I bought a stick of chapstick today, and putting it on instantly reminded me of visiting my grandmother (father's mother) up in Wisconsin Rapids. i don't quite know why the smell reminded me of that, but it is specifically the Chapstick that is the original "flavor"... i don't know WHY Chapstick reminded me of my grandmother's, but it did... and that made me think of other smells...
Lysol=puke. it has to be original scent Lysol; the flowery scents don't trigger the "ugh, someone puked" reflex (luckily) just the original scent. It's not a happy memory, but the only time that Lysol was used in my house was when someone (usually me) puked.
Vintage Volkswagens. Last year when i went to the Volkswagen show (pictures on my main website...) i stuck my head in the window of a 1972 Type III Fastback, and all the sudden i was 5 years old again. Its this combination of rust, oil, and cheap vinyl (or whatever the upholstery was...). Growing up we had a Type III squareback and a Bug. Might not be a good smell, but it's a great memory.
Paper Mills. Once again, not a good smell but a good memory. Grandma Slattery (dad's mom) lived up in Wisconsin Rapids, right in the middle of paper mill territory. Actually, papermills smell pretty bad... but i like the smell just for the memory. Last year when we were in Albany, this horrid smell came wafting over the camp... it was the smell of papermills...
Wet Wool. My mom spins and weaves her own wool.. She would actually go to sheep shearings and buy wool in bulk, wash it in the bathtub, and then one of my chores was to card the wool. i told Sixpence about that recently and her response was "How very... Pilgrim of you..." i hate my mother, but i didn't mind carding wool...
Shoe polish. Actually my memory of the shoe polish smell has nothing to do with polishing shoes but... the junk drawer. Everyone's got one, a junk drawer. There wasn't much in the junk drawer that anyone actually used. There was a card of upholstery tacks, a compass in the shape of a tractor tire, a spool of kite string (which i think that i still have, thirty years later) and a can of Kiwi shoe polish (amongst other things of course). The whole drawer smelled of the shoe polish. That can of shoe polish moved with us to two other houses and two other junk drawers... I have no idea how old it was, but i think that it was the can of shoe polish i took with me when i went to England in 1991 with my very first pair of combat boots...
Army dessicant. if you've ever been to an army surplus store, a REAL surplus store--not just a camping store that carries a few racks of unused camo-- you'll know the smell. there was a surplus store in Madison that we went to every time we went to Madison, and they carried EVERYTHING you could possibly want, right down to parachutes and C-rations from WWII (supposedly still edible). Ironically, army surplus looking clothing is all stylish now; i saw a guy wearing a fake surplus jacket done by Tommy Hilfiger. Just proves that i was a fashion maven ahead of my time...
Spring=Moving. Okay, this isn't a childhood thing, but it's still a strong trigger. There was a tiem in my life for many years where me and my friends moved about once a year, and always in the spring. Smelling spring makes me want to start apartment hunting, but luckily for my friends that would be helping me... i am very happy with my currrent apartment and i plan to stay here for years to come.
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