Do certain smells bring you back to a time or place...? Give some examples..

I always liked that the word "redolent" has two definitions that when combined explain the phenomenon of smells leading to memories.

More so than any other sense.

Fish. Reminds me of your mother.

anytime I smell fiberglass resin it takes me back to when I was a young kid hanging out around the family's shop where a lot of auto body work was being done

wrigley's spearmint gum reminds me of my grandmother. she always had some at her apartment.

My great-grandpa used to put out hay with a 1974 Massey Ferguson 135 tractor- I was 8 years old and would drive it around his front pasture.

A few years ago, I searched hard to find one just like it- I bought it and every time I crank it up, it smells just like Popa's barn.

quote:

---

Do certain smells bring you back to a time or place...? Give some examples..

---

The smell of creosote that's used in the bridge pilings on those old gravel roads around my Mammaw's house and her outside utility room always had a unique smell (not a bad one) that was unique to her house/outside utility room.

It actually saddens me to think about, because everything was much better then. All of our family was a strong unit, and had fun together. Now, the family unit has split off (mainly due to a shite head first cousin) and my parents sold my Mammaw's house and the 80 acres due to said shite head cousin and his wife. I was hoping to get the family place one day, but that will never happen now

Paper mill in bogalusa. Bogalusa was Where my grandma lived and would go spend the summers there while my parents worked

I associate the smell of burning wood in the distance with winter and of one of my old friend's hunting camp in Natchez, cooking breakfast on the still smoldering fire built the night before, playing king of the hill on top of the bails of hay (not sure how a neck wasn't broken with 10-15 11 year old boys spearing each other off the top of those).

Smelling a boat engine reminds me of summers on the Amite River and several friends' birthday parties at the various camps. School bus smell brings me back to middle school. Mold to cleaning out my sister's and mom's house after Katrina. I think of my dad every time I smell a cigar, but he still smells like a cigar so that's hardly a distant memory.

And I always can tell when a girl in my area is wearing the perfume my wife wore back when we had just started dating.

I have a terrible memory, but a smell will bring out ones I never could recall, more than any other sense.