What smells evoke the strongest sentimental or nostalgic response in you? For me, an not unexpectedly, they are both fond memories of my childhood.
First, I love the smell of puffed wheet when I sprinkle brown sugar over it in the morning. We didn’t often have puffed wheat, mostly when my parents took us back to Canada from Peru for an extended vacation every three years. So, at Grandma’s house, where we stayed, it was puffed wheat and brown sugar for breakfast, and it was such a treat.
My other is something I have mentioned on these pages before…creosote. Through much of my early childhood, first near Sudbury until I was five, and then in Peru for the next 9 years, I was near trains…steamers first. Today, whenever I get the occasion to stand between two rails, especially on a hot summer day, the powerful aroma evokes a strong response in me…quite emotional.
My assocociation with cresote is long hours in confined spaces treating untreated lumber against dry-rot. When I think of cresote, my chest hurts and my eyes burn.
Smoke fluid coming from my Marx steamer going around the Christmas tree. I get flashbacks of my mom yelling about the grease stains on the carpet when I smell it now.
Also-Nitro Methane (CH3NO2) I love the smell of nitro in the morning.
Cinnamon toast from my childhood. The hot toast melts the butter whose smell mixes with the cinnamon aroma - boy does that take me back to bygone days when Mom made breakfast and summer vacation lasted forever.
creosote and deisel fumes, train watching; compressed air, from first cab ride in NYC e-7;turkey cooking in oven;first mowed lawn of spring, alcohol exhaust from stock car days…
For me, it’s two smells–eggs fried in Nucoa (a lot of people might not remember Nucoa, but it was a butter substitute during WWII that had a very strange, almost CLEAN odor when you fried something in it), and the very unique scent of oil-fired exhaust from one of those big, hunking Southern Pacific AC cab-forwards, as it came charging by with a mile-long train of reefers while I was growing up in Truckee. Nothing in my book has ever matched the very personal ‘perfume’ of those locos.
My grandparents on my mom’s side were from Sicily, and man, could my grandmother cook. For some reason, whenever I smell fresh green peppers frying in garlic and olive oil, I’m back in her kitchen.
My hometown, Pottsville, PA. is home to America’s oldest brewery - Yuengling. No matter where you are, you walk outside on a brisk fall morning and you can smell the hops…they still blow the factory steam whistle at 7 every morning. Takes me all the way back to last night’s beer.
Growing up on Vancouver Island and working in forestry, the scent that gets me going is fresh cut Western Red Cedar, with creosote a close second due to all the time spent on the water/at docks.
It’s the smell of the motor in my old Lionel engine after it had been running a while on the basement floor and got warm. My slot cars sometimes emitted a similar fragrance.
Two things for me. The first is butter-milk pancakes with homemade syrup. The second is the smell of arc-welding. Both of these take me back to my childhood when I spent the summers with my grandparents. My grandmother made her pancakes in a certain way that only my mother has duplicated. She cooks some up now and then and suddenly I’m back in my grandmothers kitchen. My grandfather was a welder and had his own shop near the house. I spent a lot of time, taking old machines apart to find out how they worked. He taught me all that I know about arc-welding. I didn’t know how much I loved my grandparents until they were gone and realized what I had lost. I have to stop now. I can’t see to type.
Crandell,For me its diesel locomotive fumes,hot oil and warm axle grease…All of those recall fond childhood memories of being track side at Union Station in Columbus,Ohio watching PRR trains roll by while I was slipping on a 10 cent Coke Cola…[:D]
The smell of evergreen in the Adirondacks, as well as the smell of the cabins; steam locomotive smoke, both real and American Flyer, and a certain kind of printing ink that both my sister & I have loved since we were kids. You don’t come across a book or magazine with it too often, but it has this almost smoky petroleum odor that is one of the best smells in the world. Friends used to think we were mental patients when one of us would run to the other saying something like “It’s one of those great smelling books!” and we’d both stick our noses into it. But the odor doesn’t last long once the book is opened, so it’s a fleeting pleasure.
Reminds me of great family vacations when I was a kid, years in the Boy Scouts and new vacations with wife and kids. Somehow, everything is OK when I smell these two things together.
Funny, I was thinking of the “bay” part of my Moose Bay layout today. I had the idea of getting a bucket of clams and putting them under the layout to put that ocean smell into the trainroom. Not sure the women folk would approve, though.
The smell of leather and oil that is so characteristic of a 50’s era British car. They may not have run very well but they sure looked and smelled good!