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Memorable smells

N

NCWayne

Well-known Member
I had a two hour plus ride to a job this morning, and another two plus this evening to get home, so I had alot of seat time to just ride and think today.

The customer I was working for has their office in what was an old school building. When I went in the place had what I think of as an 'old building smell'. Just about every old building I've ever been in has that same sort of dry, musty smell, and I love it. I think it goes back to messing around an old house that was on my Grandparents place when I was growing up. It was a big, old, two story house sitting under a bunch of BIG oak trees and for some reason it was always just a little spooky for some reason.

Anyway, I got to thinking about the old building smell and others that brought back memories came to mind. Things like the pleasant, sort of sweet, yet musty, cigarette smell in my grandparents car, and the smell of Grandpa's pipe tobacco. All of these smells tend to being back nice memories of growing up.

Then there are the work related things like the smell of 90 weight gear oil, or even worse the smell of 90 weight, along with a mix of everything found on the floor in a commercial cow barn, in a CAT final drive, on a 98 degree day. Then there's the smell of 'belly pan gunk'. That's one of those smells that seems to be the same regardless of the machine. Then there's diesel smoke, diesel fuel, and a host of others that there is simply nothing else that smells like it.

Top all of it off with the 'outside' smells that you either wish were stronger, or wish they'd just go away. Things like the sweet smells of wild roses, and honeysuckle's that float through the air and tickle your nose at night when your driving around with the windows down. Then counter that with the freshly road-killed skunk who's stench doesn't so much tickle your nose as it just plain out assaults it. Worse yet is getting stuck behind a truck full of chickens, or even worse a rendering truck, either one on a 90 plus detree say.

Like I said, these are all 'memberable' smells, be they good or bad, that rarely have an equal. So, these are a few smells that bring back memories whenever I smell them, what are some ya'll remember?
 
I have a smell disorder, so certain smells can make me sick for 3 days - or even put me in the hospital, so I have to be very careful. I often wear a carbon mask to filter out the bad smells.
 
The smell of silage,takes me back to my Grandfathers farm.well,alot of the farm smells do,fresh turned earth,manure and such.
Thats one of the reasons I love to cruse around on the motorcycle all of the smells both good and maybe not so good. the lilac bushes are in full bloom now and that sure smells like spring to me
 
Before I was drafted in 65 I was raised on the farm, of coarse now retired and live in town,to me the best smell i can think of and rearly enjoy is the smell of a freshly cut alfalfa feild. After living in town for many years.I'll drive a couple miles out of the way just to drive by and take a good wiff or two.Just cant beat the smell of that!
 
Girls when they are young and beautiful.

Rust and grease on old equipment in the hot Sun.

Celery flats in the morning mist.

Smell of hot metal being poured into sand molds.

Smell of the beach at Lake Michigan.

Foul smell of bluegills being cleaned.

School odor when first opened in the fall.

Cast iron room heat exchangers when first turned on in The Fall.

Microwave ovens at work when used by Chinese or Korean coworkers.
 
Yup, fresh cut grass or hay. Best smell on earth. I can remember it would always be in school where I'd get the first whiff of cut grass after a 5 month winter. The school of course had the well drained, open fields all around it and a set of gang mowers behind a Case 630. I'd be sitting there by the open window snorting that smell, hating school.

2nd best smell was the perfume my first girlfriend wore. At least at the time it was.....
 
The attic in my grandparents house.

The sweet smell of a freshly lit cigarette.

Nitrogen fertilizer.

Fish cleaning house at our old camp in Canada.
 
Starch.

I don't smell it too often these days. But when I do - it's amazing - instantly takes me back to being 3 or 4 years old sitting in the big puffy, green vinyl covered easy chair (don't knock my parents taste, it was the 60's), while my mother was ironing.

Like it was yesterday.
 
* leather
*gasoline
*camp fires
*sweet clover
*fresh mowed hay
*pine trees
*the air after a rain shower
*lumber yard
*feed mill
 
A slightly weird one: the smell of my H! When I walk into the garage the smell of the H , sitting or running , it is slightly different than more modern equipment.
Vintage Lionel engines! They produce ozone when running. That, along with the old smoke pills or fluid just reminds me of Christmas when I was a kid.
Dave
 
Nothing I know compares to the smell around a healthy bee hive on a warm summer day when they are fanning air thru the hive to cool it. The smell of honey and pollen in the air is ALMOST as good as honeysuckle aroma in a warm summer evening.

Note: One of the worst smells is also a bee hive when the hive is diseased and dying!

(Old-time smell was entering a home that had no electricity and was lighted by kerosene lamps - and heated by an old-fashioned wood stove.)
 
I remember running a post like this a month or so ago.

My daughter told me that she learned in school that our sense of "Smell" brings back the most memories.
 
Mine is the smell of fresh baked tea cakes my grnadmother (Big Momma)would make. The house was about 100 yards from the road but as soon as I got off of the school bus I could smell them. Then it was a race to the house with my dog that sat at the road and waited for me everyday.
 
smell of a shop/Garage. Old oil,gas diesel a bit of ensilage manure, hay chaff. Just a great small that reminds of Grandpa everytime.
 
The smell of older peoples houses. It seems that almost every house of older people smells the same. The smell of the old time welding shop. Like somebody else mentioned, the smell of an old girlfriend's perfume. Well, she wasn't a girlfriend, but a really good friend who happened to be a cute girl back in grade school and high school. She had a different perfume or shampoo or something that nobody else had. This was 35-40 years ago, and I still recognize the smell after all these years. And I bet I could recognize the smell of Chesterfield cigarettes, if they still make them. Grandpa use to chain smoke them.
 
~The smell of a 54 Harley. Don't know if it was the oil or what. New ones do not smell like that.
~Fresh cut hay.
~Sawdust when dad cut lumber for fence posts.
~My moms oder when she held me close as a child. Her perfume was great.
~The smell of a brand new baby.
 
The rotten egg smell of the papermill when we picked Dad up after work.

Driving into Pisgah National Forest and smelling the damp pines.

Walking into my Grandmother's kitchen cause she was ALWAYS cookin' something.

And the right perfume on a lovely young lady,even now makes me stop and think about times past.
 
The smell of corn being picked on a two row mounted picker. I can still see dad driving it with the dust flying. A great memory. The smell of fresh cut hay. This makes me think of my grampa and us bailing on the hill side. The smell of sode being turned. Makes me think of Jack Wright and walking behind his team of horse plowing. With that you also heard the sound of the sod being ripped, most tractor drivers don't know what that sounds is. Dorthy Stolds blue berry muffins. Mmmmmmm This too make me think of bailing hay as she alway fixed the best meal.
 
The smell of bacon and eggs frying in my granny's kitchen as my mom dropped me off on her way to work. The smell of my grandpa's coffee as I climbed up in his lap with Johnny Cash "Burning Ring of Fire" playing on the radio on the kitchen counter. Happy times!
 
Freshly cut and split firewood, I can tell what kind of wood it is! I just stacked a bunch at the cabin and it brought back memories of my uncles wood pile 50 years ago. About 15 years ago I had pneumonia and lost my sense of smell for awhile. One day I met a lady in the hallway at work and her perfume smelled great, I knew my illness was over!
 
elem. school in the 50"s had steam radiators for heat and in the bathroom on many occasions some boy would pee on them; now thats a smell to remember. "who that do that on that there radiator".
 
Violets always take me back to opening day of trout season

Air after a heavy rain

Fresh cut hay

A barn with cows--early years on the farm

Splitting oak

Almost anything baking in the oven, but especially home-made bread

Larry
 
Brake fluid in the old cars with the master cylinder under the floor.

The smell of flour dust heated in the motor of the old mixer when my mother would bake a cake on Sunday.
 
The smell of an old, old book.

Scent of lilacs (meant school was nearly done for the year).

A chocolate cake baking.

Any horse or cow barn.
 
Over the years I have lost all sense of smell. Some odors I can remember but most I no longer can conger up in my mind. What I wish I could experience would be, propane and natural gas for safety reasons and for memory would be my uncles meat market and a good bakery.
 
My late girlfriend said "...you love the smell of manure, your my little farmer boy." Yup, I do!

Fresh cut alfalfa hay and then the aroma of small bales just stacked in the haymow.

Grandma Martha's kitchen.

Air after a snowstorm.

Lilacs.

Burning leaves.

Cheese curds being made in the long vats.

Walking through a mature corn field in August.

Just to name a few; a great topic, thanks.
 
The smell of diesel reminds me of the POL storage facility at Cam Ranh Bay, Viet Nam. We used a deuce & a half to pick up metal for the fabrication & welding shop. I had a military drivers license and drove the truck for refills frequently.
 
Fresh road tar being sprayed on a new laid bed of pea gravel.

Soluble oil / water in an auto manufacturing plant.

Old cars with Mohair seats.

Outboard motor gas leaking from an old Johnson or Evinrude engine while out on the lake trolling.
 
Fresh mowed hay. Bubble gum. Silly putty. Bondo. A wagon load of picked corn. New inner tubes. Clothes off of a clothes line. Baked bread. Chopped corn silage. Musty antique stores. Real old books. Fresh plowed ground.
 
I have 0 percent smell per the nose specialist I went to. Deadest he'd ever seen and he gave me 12 different level scents to test and I could not detect anything but sure made my eyes water. So all you have at least some smell, treasure it cause it is fairly dull to be without. I only eat to satisfy my appetite but the taste buds are activated with the sense of smell so most food all taste the same to me. The few memories I try to recall of smell are all bad etc. hog confinement pit,warm cow urine while milking by hand,cleaning out chicken manure from the laying house, and old gasoline in a tractor I picked up from who knows where. Migraine
 
There is something about a gas station really early in the morning. The combination of exhaust/fuel fumes and the cool morning air always seems to perk me up. Reminds me of family vacation (as in going to visit family) as a kid. We always left at 2:00 AM. Dad liked to get a few hours driving in before the seven of us woke up. First stop was for gas and restrooms and if we were really lucky we would hit McDonald's for an Egg McMuffin. The smell of Dad's coffee poured by Mom into a coffee cup from his Thermos while traveling is also a fond memory.
 
But just what are bad smells? It depends on how you react to them. I have a real tough time with most perfumes--they smell awful to me and if I am exposed to them for any length of time, I get a headache and upset stomach. I have often wondered just why anyone would INTENTIONALLY want to make themself smell so repulsive...but then some people actually like those smells.

When one of my daughters was in high school, she got some perfume that smelled to me like dirty socks. She could not understand why I demanded (and I seldom demanded anything) that she not EVER spray that junk in my house again. It finally ended up in the burning barrel.

On the other hand, new tires smell great, cow manure does not have an objectionable odor, most wood has a pleasing odor.

When I was a kid, I thought the gasoline they sold then smelled good. It doesn"t anymore. Diesel always smelled bad.

I love the smell of baking bread, coffee being made, and lots of other things.

Most cheese smells to me like something that should be flushed down the toilet rather than eaten. Parmesan smells a lot like vomit to me, and I could not possibly eat anything with Parmesan or any other stinky cheese as an ingredient. Yet lots of people LOVE many kinds of cheese. Not me.

But I just cannot be around perfumes. Maybe it has something to do with their being artificial scents. Most shampoos, laundry detergents and hand soaps have scents that I need to avoid. To me, they STINK.

So the least amount of scented products possible in my house, and very little cheese. I don"t use a respirator to avoid smells, I just move away from them. We are all different, and probably our perceptions of smells are all different. Good luck avoiding the ones that bother you!
 
The smell of my neighbor's big Lilac hedge in the spring

The smell of potatoes in Idaho freshly sprayed with acid to kill them

Driving by a field of flax in Canada

fresh cut Alfalfa

Grandpa Bill's pipe

The smell of a mixture of cigarettes and cattle manure in a sale barn.

The smell of driving behind a truck load of fresh chicken manure. Those trucks are never tailgated by cars. LOL
 
I loved the smell of the old Phillips 66 gas station across the street from the house I grew up in. The smell was a mix of gas, oil, new tires and cigarette smoke. Probably why I'm still a part time grease monkey. I also loved getting the pop in glass bottles out of the old water cooled machine.

Another smell I loved was that of one of my tractors freshly painted in the old PPG acrylic enamel that we used to use. It smelled like a cross between licorice and fresh picked apples.
 
The smell of well aged silage. Old cars with horsehair seat padding. The combine cab after it sets all winter. The cab of the grain truck when it sets in the sun. A grain bin or the inside of the mixer grinder. The air after a thunderstorm.

The liquid mineral that I put out in tubs for pasture cattle is almost the same smell of silage. I think part of the silage memory was the smell of it mixed with the exhaust from the 51 Chevy pickup while feeding it. Back then vehicles really had a smell to them with the leaded gas and no emissions crap. You just about can't smell anything from a muffler now. Seems dangerous. We never filled the pickups from the "road gas" barrel. In thinking back I will bet it was unleaded fuel.
 
Perfume is my number 1 problem. I would go to church, get a headache and go home with flu-like symptoms (without the nausea) for 3 days. Doctor told me that the only thing that I could do was avoid the smells that made me sick.

The chemical outgassing from carpets and imported upholstered furniture will also make me sick. The smell of beer or wine can make me sick for 3 days, as well as many other chemical odors.

Most people think it's my imagination, but I have to live with it every day.
 
The exhaust from a 2-stroke outboard motor. Most of mine burn a 16:1 mix (a couple get even more oil) and the smell always takes me back to fishin' with Dad out on the lake.

There's a smell I can't explain...I remember smelling it the first time I slow danced with my ex-wife. Somehow, that scent let me know she was interested in getting to know me better I'd love to smell that scent again.
 
Dad ran a Phillips 66 gas station and I went there whenever Dad would let me, and the smell of a coal fired forge,we lived next to a Blacksmith shop for a year when I was three. The side walk ended at the shop(tricycle) and the old man and his wife who owned it never ran me off!
 
In Terre Haute Indiana, Pillsbury Produced the Funny face Drink Mixes. There is a radically wrong set of smells associated with their production that will prevent the purchase or consumption of Loud Mouth Lime, Rootin Tootin Raspberry, or Goofy Grape. Not to mention Freckle Face Strawberry.
Favorites are ripe cantaloupe (smelling the blossom end), crab apple blossoms, the first puff of air from a potato chip bag, my Grandmothers German recipe Pan biscuits baking. Jim
 
Honeysuckle and the local foundry pouring off in the afternoon, back in the spring of 1998 after my sense of smell came back from 10 years or more of no smelling. Also the exhaust smell of a car, knowing how it is running by the smell. We moved out of an old house into our new custom built house and in 3 or 4 months my sense of smell started to work again! The old house had more covered fire damage than we knew about, took it down and made a parking lot there.
 
Now you've done it! There are SO many!
I always liked the smell of a tobacco barn after it set unused all winter, coming across the yard on a winters evening and smelling coffee perking. The smell of freshly plowed earth in the spring, etc, etc.
In our neck of the woods there is one odor that will open your sinuses and that is the smell of a chicken house on a hot summers night!
Good topic Wayne!
 
Fresh cut grass

Newly plowed ground

The smell of soybeans or corn being loaded

The smell of the shop, gas, oil, etc

Hot brush fire- we used to roast weiners when we were clearing for pasture. I can still smell the chainsaws, the fire, and hear the exhaust on the H when mom would come over the hill with a tub full of ice and pop and all the grub.

Creosote takes me back when we were building fence and setting posts.

Taboo-perfume, old girlfriend, not going there in case shmbo is reading. :roll:

great post

Thanks

Ken
 
The smell from two stroke exhaust when using castor based premix. I still use klotz bean oil in my vintage bikes and always get complements on the smell.
 
Don"t feel alone. My wife is also sensitive to perfumes and we have sometimes moved after we first sat down in Church because someone with heavy perfume sat down near us.

It seems like the major problem is with little old ladies and also with teenage girls.

Our church has had little articles in the newsletter asking that people not use perfumes, but it doesn"t seem to make much difference.

Most artificial scents are bad, a few are just plain repulsive. I wish I understood why people think they need to smell that way. Just smelling clean, or not smelling at all would be much nicer for all the people around them.

Good luck!
 
When is was a kid in the 1960s, all of the old time garages around here smelled like carburetor cleaner. The good old stout kind, sold in 5 gallon buckets. Gunk HydroSeal was one brand. I think that smell made me think that they knew what they were doing! At least when it came to carburetors.

We have been EPA'd out of the kind that works.
 
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