, too. My mother and I lived with my grandparents in Western Pennsylvania while my father was in the army during WWII. They had a kerosene stove in the kitchen. Others may wax nostalgic over the smell of a wood fire, but for me it's the smell of burning coal - we had a coal furnace and coal burning fireplaces as well.

 

[Miss 1929]

Visuals

Terra-cotta tile deco buildings
Fred and Ginger movies
Old fabrics they don't make anymore, like metal lame and pebble satin
Silver tea services
Fireplaces on rainy days

 

[LizzieMaine]

I totally agree with all who said smells are the top of the list. But I'll add that when I come across vintgae sounds I get pretty emotional. By that I don't mean old music (although I get as charged up by big bands or acapella doo-wop as the next guy), I mean sounds from my own past. I guess I'm old enough now to have lots of that, but we all have those from childhood and so forth. For example I used to love sneaking a cassette tape recorder around and playing people's voices back to them for a laugh. Some of these survived, laying around in a drawer or box until I discovered them decades later. It's pretty powerful to hear someone's voice again long after you lost them at far too young an age to a terminal illness, or hear your father singing (with perfect intonation!) when you don't recollect him ever singing at all.....

Whatever it is, nostalgia can be so sweet....bittersweet, but where would we FLers be without such a soft spot for memories?

Random sounds can do it for me, too -- especially ones that just seem to have vanished completely from the modern scene. Think of the sound a coin makes as it rings the bell while dropping into an old pay phone, or a gas pump that dings as it counts off the gallons, or the chunka-chunka sound of a manual cash register or the air-raid siren they used to blow off on the town office roof every day at noon, or a non-digital dialtone. Even something as basic as a telephone bell is pretty much extinct in the non-retrophile world, and it's sounds like that which have the most potential for nostalgia.

 

[ShooShooBaby]

the smell of my grandma's house at christmas from when i was a child. i have two poinsettia-shaped candles that still hold this smell, and occasionally i get a whiff of it when i find vintage christmas stuff at thrift stores. i cannot put my finger on it. but man, what a happy smell for me!

 

[pgoat]

Random sounds can do it for me, too -- especially ones that just seem to have vanished completely from the modern scene. Think of the sound a coin makes as it rings the bell while dropping into an old pay phone, or a gas pump that dings as it counts off the gallons, or the chunka-chunka sound of a manual cash register or the air-raid siren they used to blow off on the town office roof every day at noon, or a non-digital dialtone. Even something as basic as a telephone bell is pretty much extinct in the non-retrophile world, and it's sounds like that which have the most potential for nostalgia.

very true.

My wife and I have been watching all our videos in chronological order and it's odd to watch, say, All the President's Men or The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which are based largely in offices - and the desks have no computers! You hear typewriters clacking away....I am old enough to remmeber this stuff from the start of my working life. But still weird to think of going in to work now without a computer workstation as my focus every day....

 

[KY Gentleman]

On that same note, do you think its funny when a movie from that era shows someone on a cell phone? Its as big as a shoe!

 

[Patrick Murtha]

On that same note, do you think its funny when a movie from that era shows someone on a cell phone? Its as big as a shoe!

Someone once said that nothing seems more dated than the recent past...I think that's a quite correct perception.

 

[pgoat]

absolutely on both counts - those mid 90s cell phones are hysterical - we just saw some on Melrose Place. Especially funny as the characters using them are supposed to be all 'jet set cutting edge'....lol

 

[KY Gentleman]

I don't live in the town I grew up in so when I get back there its always a shock at whats changed. My first job was as a bellman in a nice Holiday Inn.I have many, many fond memories of working at this motel. Last Christmas I was home and drove by the place (its been over 25 years since I worked there) and its changed hands several times. It is now a place of questionable repute and seeing it in such a state has made me very nostalgic for its glory days.

 

[LadyStardust]

This is going to sound strange, but often time I get the strongest waves of nostalgia when I happen to be entrenched in a completely modern situation/location. I just get these overpowering thoughts of just how out of place I am, and this is not my time, and how desperately I wish things were different. Other nostalgia triggers usually involve particular older homes, certain books, and sounds. Especially trains, for some reason. Whenever I hear trains, especially at night, it whisks me away to thoughts of a dim past I'm sure I knew.

 

[pgoat]

I remember doing itinerant work in the early 90s, using my own car and I would have been lost without my tape deck. It dawned on me one day that not only did I not listen to the radio (with current music and news, etc), but that immediately outside my little automotive bubble the world around didn't know or care about Charlie Parker, Husker Du, Lennie Tristano, NRBQ, Jane's Addiction or whatever else I was blasting.

Not everyone goes out of their way to have things not readily available. We do live in a mass market pack mule world.....

 

[CharlesB]

Listening to Weezer or the Rentals, hopping in one of my old trucks putting the windows down. Light up a smoke and haul ass to the diner for some coffee and all night silliness

 

[Big Man]

... Especially trains, for some reason. Whenever I hear trains, especially at night, it whisks me away to thoughts of a dim past I'm sure I knew.

I used to spend my summers and every weekend with my grandmother. The old house sits on a hill above the rail road, and I used to sleep in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Late at night when a long coal train would come down the tracks, the old windows in the bedroom would gently rattle from the vibrations sent by the passing train.

I'm sure to some that would be a scary sound, but to me it was peaceful. Now, when I'm at the old house and a train passes, I think back on those days so long ago when I spent time with my grandmother.