Old Smells that Make Your Nose Wrinkle

[TimeWarpWife]

That’s the type of rear window compartment I was talking about.

By age six, I was too tall to fit up there.

How the heck were you able not to get carsick ?
Even the exhaust of fumes from those cars made me sick.
I was a lousy traveler, But I never complained.

Actually, riding in the back was to keep me from getting carsick. If I'd smelled any kind of fumes, I definitely would have gotten sick, but I never did. I can't remember not going to sleep there in the back, so that's probably why I didn't get sick. Thankfully, when I was about 9 or 10 I stopped getting carsick, which coincided with me being too big to ride in the back.

 

[2jakes]

Actually, riding in the back was to keep me from getting carsick. If I'd smelled any kind of fumes, I definitely would have gotten sick, but I never did. I can't remember not going to sleep there in the back, so that's probably why I didn't get sick. Thankfully, when I was about 9 or 10 I stopped getting carsick, which coincided with me being too big to ride in the back.

I must’ve been 12, I don’t recall right now.
I was sitting in the back seat in the middle.
My dad was driving, mom on the passenger side.

In the movie, “ Saving Private Ryan”,
there’s a scene in the beginning of the
movie where the noise or sound stops
and all you notice is the action.

I had a similar experience. And it was very brief.
But in that moment, this is what
went through my mind.

“Savor this moment, for there will come a time when this will be gone. Enjoy them while you can. Someday you will look back on this with fond memories.”

Now I’m here thinking about them.
I miss them so much, but grateful that
I had them with me as long as I did.
Mods: Sorry if I’m off topic.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The long-ago scent of the fish-waste fertilizer plant we had here when I first started working in this town. People used to call in bomb threats there on hot August afternoons just to force them to shut down for a while. Finally somebody set it on fire, and the decades of fish oil soaked into the wood caused the place to burn like a spectacular and long-lasting torch.

 

[Matt Crunk]

The long-ago scent of the fish-waste fertilizer plant we had here when I first started working in this town. People used to call in bomb threats there on hot August afternoons just to force them to shut down for a while. Finally somebody set it on fire, and the decades of fish oil soaked into the wood caused the place to burn like a spectacular and long-lasting torch.

LizzieMaine, What town do you work with? I was just up in southern Maine back in August. Beautiful country up there. Everything I saw looked like it could be on a postcard.

 

[Fading Fast]

Matt, duck!

 

[LizzieMaine]

LizzieMaine, What town do you work with? I was just up in southern Maine back in August. Beautiful country up there. Everything I saw looked like it could be on a postcard.

Rockland, about seventy miles up Route 1 from Portland. Until the early '90s it was the fish-processing capital of Maine, and smelled like it too. The "Seapro" plant used to cook fertilizer from pogies -- an oily "waste fish" used mostly as bait, but at the time profitable to render down into various noxious-smelling products, and a dark green cloud of stench could be perceived hanging in the air from Thomaston as far north as Lincolnville, when it intersected with the yellow cloud of chicken-waste stench then emanating from Belfast.

Ah, happy days. The only smell we have now is from the occasional decomposing body found in the woods.

 

[scotrace]

The kerosene black ball torches that used to light up traffic hazards at night.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

The kerosene black ball torches that used to light up traffic hazards at night.

I believe those were on Lizzie's first-ever posting in the "Vintage Things That Have Disappeared" thread. I've got a couple of those things around here somewhere. When I was a kid I liked to pretend that they were anarchist bombs.

 

[Old Mariner]

There is a very specific smell that really hits the scent-memory connection for me. I am not sure how I can describe it, but perhaps others may have smelled it and know what I am talking about.

It's the sharp smell of cold water in a flooded basement. Not really sewage water, but water from over saturation and surface water. It has a very distinct smell, and every time I smell it, even when not around a flooded basement...I am immediately taken to all the times I had the misfortune of being the first one to find the basement flooded when I resided at someone's house for two years.

To this day I have such a strong emotional reaction to water that smells like that.

 

[Zombie_61]

The long-ago scent of the fish-waste fertilizer plant we had here when I first started working in this town...

While I was growing up Dad worked at Pan Pacific Fisheries on Terminal Island here in southern California. The "fish-waste fertilizer" you mentioned, they called "fish meal". Fins, scales, bones, etc., whatever part of the tuna they couldn't make consumable for cats, dogs, and humans, they dumped into a huge metal bin that slowly "cooked" the moisture out of the tissues, and when they were all dried out they were ground into a powder. Best. Fertilizer. Ever.

...Ah, happy days. The only smell we have now is from the occasional decomposing body found in the woods.

Now that's a smell you never forget.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep, that's how they did it here. "Seapro" was the name of the company, and when people said it here, they spit it out like a curse.

Pogies, also known as menhaden, are the oiliest, greasiest fish in the ocean -- and by far the smelliest when processed. In addititon to the local plant, we used to sell a lot of pogies to the Soviet Union, who would send processing ships to handle them at sea, rather than doing it on land. When one of those ships was moored here, it sent up a cloud of stink that could be smelled all the way to Murmansk.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There is a very specific smell that really hits the scent-memory connection for me. I am not sure how I can describe it, but perhaps others may have smelled it and know what I am talking about.

It's the sharp smell of cold water in a flooded basement. Not really sewage water, but water from over saturation and surface water. It has a very distinct smell, and every time I smell it, even when not around a flooded basement...I am immediately taken to all the times I had the misfortune of being the first one to find the basement flooded when I resided at someone's house for two years.

To this day I have such a strong emotional reaction to water that smells like that.

When I was about ten, our cellar flooded up to the depth of about four feet -- and to this day, nearly fifty years later, that cellar still smells like that. You can poke around in dark corners down there and still find pulpy remnants of stuff that was destroyed in that flood.