A favorite camping memory of mine is my dad waking up before dawn to go fishing. He would try being quiet, but always made a little noise while making coffee. The sound of a blue-tip match being struck, followed by the smell of the match is a memory burned into my mind. Then came the smell of coffee being made in a percolating pot atop the propane stove. To this day, the smells of a blue-tip match, percolating coffee and burning propane in a damp camper, take me back to the days of being a happy kid, enjoying life in a simple time.
Was it the smell of Mellorine eminating from my Grandads old chest style freezer when i was 3-5 years old and before they upgraded, or a combination of that mixed wit the smell of an open brick of Days Work or Brown Mule?
The smell of a pine forest. We lived in central and west Texas and every trip to east Texas i was in anticipation of that. Those exposed all the time never noticed.
Grandpa was a Standard Oil (Amoco) bulk dealer for 30+yrs. He had a 25x50 steel building with a gravel floor. The dust in that building smells different than gravel dust out on a gravel road. I could be kidnapped and blindfolded and if I ever ended up in that building, I'd know exactly where I was just by the smell.
My dad bought a 1937 Chevy 2-door Coupe. While I was in Jr. High in the mid-80's we completed the 3rd restoration of the car. There is a smell when you get close or into the car. Unburned fuel in the exhaust system, throw in a little bit of 'Ode de Gear-Lube", and the faint smell of Grandpa's steel building gravel where the car sat for ~7-8yrs between restoration 2 and 3.
Field dressing/cleaning Sharptail or Ruffed grouse as well as the emanations of anyone involved for the next 2-3 days. #Grousefarts
Elk have a smell all their own, sort of a mix of "horse and juniper".
Pre-DPF diesel exhaust. Neighbor in the campground removed the DPF system on his pickup and I stopped by to ask him about it as I have the same truck/motor. HIs wife asked, "How did you know it's been worked on?" I told her, "I can smell it and hear it."
The smell of a mid-summer warm weather storm coming when the temp very quickly drops 10+ degrees and it "smells like rain" just before the rain starts
Waking up and my grandparents house, with Granpa cooking breakfast. Can still smell it and its been a long time.
Yep. Grandad knew how to fix bacon. Have that deep skillet filled half way with boiling hog lard and the whole pound of bacon swimming in it. It cooked every bit of the bacon strips. I think he had cut them in half and stirred them around. There were no under fried bits of fat.
The first time you gut a deer and bust/cut into the guts, you will never forget that smell.....and you will do your dead level best to never do that again..... The of BBQ being smoked on pit. Turnip greens being cooked
It's getting more rare every year, but, the sweet smell of a slightly (or majorly) rich-running (over-gassed) carbureted motor. Typically I "sniff" for it when I see likely V-8 powered cars or trucks from the early 80's and older.
Jeff's thread on sounds has me thinking on smells. Two cycle outboard exhaust, shotgun shells still smoking ejected from a double barrel.
Bacon sizzling in the pan. Yours?
Visiting my grandparents in Virginia, the smell of grandma making breakfast, bacon, sausage, coffee.
Visiting my Italian grandparents in New York, the smells of Italian cooking. As soon as you entered the apartment building (which they owned and landlorded), you could smell it.
My grandfather’s doberman used to release some hellish SBDs while Barnaby Jones was on. Had to be the Fritos the old man was hand feeding him He more than earned those postal rubber band shots to the ball sack while sleeping (the dog)
Fresh cut hay.. The oils from the insides of a WWII submarine.. Hoppe's #9.. My grandfather's basement wood shop - the various stains, finishing oils etc.. I sure miss him..
I grew up around two very different industries and the smells around them remain pleasant to me. The first was the timber/lumber industry and the smell of freshly cut lumber or logs makes me want to stop and just breathe it in. The smell of red fir is my favorite. The other industry was the petrochemical industry and I kind of like the smell of sulfur! It is one of those nostalgic odors for me. I really like the smell of elk. Gunpowder; single base or double base. From my motocross days, the smell of two-stroke exhaust; especially if burning Bardahl VBA. Hoppes #9 and G96 gun treatment. Sadly, as I age, my sense of smell is diminishing and I feel I am missing out on a lot. GD
My Grandmothers Saturday morning kitchen; fresh baked bread, raised rolls, drop biscuits, doughnuts two cakes (one yellow one chocolate) six pies. Just about every Saturday.
The aroma of AM coffee brewing, Grandma's meatballs frying on Sundays (Every Sunday !!), 2 cycle engines, The clean natural scent of a woman you are crazy about, Fall mornings at the ocean while striper fishing.
IMR powders. They have a singular distinct smell when fired. I recognize it instantly when I smell it. It smells like hunting to me, from my younger years.
The smell of the ocean after a rainstorm. I've been to the Pacific from San Diego up to Oregon, and the Atlantic from the Gulf all the way around Florida up through Maine. It smells like peace, to me.
When I was in my early 20's, I had a 19-year-old girlfriend who smelled and tasted like strawberries. She was kinky as hell. She HATED wearing panties, and loved wearing skirts. I will never forget her smell.
Horses, Brahma cattle, burnt gunpowder, puppy dogs, mud on a hot muffler, salt air on the gulf, a fishing camp, and even though I despise being cooped up with a smoker I always liked the faint smell of a cigarette from 20 feet away across the deck of a trawler out on the Gulf. I'll think of more.
Running through the impact site of an Arclight mission on a few companies of NVA. The smell of victory is not always sweet. Bomb damage assessment missions were the worst.
Okay........so I'm not fahqin' crazy. I tell people they smell like cucumbers or broken watermelon rind, especially when you run over them on the road on a warm rainy night.
They look at me like I have a big cyclops eye in my forehead.
Okay........so I'm not fahqin' crazy. I tell people they smell like cucumbers or broken watermelon rind, especially when you run over them on the road on a warm rainy night.
They look at me like I have a big cyclops eye in my forehead.
The sooty smell of coal smoke, takes me back to when I was a kid in England and we all heated our water and our houses with coal.
Some years back I was atop Mount Washington NH when the coal-fired cog railway stem locomotive arrived, the smell of soot, coal smoke and grease took me back to when I was a kid and we used to live next to the railyard, the last steam locomotives were still in operation, us kids used to climb on them when they were parked. I got lucky, Mt Washington switched to diesel in 2008, a pity.
The smell of leaf litter in the rain.
The juniper/pine smell of the Sacramento Mts of New Mexico in the morning.
Anytime mesquite is burning.
Sweetgrass/sage.
The whiff of dogbreath when your dog is checking if you're awake while you're pretending not to be so it will go away.
Brewing coffee.
A woman's hair.
A woman's sweat on your sheets.
The cider smell of rotten apples in an old orchard in the fall.
Wabigoon: Indeed the old "paper" shotshells had a sublime odor for me. Of course I also like Hoppe's #9 and G96. I do hope you all will not mistake me for a flaming homosexual but my all time favorite "smell" is that of the evening aroma of the orchids and flowers on the beach at Waikiki wafting on the warm trade winds. Got to get back to the islands - one more time! Hold into the wind VarmintGuy
And Testor's Aero Gloss! When I was a kid, I spent many a night barricaded in my room working on my model planes. Silkspan and Aero Gloss. Getting high later on in college felt like normal to me!
Vanilla. Coffee. Bacon. Chainsaw chips .. preferably douglas fir. Fresh mowed grass. Warm day in the high mountains when the last huckleberries give off the smell of ... huckleberry pie. Black powder smoke .. maybe not pleasant, but evokes strong memories of past hunts and great hopes for future ones. Smokeless powder ain't far behind.
The faint oily smell of a passing school of swimming bluefish wafting up to the surface. The kind where you can stop the boat, cast even though nothing is breaking and no birds, and it be a wide open bite.
The smell of the Saudi Arabian desert the morning after a rain, when the desert has turned from brown to a light green.
The sharp, almost crystalline, smell from a mountain brook in late fall
The clean fresh smell of a saltwater beach, tinged with eau de seaweed.
Venison chile in the crock pot.
Trout cooked over a riverside fire in an iron skillet.
I can't even describe what this smelled like, but it was rank. Combination of burnt plastic, rubber, diesel fuel, antifreeze, and oil. It's a smell that I'd like to forget.
Hookers and blow................................ I have a bunch sitting just remembering back Fresh fired shotgun shell has to be right up there The smell of lumber when you walk into a house under construction The smell of gasoline from 45 years ago when it still was real gas Thanksgiving day food smells and of course a fine sweet lady.
I grew up on a dairy farm and loved the smell of fresh turned dirt when I plowed. Its all no-till around here now so plowing as I knew it is extinct. My grandmother's apple pie fresh out of the oven. Hoppes number 9 and fresh shot paper hulls were great smells. And Avon sweet honesty perfume on a special girl who is long gone.
Smell of freshly fired Federal paper hulls in the duck marsh...don't think dad was amused as I would scramble to pick them up. And the smell of the garage when dad would get home late and have a limit of ducks laid out on newspaper.
Cedar and Sage after a rain, Horse barn in the early morning, cows and milking in the early morning, putting up hay, 1st snow,
Hunting season I can smell when it's time to hunt, Bear, Elk, Mule Deer, Quail, bird dogs, warm fire, cold hands and feet, wet cloths, I could go on for ever and not name all the smells that I remember. Rio7
The incredible, olfactory overload of sage on a crisp, cold morning.....add in a cup of good hot coffee and a fresh dip before walking the sage for pheasant, quail, Huns and chukar is a perfect morning.
The smell of my children when they were infants. Fresh out of their daily bath and swaddled tight in blankets made with the love of family
The faint smell of mom’s perfume on my whiskers after kissing mom’s cheek .
There are so many; IMR powder smoke on the firing line early in the morning Jet fuel exhaust Bacon frying Coffee brewing Pipe smoke Fresh tilled dirt My Wifes hair after a shower Rain on hot asphalt Good beef cooking hoppe #9 A Zippo lighter striking Fresh cut wood
Filling the barn with alfalfa hay. Fresh cut green oak. Gross, but three of us in a 90's Toyota at the end of a hot summer day logging. Chainsaws, diesel, sweat..... G96. Diesel exhaust, pre-LSD. The smell of a small old wooden machinery workshop. WD-40
Movie popcorn (though I don't really enjoy eating it) Fresh coffee (though I don't drink it and never really have) The smell of fresh earth after a field has been plowed under in the fall The smell of the first somewhat warm spring morning, usually about 2 days after the last snow has melted The smell of burning propane from a sunflower heater in an icehouse We used to have a sugar beat processing plant across the river from us. The thing created some God awful odors, but there was one from a certain stage that I actually enjoyed, it brings back some nostalgic memories. The exhaust from an outdoor motor The smell of the inside of a Plano tackle box that has been in the sun for a while Wood smoke Fresh cut pine
Some good ones already listed. Fresh coffee, moms fried chicken, moms yeast rolls, fresh plowed dirt, barn full of fresh hay, popcorn, barn full of horses, honeysuckle and great barbecue. And the smell of Africa!
My grandfather’s pipe, the smell of a freshly fired 20 ga from when I was a kid, and the smell of rain. I also love the smell of a can of coffee when it is first opened.
Rain in the Rockie Mountains. Bacon and fried eggs over a mesquite campfire. The perfurme my wife wore before we married (not made anymore). Puppy breath. Fresh cut grass.
Honey suckle , sasafras , cedar standing , fresh cut , or burning . Wood fire , coal , lived in a lot of chicken houses when I was a kid , coal was a welcome smell , soon followed by a good glowing heat . Fresh cut hay fields . Shotgun smoke , good food , meatloaf , breakfast , coffee. Creosote, used to love the smell of pumping a saw dust pump through a blackjack pole , nothing like looking out over a valley or hollow first thing in the morning with sun breaking across a frost , fresh cool air flowing through your nose after the climb . The smell of pines and cedars when setting in those special places that had natural shooting lanes . You can find some dandy spots setting on the ground with pleasant evergreen smells , And rancid onion farts , he'll yeah ! Kenneth Holy shiet ! Fried chicken and fresh cut cantaloupe
I remember wanting to go in the dry cleaners with mom when she went to pick up dad’s clothes and how I always got to go inside with her because I loved the smell. Back when dry cleaners could use the good chemicals, the nastiest ones always smelled best. 😁
Night Blooming Jasmine. There was a place in the middle of central Florida, off SR 532 on the Deseret Ranch we would hog hunt at night, it was loaded with it. I still remember where it is, and go back to this day to just smell it. And a kind of funny one, as a life long trapper, I still have flash backs to my child hood trapping in the 70's every time I open a bottle of Hawbakers Coon lure. It smells exactly the same as 40 + years ago.
I remember the apple shampoo the hair lady washed my hair with as a kid.
And something about those triangle rubber things that you'd slide over your pencils so they wouldn't roll off your desk. That rubber had a distinct smell.
Two come to mind. I really miss the smell of Mom's home made bread baking in the kitchen. We never ate a slice of store bought bread. Mom baked every bit of it for us. The other would be the decadent smell when Mom and Dad were canning dill pickles How can you not love the smell of dill and vinegar?
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