Smells and sounds that bring back "good" memories

[WardenRoss]

My first "real" girlfriend would write me love letters that she sprayed with Avon perfume. I was eighteen and living out west.

I will never forget that fragrance. To this day, that aroma makes my knees get weak and wobble.

I won't even mention her strawberry flavored lipstick.

,

 

[Cleandean]

The smell of cheap cigars. Many childhood memories.

My Grandfather's Parodi's & my Uncle's D'Nobli cigars.
Their favorite alcohol drinks of the time period. Homemade Italian Red Wine. Might try that tomorrow ( albeit , a different wine) .

 

[mckenney99]

The smell of bacon and/or sausage frying in the morning.
My dad was a huge believer in breakfast and he would eat 3 or 4 eggs every weekday morning with either bacon, sausage, goetta, ham, pork brains, chipped beef or potatoes. The timing for me getting up for school worked out just in time to eat breakfast with my dad before he took off for work.

 

[CAJUNLAWYER]

The smell pf s chicken coop. Reminds me of when I was a child following my grendfather around as he gathered eggs for breakfast.
Also that mildew smell that was the wash/laundry room on the farm where there was a tin shower stall with the wood slat floors where he and I would clean up before lunch. It was right next to the pump house loaded with mud dobbers.
Thanks for the memories

 

[walkinghorse]

Pine trees in the mountains!
Noticed it for the first time this year earlier in the week.
Always brings back memories of camping and fishing trips to Stockade Lake as a youngster!
Smell of an army surplus green canvas tent, very distinctive!
Surplus kapok life jackets smell. As they were all adult sized they surrounded a young kid!

 

[Fishinfool]

Once in a while I will hunt pheasant with the shells from an old paper hull box of Remington high brass #6 I have stashed away. The smell of those freshly fired paper hulls reminds me of bird hunts with my father as a youth. He always picked up an empty hull after firing at a bird, and sniffed it, and I got into the same habit. He insisted the paper shells smelled different than the plastic ones, and I agree. It is amazing how something so simple can trigger a flood of good memories.

Larry

 

[TheHobbyist]

My nanny as a child always, throughout the day, would apply carmex to her lips. That smell will smack me in the head and send me back 30+ years. Good memories. Great person.

 

[dasnake]

For me

Canned tuna

 

[tlawler]

Ok, this is going to sound weird. While I have other instances of smell and recollection, this is the most vivid and striking example:

Back when I turned 16, my first actual paying job was at Disney World. I'd always been fascinated by the Magic Kingdom and all the rumors of the tunnels that ran under it. Over the next few months, I spent a lot of time down in those tunnels going to and from work, taking out trash, getting stores, etc. One of the coolest aspects was the trash AVAC system. Basically a system of big pneumatic tubes(24" diam, IIRC) that sucked trash from stations all around the MK and deposited it at a central collection point that was over a mile away. What I recollect very vividly is the distinctive smell that permeated throughout the tunnels. It wasn't really a trash smell or really unpleasant at all, it was a mix of the garbage and the deodorizers and very evident, but like I said, not really unpleasant.

Well anyway, after my hitch in the Navy and a couple of year long jobs, I went back to work at the mouse and the first time I walked down into the tunnels in over 10 years, the very same smell hit me and I had an immediate recollection rush through my head of all the great times I had there as a teen working my first job.

 

[ron 57]

Wood smoke. My grandmother cooked on a wood stove year around. To this day when I smell wood smoke I remember those big pans of biscuits in the oven and A&P Bokar coffee perking a mile a minute on the stove.

The earthy smell of a cattle barn on a frosty morning. Ground corn, molasses, aged manure, last summer's hay in the loft and the cows themselves.

Leaded gasoline. Boy did it smell good filling the tank!

 

[Rustyt1953]

I have too many sounds and smells to list that evoke memories both pleasant and unpleasant.

It is quite remarkable the I can encounter an odor or sound that I haven't experienced in decades and my mind will instantly recall it.

I am great at "name that tune".

How marvelously we are wired.

 

[snowman]

Another member posted a very similar thread not long ago, and a bunch of us farm boys agreed that freshly plowed/tilled soil in the spring emitted a wonderful, memorable smell, along with a field of drying hay awaiting baling. The farm has a variety of smells all its own, and I'm thinking of the pleasant ones(there are others of course).

Regards,
Andy

 

[gamboolman]

Diesel smoke will take me back to Tripping Pipe on the Floor of Delta Drilling Company Rig 40 in deep East Texas 40 some odd year ago.
I can picture myself on the rig floor to this day whenever I smell diesel smoke.l

 

[wood714]

The smell of lighter fluid when you open a Zippo lighter, and even better the smell when it lights a cigarette.

 

[lihpster]

The smell of pipe tobacco reminds me of my uncle. The smell of bourbon reminds me of my grandfather. Mom was lavender and coffee. My brother was , oddly enough, those vanilla tree shaped car air fresheners. And, after one particularly amusing incident, chocolate chip cookies baking takes me back to our Beagle, Lucy.

If, in my memory, their faces began to blur, one sniff is enough to bring them back into focus. When my father goes it will be smoke tanned buckskin and black powder smoke. I wonder what smell will remind people of me?

 

[Golddollar]

I wonder what smell will remind people of me?

I'm not sure I would want to know!

 

[hemiram]

On stuff burning:

My dad's Zippo lighter opening up and the smell both before and after it was lit.

Burning leaves. Don't smell it much anymore, once in a while in the fall on the way to a friend's house in Mich, some farmer is burning a pile in his yard. A lot of memories come back. A lot of them about this guy, Gus, who for some reason, always slightly smelled like burning leaves:

 

[rickflst]

We burnt our leaves in the crisp fall air.... When I start a campfire and there are leaves still in the fire catching, that smell of the burning leaves sends me back in time to being 7 or eight and jumping in the piles we racked up for the burning.

All those memories are time machines. Yes you can time travel...

 

[Abbynormal]

Since I got Covid in Nov. I've had VERY limited sense of smell. I get occasional wiffs.

Some bring back strong memories, some bring back urges like cigarettes which I gave up a couple of years ago.

The problem for me is, it isn't consistent, it comes and goes.
I've gotten to the point where I don't cook without company because I've
burned too many meals and don't even smell it.

 

[WuzzFuzz]

Me???? I sort of miss working the midnight shift. Along about 4 in the morning the smell of fresh bread being baked by the bakery..

No I didn't get donuts, but a nice big still warm sweet roll sure did hit the spot coming out the back door.


WuzzFuzz

 

[RobertJ.]

I have too many sounds and smells to list that evoke memories both pleasant and unpleasant

Same here, but I'll list my very favorite:

Driving through a nice, fresh clear cut. The aroma combination of wood, oil, and mud takes me immediately to when I was a kid in SE Alaska. The icing on the cake is if there's some skunk cabbage nearby.

 

[GB]

The smell of sage in the air after a hard rain on the high desert. Brings a good feeling to my mind and heart. The smell of damp fall vegetation. Reminds me of my youth, hunting upland birds and waterfowl in Eastern South Dakota with my Dad.

 

[CCantu357]

Aqua Velva. I've been splashing it on since before I could shave. Maxwell House instant coffee reminds me of my grandfather. Hoppe's 9 for obvious reasons.

 

[7shooter]

A few weeks ago I shot my fathers old Springfield 87A "gill gun". While I was shooting it, the smell of gunpowder brought back childhood memories of when my father taught me how to shoot. I remember the distinct smell it made. I remember care free roaming around the woods looking for the opportunity to pick off an attacking pinecone, or shifty looking cricket. That got me to thinking about childhood fishing trips, the smell of the outboard motor, the marina, being fascinated at the critters in the bait bucket. Each smell was unique, and seem to change over time.
The part of Texas I live in now has few pine trees compared to the piney woods of east Texas, and west Louisiana were I spent my earliest years. I have three pine trees that have managed to survive at my front gate. I was tending to the cows the other day and heard a familiar faint roar above my head. It was the sound of wind through those three pine trees. I hunted squirrels as a child in Louisiana, the wind sound reminded me of those tough windy days sitting under a big pine tree.
I'm sure smells and sounds can trigger both good and bad memories, but the ones from a care free youth are the ones that take me back.

The smell of hops in a brewery.

 

[Mike SC Hunter]

The smell of diesel smoke and fresh turned dirt from the tractor seat.

 

[M1A]

The scent of Amarige by Givenchy, and a turned down bed.

 

[LAWMAN662]

that first real cool Fall morning....squirrel season.

 

[Kevin J.]

The inside of an old cedar chest when you open it.

 

[OLDSTER]

Smells and sounds coming from our "duck camp" in north central North Dakota. It's been in our family of waterfowlers since 1946. Going way back to when I was a youngster,( too young to shoot); at 4:00AM,gramma cooking breakfast and making coffee, my grandfather, father , and guests anticipating the day, drinking strong coffee and smoking cigars, dogs ( all Chessies) warming on a rug by the stove. These are my fondest memories, and still what I look forward to all year,

 

[Rustyt1953]

The inside of an old cedar chest when you open it.

The first house Ruthie and I bought after getting married had a walk-in cedar closet. I miss it.