When I smell ________, I remember ________.

When I smell the odor given off by an oil refinery, I remember the best times when I was a kid, riding my bike down the Santa Ana River Trail to the beach. . . . s i g h

Bad odor, good memory.

How about you?

a certain (former) poster here on DU.

Also get the same trigger from creosote. All the cabins at our Boy Scout camp were treated with creosote, and you could really smell it on rainy days.

:-)

:woohoo:

Gets me every time.

Mmmmmm.... :)

as I have been counseled to call it.

:bounce:

I remember my first cross-country train ride.

all those trips on the school buses :D

I go through gum phases- and I remember different thigns with different types of gum :D

I called him Opa Peter because I wasn't able to pronounce his Dutch last name when I was small. He spoke very little English, but was such a warm, kind person that it was fun just to hang out and communicate through gestures and funny faces.

He travelled around the world when he was a young man as a merchant marine and had many amazing stories to tell (most of which I heard from other family members after he passed away).


He died when I was 13, but the summer before he died I snagged one of his cigar butts and saved it in a jewelry box. For several years after I wouild periodically open it and take a whiff to remember my great-grandfather. I still have it, though the scent is long gone at this point.

One memory I always laugh at is when he would sit on his porch in the dead of winter in a jacket with a book and his long stogie after my step-mother forbad cigar smoke in the house!

We were walking down the street in Manhattan about 20 years ago and a woman saw his cigar and said "OOOOOH, that looks like stool". My father just smiled, took the cigar out of his mouth and said "I chased the dog for 3 blocks"!

playing along the creekbanks as a kid.

My mother was very young when I was born. While she finished high school and then college, I spent most of mytime with my grandparents. At night I would sit at my grandfather's feet as he sat in his chair and we would both read. He always smoked while we read. I can hear the clink clink of the him klnocking tobacco out of his pipe as I write this.

I have my grandfather's old pipes. They still smell like his brand of tobaccco. Every now and again I will pull one out and smell it just to remember him.