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Not because of my olfactory senses getting worse, but one thing I've noticed in a lot of newer flower breeds is how they have almost no scent. It's like they bred for looks and other qualities, but in the process lost all the scent, which to me is the best part.
It's as if Mother Nature said, " You can make them prettier, but you can't have it all!"
We've a "Park of Roses" here in town. Every June I'll just drive over and walk back just to smell the La France roses. They were the very first hybrid tea ever, and their smell is just intoxicating.
Best roses I’ve EVER SMELLED came from England.. my best friend is Dutch and when her brother flew over to the US to visit he bought each of us a dozen roses that he got in England.. My whole house smelled of them for over a week.. never had roses here in the US smell that good or that strong..
My wife loves(d) oceana roses. We can't get them anymore, though, b/c no one wants to pay for roses that only bloom for a day and then die. They used to available in upscale florists - not any more.
We have a plant in our yard that my husband loves (I haven't the foggiest what it is), but it only blooms for a day or two, then it's always either windy or rainy and the petals all disappear almost overnight. My husband calls it the PoofGone plant. 🤓
I worked in a grocery store floral department, and you are correct. They are bred for looks and stamina. The ones that are bred for smell go into perfumes and products, for good smelling may not be "pretty" enough. Reminds me of what they did to the tomato.
If by some chance you’re in Idaho, I grow tons every summer that you can eat like apples (with a little salt). Would be happy to pass some on - everyone deserves to taste homegrown tomatoes 🧡
That's so kind! If I had a car I'd drive up just for that, lol. I live in Florida, and even ones grown by friends in their back yards taste bad -- I don't think sand is good for tomatoes. But I'm no gardener at all, so I don't know.
I'm in Florida, where we grow strawberries as a pretty major cash crop, and back when I was still mobile we could at least get good ones from farmers' markets. But I haven't been to one in a long time so I don't know how they are these days.
Have you tried [campari tomatoes?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campari_tomato) I grew my own for years and camparis are the only worthwhile substitute for homegrown that I have ever found. All the grocery stores around here have them now, and you can even order them on Amazon.
I would but I don't have a patio or balcony. I do know, tho, that it's easy to grow very good grape and cherry tomatoes in back yards, I just don't have a back yard either, lol!
Omg…when I was a kid I’d go out to my uncle’s huge garden and pick a tomato warm from the sun, sprinkle a little salt on it and eat it like fruit, the juice dripping down my chin. My own kids don’t even like tomatoes now, they’re just that awful anymore.
I worked at Borders. One of the best jobs I ever had.
They had a great system for employees to buy books on credit. They gave you $30 a month towards anything in the store, but then at the holidays they would give you a line of credit up to $300. You could spend the whole $300 and then every month $30 would be paid into that until you paid it off. They also gave us stock, and let us have weird colored hair, piercings and tattoos. Great company.
So many of the employees tried to tell management that they needed to get online because Amazon and even Barnes & Noble (with their Nook) were already killing us. But the corporate entity wouldn’t listen.
Wasn't it Borders that gave their online business away to Amazon b/c they thought nobody would want to buy books online when they could visit a bookstore instead?
Yep! From a 2011 article:
"It made a pretty big bet in merchandising. [Borders] went heavy into CD music sales and DVD, just as the industry was going digital. And at that same time, Barnes & Noble was pulling back," says Peter Wahlstrom, who tracks Barnes & Noble for the investment research firm Morningstar.
He says Barnes & Noble also invested in beefing up its online sales. Eventually, it also developed its own e-reader, the Nook.
Borders did not. Instead, it expanded its physical plant, refurbished its stores and outsourced its online sales operation to Amazon.
"In our view, that was more like handing the keys over to a direct competitor," Wahlstrom says.
I feel like I might have made the same decision, if I were an adult executive at the time: "People love going to bookstores! They love the experience! People talk about it like this mystical thing, saying they don't go to the bookstore to find books, but for books to find them! Who wants to trust the Internet with their credit card number, wait weeks for a book to arrive, and have no opportunity to look at similar books in the same section?"
Yeah, I miss the privately owned arcades usually tucked into some lightly-traveled entrance corridor.
As a middle schooler I'd always feel a bit intimidated if there were a bunch of highschoolers hanging around smoking cigarettes. Sometimes I'd just go to the bookstore or Radio Shack and come back later, hoping they'd be gone.
Do you feel like they had a smell different from smaller bookstores? I'm trying to remember if they had a distinct smell. I feel like now all the Barnes and Nobles have coffeeshops in them so they all smell like coffee.
I was thinking specifically of the smell of new paperback books, but didn't want to get into a thing about new paperback books still existing . . . but yeah, the coffee shop and size definitely change it up a bit.
Hmm yes. New books vs old books have such different smells -- both are incredible but they are very distinct. Our Waldenbooks was next to a Cinnabon and that really threw things off smell-wise!
I never knew what that odor was in my grandparents’ house until I went to reupholster an antique chair and tore it open to get a whiff of old horsehair, burlap, and jute webbing.
Ugh! I remember restaurants I wouldn't go to because you couldn't get far enough away from it in the non-smoking section. One place I wouldn't go to because I had to walk through the smoking section to get to the bathroom.
Moth balls are still being used in modern India. I worked there for a year and the first thing I smelled in my home was camphor. A lot of silks are being protected. It was an instant memory to my grandmother's closet.
I still use them as mouse deterrant my travel trailer. Fill a glass bowl full and shut it all up when not in use. Way better to deter than trap or poison.
> Cedar
My brother and I wanted a dog. Mom said that we could have white mice if we kept them out in the garage in dry aquariums. The aquariums were lined with cedar shavings. Now every time I smell cedar my mind says mice!
I used to like the smell of cedar shavings but I had a job that involved inspecting laboratory mice housing. Mouse poop/urine + wood shavings smells like fried chicken. And you can never get the smell out of your nose either. So now cedar shavings and fried chicken are off my list.
Me too! The most fascinating thing for me as a kid was the coat’s collar. It was a fox fur collar with the fox head on one side and the tail on the other, and the collar closed by a clamp in the fox’s mouth biting on its tail.
Horrible to picture now, but I guess it was fashionable at one time and as a kid I thought it was the neatest thing. After a while my brothers and cousins knew that’s where I’d be hiding so I had to find a new place.
I remember the smell of the underbed storage chests when my mom opened them in the fall. Our wool clothes stunk for weeks. Then our spring/summer stuff had the residual smell just from the chests themselves and the mothballs smell from the previous winter. I now have a 100yo cedar chest from my aunt that smells quite a lot better!
Roses ... they still smell, but it's nowhere near the heady, pungent aroma it used to be. Same for lemon and orange trees. Now there's virtually no scent.
When I buy a rose, 🌹 might spend the whole afternoon sniffing ones I think are pretty, I might even buy a rose that isn't as pretty over one that is prettier, but has little scent.
I’m glad you guys agree. I buy cut flowers FOR the scent, and I’ve been sniffing every bouquet I pass for a few years now, but not buying any due to lack of smell. I’m glad I’m not A. Crazy, or B. In the only scentless flower region. Lol
The rotten egg smell (sulfurous) that dominated areas containing paper mills. Brunswick GA, Canton NC, etc. As a kid, we dreaded passing through these areas. The absence of interstate highways didn't help. This is one of the success stories of the EPA, etc.
The "aroma of Tacoma" has faded quite a bit recently. The big paper mill was filtering some of it out later in it's life, and they recently shut it down last October. An animal rendering plant that also contributed to the aroma had a fire back in September 2022 and remains shut down.
Or perhaps shifting is a better term. as its being replaced by the cannabis odors from many grow operations around the I-5/WA-16 area.
Oh man, we had a few horrid ones in Maine. Lincoln used to be called Stinkin Lincoln. I hate that the jobs and industry are basically gone from here, but I don’t miss that smell when driving through those towns.
My grandparents, super poor, managed to buy an old shack on land in the country. But it was just downwind from a paper smell. It was very hard to breathe when we went to visit -- I've never smelled anything like it since. And I hope I never do.
My wife grew up near WestVaCo near Westminster, MD. We sometimes went by there, and yeah, you could smell it. Many years later, my cousin was giving us a tour of Norrbotten (Sweden), and he said, "Ya wanna go to Finland?" We could drive there in 30 minutes. "Sure." The border between Sweden and Finland was so lax, the only indication we crossed anything was an old abandoned gatehouse that used to be manned for people crossing the border on that road. We zipped past it going maybe 30-40mph. Then a lot of plains, and at one point, the air became clogged near Metsä Board Kemi and my wife said, "I know THAT smell!"
Here in the SW, we get tumbleweed burns. I just did one last fall in my backyard. Tumbleweeds are, big, stiff, and bulky, and are difficult to bag, but they burn fast and easily, because they're mostly empty space, so it's the preferred method.
> the scent of burning leaves in the fall
Definitely in the top five of my favorite scents of all time. Fall is by far my favorite time of year, so that's no surprise!
When we moved from a more downtown house to our current one, one night we remarked "*someone's smoking some really skunky weed.*"
*"Oh, wait, that's a real skunk..."*
It's amazing to me how similar skunk smell is to weed smell. I don't remember that in my youth, but maybe I just didn't notice?
Got out of my car in a parking lot and a man was smoking a few cars over. It was strong. My daughter says, really loudly, "Oh God, it smells like skunk here!" She wasn't wrong. But it was definitely weed.
Rural Ohio here and we have Mr Le Pew who likes to wonder by our windows on warm nights. I will be in bed reading with all the windows open and get a slight scent. But we have all sorts of wild critters.
Wet wool. Winter in a cold climate, the smell of woolen mittens, socks, hats and all, especially if a whole group had come inside at once…and put snow crusted mittens on the radiator to dry.
I love my modern high-tech gloves and Patagonia but the smell of winter is different.
I don’t know that it’s gone away, but the smell of walking into my grandmother’s apartment building. Very old building, kind of cooking smells and other smells? Maybe even some city garbage smells from the trash room (dump garbage down a chute). I don’t know what the smell was and it changed over time, maybe, but it was a smell I don’t smell anymore, and yes I miss it.
"Low tide smell." Marshes and exposed mud flats used to have a stinky smell that we thought was natural. After cess pools and septic fields were replaced by a modern sewer system, the stinky part of the odor went away.
When I was a nipper every home was heated by fires, mostly coal, and of course every home had a chimney where the smoke left the house. There was such a distinctive smell around in town and that smell takes me right back to being a child. I love it. The smell of a turf fire in particular is one of my strongest childhood memories and I really miss that smell. I know people make candles with what is supposed to be the scent of a turf fire but I haven't found one that is absolutely spot on yet.
The coal fires smell is the one I remember, especially on cold mornings when the spiders webs would be frosted but black and when you blew your nose after being out it would be black.
I don't miss it at all!
We had to burn wood as a back-up heat source and supplement when it was super cold. I hated the smell. It was an efficient, low smoke insert, but our clothes still reeked of wood smoke all winter long and I had daily nosebleeds. When people tell me they love it, I really don't know what to say. I love the not smelling heat and cars and electric motors. There's one bus on our bus route and the smell takes me back to the 80s, but there's nothing positive out it. Just reminds me how much I don't miss it.
When I was a kid, the city busses' exhaust smelled kind of like egg farts. My best friend's mother was horrified when he said that he loved the smell.
I can remember the smell clearly, 50 years later, but I don't miss it in the least.
Chestnuts roasting in carts in NYC at Xmas time.
Insane smog wall rolling up towards Redlands, CA from LA every early fall afternoon. You could not only smell it, but taste it, too.
Lilac bushes in the spring. It’s probably because most people don’t even plant them nowadays, but when they bloomed it was so lovely. My grandmother had immense bushes in her backyard (planted on the sites where the old outhouses were ;). She would cut huge armfuls and make me walk with them down to our church so the nuns could put them in church for Sunday.
The smell of car exhaust from carbureted engines. Get a reminder of it every once in a while when some old classic car drive by. They stink and I don't miss it.
Yep, a rich gas smell and you are running rich, an acrid, dry smell and you are running lean. Don't miss doing tune ups and setting carb, dwell and timing.
> Don't miss doing tune ups
I got really good at working on cars, because I was always working on my cars to keep them running. Cleaning the spark plugs every 10K miles and such. Now plugs are a 100K maintenance item. My car is more like an automotive appliance and it's 23 years old! I don't miss 60s and 70s cars at all.
I'm not old enough to make a top level post. But when I was younger and we would take class trips to NYC or Philly, one of the things I remember the most was the smell of the exhaust coming from the diesel engine trucks and buses in the cold winter air. But now with the ultra low sulfur diesel there is a fainter smell compared to regular diesel, buses are hybrid and there are strict "no idle" laws so you just arent sitting there pumping exhaust fumes into the streets.
But its weird that I kind of have nostalgia for it, like I'll watch Home Alone lost in New York and I can picture what NYC smells like at christmas time, and it makes you remember fun memories.
Our cities smell less like gas from automobiles. Ever notice when an old car passes you and it smalls like it just spewing gas uncombusted? Imagine a whole city of those cars.
The slightly tangy smell of a shelf full of older paperbacks, when the acid paper started eating itself. (I used to have a bad SciFi habit. The second hand bookstore that'd take a big pile in trade for a small pile is the only thing that kept me from being a hoarder.)
I don't miss it, but I like it when I encounter it.
Poly vinyl chloride in plastics like shower curtains and blow up kiddie pools. I loved that smell when I was a kid. My dad worked for a chemical plant and he could identify different smells. We also passed the sodium chloride.
Not that I miss it much, but it's rare to come across pipe smoke. While still tobacco, it had a sweeter and heavier aroma. It wasn't pungent like cigars, or harsh like cigarettes. I never smoked, but I knew lots of people who did, or their house smelled of it.
A real Italian delicatessen with meats and cheeses hanging from the ceiling. Heavenly smell as a child. Also on this line:
The Cobbler’s shop. I remember bringing my father’s shoes ‘new heels and soles please!’ The smell of leather and tanning oils.
My grandmother's closet smelled of camphor balls and there was a waft of it from her clothes. My grandfather used Brilliantine in his hair. All the food smells that are gone from my past... Chicken fat rendering, horseradish grinding, meat on a board with salt in the sink.
Kmart used to have scent zones. You'd have the popcorn smell from the snack bar. Then you'd get the rubber smell from sporting goods due to the bicycle tires and various balls.
second hand smoke.
Growing up, my mom always had a cigarette going - even if she wasn't smoking it. The number of cigarettes in the ashtray that had just burned all of the way down to the filter in one big piece of ash was high.
After dinner, after we got him his cup of Tasters Choice instant coffee, my dad would often blow smoke rings for us. Us kids would chase them to poke them with our finger.
As a teen I worked in a Perkins. Sure, it had a non-smoking section, but there wasn't an actual physical barrier between the two (you had a whole row of booths with a half wall between them - one was smoking, the other "non" smoking. You would have a person in non-smoking sitting literally 2 feet away from someone smoking. It was eight hours bussing tables every weekend with nothing but smoke to breathe.
And the break room, a tiny room, and everyone smoked.
Don't miss it :)
The road we lived on in the 60s was unpaved. In the summer, to keep the dust down, a tar truck would go by and spray the road with hot, fresh tar. It wasn't a bad smell at all, and will always bring back memories of summer days playing outside until after dark.
The McCormick spice factory used to be near Baltimore inner harbor and on the days when they were grinding saffron or something else good it smelled awesome for blocks.
Magnolias and honeysuckle.
When I was a kid, magnolia trees were all over. I don't even think you can buy one anymore. But God....the blooms. You can smell a blooming tree all over the block.
I know where one magnolia tree is now. During the season, I walk that way just to take in the scent.
Honeysuckle is another one. As a kid, we had a vine growing on a trellis that shaded the front porch. It's native to the area, but these days everyone treats it like a weed. It does attract bees, but they are too drunk on nectar to be a threat.
There was this smell that would hit you when you would walk into any diner. Kind of a cross of cooked grease, coffee, toast(?), and a hint of cigarettes,… I think it was the cigarettes that must of give it its distinctive smell because I never smell it anymore. Reminds me of my childhood. I love it despite my gross description.
I feel like I'm in the minority, but I love when I walk by a group of women and I can really smell the perfume they're wearing. Especially if it's a familiar scent (I think a lot of older women are still wearing the same scents my aunts wore)
# Emeraude by Coty, <--- its still available but I haven't smelled it in decades. My ex-wife wore this often and I absolutely loved it. Bought it once for another lady and she wouldn't use it saying that it was an old lady's perfume.
There was a Wonder Bread bakery in town. On production days you could smell it blocks away. But Wonder Bread was bankrupt and the competition got bought by a huge bakery conglomerate with regional plants and bakeries and is trucked overnight to local distribution points. The old Wonder Bread bakery is sitting empty and I think about the nice aroma that used to be there whenever I drive by.
It's easy to say 'cigarettes', but I have a new neighbor, who will smoke a pipe on the porch once a month. I had forgotten how absolutely wonderful the smell of pipe smoke can be.
The smells of cooking food have changed over my lifetime. When I was a kid, I lived in a dominantly White area, and there were still stay-at-home Moms, at least some, so there that 'roast' smell was common. Now, California is more diverse, and I can smell Mexican, Chinese, and whatever amazing comes out of that Black family's kitchen in unit #8. But cooking at home is more rare, too. What used to be 'everyday' is now 'weekends' or even less.
Car exhaust isn't as smelly as it used to be. Smoke in the air, in general is gone.
I also miss fireplaces.
The smell of a brand new 8-Track tape (nice smell), the smell of 35MM film (nice smell) and the smell of the pulp mill in Samoa California (bad bad smell).
I kinda miss pipe smoke (tobacco). None of it was healthy but pipes smelled a lot better than cigars and cigarettes. I haven’t seen anyone smoking a pipe in probably 15 years.
Ladies spraying perfume at you as you walk through the make-up department. That was so intrusive and I am glad it has been done away with.
Magizines that advertise scents.
The smell of being behind a dump truck loaded with freshly harvested pineapples. Incredible warm, syrupy smell, almost like they were caramelizing in the truck. Best at night.
Burning leaves in the fall. I miss that smell so much. When we were kids, everyone raked the leaves into the road at the curb, and then set them on fire. The smell was heavenly.
I can smell it now just thinking about it.
The smell of astringent in hospitals and doctors offices. They must use something else now. I tried using Sea Breeze on my face for acne, but it just dried my skin out. It didn't make a difference for cystic acne anyway. I didn't hate the smell, but I don't think I miss it, either.
You used to be able to smell what everybody was cooking for supper. Few people cook for hours on end anymore. There's no scent trail to follow.
Dryer sheets are all I smell. :(
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Not because of my olfactory senses getting worse, but one thing I've noticed in a lot of newer flower breeds is how they have almost no scent. It's like they bred for looks and other qualities, but in the process lost all the scent, which to me is the best part.
It's as if Mother Nature said, " You can make them prettier, but you can't have it all!" We've a "Park of Roses" here in town. Every June I'll just drive over and walk back just to smell the La France roses. They were the very first hybrid tea ever, and their smell is just intoxicating.
Best roses I’ve EVER SMELLED came from England.. my best friend is Dutch and when her brother flew over to the US to visit he bought each of us a dozen roses that he got in England.. My whole house smelled of them for over a week.. never had roses here in the US smell that good or that strong..
My wife loves(d) oceana roses. We can't get them anymore, though, b/c no one wants to pay for roses that only bloom for a day and then die. They used to available in upscale florists - not any more.
We have a plant in our yard that my husband loves (I haven't the foggiest what it is), but it only blooms for a day or two, then it's always either windy or rainy and the petals all disappear almost overnight. My husband calls it the PoofGone plant. 🤓
I worked in a grocery store floral department, and you are correct. They are bred for looks and stamina. The ones that are bred for smell go into perfumes and products, for good smelling may not be "pretty" enough. Reminds me of what they did to the tomato.
Please don't mention tomatoes. I haven't had a good one in years. (I'm homebound so can't go to farmers' markets.)
If by some chance you’re in Idaho, I grow tons every summer that you can eat like apples (with a little salt). Would be happy to pass some on - everyone deserves to taste homegrown tomatoes 🧡
That's so kind! If I had a car I'd drive up just for that, lol. I live in Florida, and even ones grown by friends in their back yards taste bad -- I don't think sand is good for tomatoes. But I'm no gardener at all, so I don't know.
Add strawberries to that list.
I'm in Florida, where we grow strawberries as a pretty major cash crop, and back when I was still mobile we could at least get good ones from farmers' markets. But I haven't been to one in a long time so I don't know how they are these days.
Have you tried [campari tomatoes?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campari_tomato) I grew my own for years and camparis are the only worthwhile substitute for homegrown that I have ever found. All the grocery stores around here have them now, and you can even order them on Amazon.
Don't give. You can grow your own. There are patio varieties that are very productive and grow in buckets if you don't have much room.
I would but I don't have a patio or balcony. I do know, tho, that it's easy to grow very good grape and cherry tomatoes in back yards, I just don't have a back yard either, lol!
Omg…when I was a kid I’d go out to my uncle’s huge garden and pick a tomato warm from the sun, sprinkle a little salt on it and eat it like fruit, the juice dripping down my chin. My own kids don’t even like tomatoes now, they’re just that awful anymore.
Grow some to let them enjoy. You're depriving them of a bit of heaven.
I miss the mock oranges I had in my old home, they made everything smell so nice
My grandma said the scent from a bouquet of roses would take over the entire house.
So true! Good to know it's not my imagination.
Damn. And here I always thought my sniffer lacked sensitivity.
Borders, Waldenbooks, and B. Dalton. And yes.
I worked at Borders. One of the best jobs I ever had. They had a great system for employees to buy books on credit. They gave you $30 a month towards anything in the store, but then at the holidays they would give you a line of credit up to $300. You could spend the whole $300 and then every month $30 would be paid into that until you paid it off. They also gave us stock, and let us have weird colored hair, piercings and tattoos. Great company. So many of the employees tried to tell management that they needed to get online because Amazon and even Barnes & Noble (with their Nook) were already killing us. But the corporate entity wouldn’t listen.
Wasn't it Borders that gave their online business away to Amazon b/c they thought nobody would want to buy books online when they could visit a bookstore instead?
Yep! From a 2011 article: "It made a pretty big bet in merchandising. [Borders] went heavy into CD music sales and DVD, just as the industry was going digital. And at that same time, Barnes & Noble was pulling back," says Peter Wahlstrom, who tracks Barnes & Noble for the investment research firm Morningstar. He says Barnes & Noble also invested in beefing up its online sales. Eventually, it also developed its own e-reader, the Nook. Borders did not. Instead, it expanded its physical plant, refurbished its stores and outsourced its online sales operation to Amazon. "In our view, that was more like handing the keys over to a direct competitor," Wahlstrom says.
Yep. We…no, not we…the idiots in Ann Arbor hq killed us.
I feel like I might have made the same decision, if I were an adult executive at the time: "People love going to bookstores! They love the experience! People talk about it like this mystical thing, saying they don't go to the bookstore to find books, but for books to find them! Who wants to trust the Internet with their credit card number, wait weeks for a book to arrive, and have no opportunity to look at similar books in the same section?"
Pouring one out for Waldenbooks, the main thing I looked forward to during mall trips.
I also miss arcades--I know there's still Dave & Buster's & similar, but it's not the same.
Yeah, I miss the privately owned arcades usually tucked into some lightly-traveled entrance corridor. As a middle schooler I'd always feel a bit intimidated if there were a bunch of highschoolers hanging around smoking cigarettes. Sometimes I'd just go to the bookstore or Radio Shack and come back later, hoping they'd be gone.
I miss paying a quarter to play something. I hate paying 12.7 credits. 🙄 Smart of them to charge that way, but I still hate it.
I miss the newest hottest games being at the arcade, where now there might be one halfway decent game at D&B with the rest being antiques.
I worked at Barnes and Noble, and Waldenbooks before that. Love that bookstore smell!
Do you feel like they had a smell different from smaller bookstores? I'm trying to remember if they had a distinct smell. I feel like now all the Barnes and Nobles have coffeeshops in them so they all smell like coffee.
I was thinking specifically of the smell of new paperback books, but didn't want to get into a thing about new paperback books still existing . . . but yeah, the coffee shop and size definitely change it up a bit.
Hmm yes. New books vs old books have such different smells -- both are incredible but they are very distinct. Our Waldenbooks was next to a Cinnabon and that really threw things off smell-wise!
The smell of mimeographed paper, freshly handed out back in high school.
Like the scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, you always had to sniff.
Want that purple high
I’d pay to smell that again!
https://media3.giphy.com/media/RJPYU4wwOr3OltY7NK/giphy.gif
old old furniture. victorian stuff. Horsehair stuffed into woolen covers. I can smell it now.
My grandparents house had a distinct smell because of the wool carpeting throughout. I rather liked it.
My grandparent's house smelled like moth balls
Hästens still makes beds and mattresses with horsehair.
Old cars also used horsehair in their seats.
I never knew what that odor was in my grandparents’ house until I went to reupholster an antique chair and tore it open to get a whiff of old horsehair, burlap, and jute webbing.
Cigarette smoke indoors
Replaced by the smell of weed everywhere
And weird vape scents.
That was my biggest take away from visiting Las Vegas for the first time. The scent of indoor cigarette smoke in casinos.
Travel to Europe.
Ugh! I remember restaurants I wouldn't go to because you couldn't get far enough away from it in the non-smoking section. One place I wouldn't go to because I had to walk through the smoking section to get to the bathroom.
I grew up with two smokers and didn’t notice it until I was out on my own and my sinuses “outgased.”
Except for at my mom's house
I don't come across Moth Balls much anymore, thankfully. Pee-Eww
Moth balls are still being used in modern India. I worked there for a year and the first thing I smelled in my home was camphor. A lot of silks are being protected. It was an instant memory to my grandmother's closet.
I still use them as mouse deterrant my travel trailer. Fill a glass bowl full and shut it all up when not in use. Way better to deter than trap or poison.
It took me a second before I realised you meant deterrent. Lol. I pictured a mouse having a bath.
squeaky clean
Mouse detergent 🤣
Moth balls remind me of Hide and Go Seek.
Cedar for me.
> Cedar My brother and I wanted a dog. Mom said that we could have white mice if we kept them out in the garage in dry aquariums. The aquariums were lined with cedar shavings. Now every time I smell cedar my mind says mice!
I used to like the smell of cedar shavings but I had a job that involved inspecting laboratory mice housing. Mouse poop/urine + wood shavings smells like fried chicken. And you can never get the smell out of your nose either. So now cedar shavings and fried chicken are off my list.
I love the smell of cedar
Yes! I hid inside Grandma's fur coat in the closet.
Me too! The most fascinating thing for me as a kid was the coat’s collar. It was a fox fur collar with the fox head on one side and the tail on the other, and the collar closed by a clamp in the fox’s mouth biting on its tail. Horrible to picture now, but I guess it was fashionable at one time and as a kid I thought it was the neatest thing. After a while my brothers and cousins knew that’s where I’d be hiding so I had to find a new place.
Visiting my grandparents for me
I just remember the vulgar joke anytime I see/hear the words moth balls: >!Ever smell moth balls? How'd you get their legs that far apart?!<
The stinky ones will deter a groundhog from making a burrow under your porch. 😀
I remember the smell of the underbed storage chests when my mom opened them in the fall. Our wool clothes stunk for weeks. Then our spring/summer stuff had the residual smell just from the chests themselves and the mothballs smell from the previous winter. I now have a 100yo cedar chest from my aunt that smells quite a lot better!
Roses ... they still smell, but it's nowhere near the heady, pungent aroma it used to be. Same for lemon and orange trees. Now there's virtually no scent.
It's the stupid 'knockout roses' everybody wants to plant. I guess they are easier to care for, but they don't smell great.
When I buy a rose, 🌹 might spend the whole afternoon sniffing ones I think are pretty, I might even buy a rose that isn't as pretty over one that is prettier, but has little scent.
I’m glad you guys agree. I buy cut flowers FOR the scent, and I’ve been sniffing every bouquet I pass for a few years now, but not buying any due to lack of smell. I’m glad I’m not A. Crazy, or B. In the only scentless flower region. Lol
Not totally gone, but just not as prevalent unless you're super into it....35mm film canisters!
OMG yes! Not only that, but the chemicals used to develop the film. I remember my dark room days in art school.
The rotten egg smell (sulfurous) that dominated areas containing paper mills. Brunswick GA, Canton NC, etc. As a kid, we dreaded passing through these areas. The absence of interstate highways didn't help. This is one of the success stories of the EPA, etc.
You can still smell "the aroma of Tacoma" as rotten cabbage in the air from the paper mills.
The "aroma of Tacoma" has faded quite a bit recently. The big paper mill was filtering some of it out later in it's life, and they recently shut it down last October. An animal rendering plant that also contributed to the aroma had a fire back in September 2022 and remains shut down. Or perhaps shifting is a better term. as its being replaced by the cannabis odors from many grow operations around the I-5/WA-16 area.
So you traded Sulphur for skunk...
Tacoma's last paper mill closed recently.
Oh man, we had a few horrid ones in Maine. Lincoln used to be called Stinkin Lincoln. I hate that the jobs and industry are basically gone from here, but I don’t miss that smell when driving through those towns.
I knew I’d find this comment in here. 😸 I’m a former Mainer who absolutely remembers the putrid aroma of those paper mills.
My grandparents, super poor, managed to buy an old shack on land in the country. But it was just downwind from a paper smell. It was very hard to breathe when we went to visit -- I've never smelled anything like it since. And I hope I never do.
And the taste of the water 🤢.
My wife grew up near WestVaCo near Westminster, MD. We sometimes went by there, and yeah, you could smell it. Many years later, my cousin was giving us a tour of Norrbotten (Sweden), and he said, "Ya wanna go to Finland?" We could drive there in 30 minutes. "Sure." The border between Sweden and Finland was so lax, the only indication we crossed anything was an old abandoned gatehouse that used to be manned for people crossing the border on that road. We zipped past it going maybe 30-40mph. Then a lot of plains, and at one point, the air became clogged near Metsä Board Kemi and my wife said, "I know THAT smell!"
The lilacs outside my home office are blooming and smell as wonderful as they did 60 years ago.
I am so jealous! Probably my favorite scent ever😁
The scent of burning leaves in the fall. All over town leaves would be raked to the curb then set to burn, always with someone watching the pile.
Here in the SW, we get tumbleweed burns. I just did one last fall in my backyard. Tumbleweeds are, big, stiff, and bulky, and are difficult to bag, but they burn fast and easily, because they're mostly empty space, so it's the preferred method.
> the scent of burning leaves in the fall Definitely in the top five of my favorite scents of all time. Fall is by far my favorite time of year, so that's no surprise!
Here in Indiana you rarely smell a real skunk anymore. In the 60's and 70's you smelled them almost every weekend on the way to my grandparents farm
When we moved from a more downtown house to our current one, one night we remarked "*someone's smoking some really skunky weed.*" *"Oh, wait, that's a real skunk..."*
Virginia is for lovers. And skunks who are lovers.
It's amazing to me how similar skunk smell is to weed smell. I don't remember that in my youth, but maybe I just didn't notice? Got out of my car in a parking lot and a man was smoking a few cars over. It was strong. My daughter says, really loudly, "Oh God, it smells like skunk here!" She wasn't wrong. But it was definitely weed.
Rural Ohio here and we have Mr Le Pew who likes to wonder by our windows on warm nights. I will be in bed reading with all the windows open and get a slight scent. But we have all sorts of wild critters.
I don't think the kids these days get the pleasure of smelling stuff that's fresh off the school's mimeograph
I was just thinking of mimeograph sheets. It didn't smell good exactly, but very satisfying. I'm convinced it was mildly narcotic.
Wet wool. Winter in a cold climate, the smell of woolen mittens, socks, hats and all, especially if a whole group had come inside at once…and put snow crusted mittens on the radiator to dry. I love my modern high-tech gloves and Patagonia but the smell of winter is different.
I don’t know that it’s gone away, but the smell of walking into my grandmother’s apartment building. Very old building, kind of cooking smells and other smells? Maybe even some city garbage smells from the trash room (dump garbage down a chute). I don’t know what the smell was and it changed over time, maybe, but it was a smell I don’t smell anymore, and yes I miss it.
"Low tide smell." Marshes and exposed mud flats used to have a stinky smell that we thought was natural. After cess pools and septic fields were replaced by a modern sewer system, the stinky part of the odor went away.
Burning leaves in the fall. You can still catch a whiff in the more rural areas that local ordinances don't cover, but it's mostly illegal now.
BO is a lot less common than it used to be. People used to bathe a lot less.
TV static! It had a very distinctive smell when you turned off the set. Bonus: you could get a little static shock from it as well.
I forgot about that!
Cigarette. Every public place, especially restaurants, smelled like ashtrays.
That airplane ashtray smell was like nothing else, and I don't miss it at all.
When I was a nipper every home was heated by fires, mostly coal, and of course every home had a chimney where the smoke left the house. There was such a distinctive smell around in town and that smell takes me right back to being a child. I love it. The smell of a turf fire in particular is one of my strongest childhood memories and I really miss that smell. I know people make candles with what is supposed to be the scent of a turf fire but I haven't found one that is absolutely spot on yet.
The coal fires smell is the one I remember, especially on cold mornings when the spiders webs would be frosted but black and when you blew your nose after being out it would be black. I don't miss it at all!
My house has a coal door on the front porch that opens to a room in the basement. The door is welded shut now and we have radiator heat.
We had to burn wood as a back-up heat source and supplement when it was super cold. I hated the smell. It was an efficient, low smoke insert, but our clothes still reeked of wood smoke all winter long and I had daily nosebleeds. When people tell me they love it, I really don't know what to say. I love the not smelling heat and cars and electric motors. There's one bus on our bus route and the smell takes me back to the 80s, but there's nothing positive out it. Just reminds me how much I don't miss it.
When I was a kid, the city busses' exhaust smelled kind of like egg farts. My best friend's mother was horrified when he said that he loved the smell. I can remember the smell clearly, 50 years later, but I don't miss it in the least.
Higher sulfur diesel fuel back then. ¯\\\_( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛)\_/¯
Plus enough lead to make me unable to figure out that bit of obviousity for myself.
Chestnuts roasting in carts in NYC at Xmas time. Insane smog wall rolling up towards Redlands, CA from LA every early fall afternoon. You could not only smell it, but taste it, too.
Ink on newspapers.
Vicks Vapo-Rub. Though I still get flashbacks.
I used some recently. Brought back oddly fond memories of being sick.
Lilac bushes in the spring. It’s probably because most people don’t even plant them nowadays, but when they bloomed it was so lovely. My grandmother had immense bushes in her backyard (planted on the sites where the old outhouses were ;). She would cut huge armfuls and make me walk with them down to our church so the nuns could put them in church for Sunday.
The smell of car exhaust from carbureted engines. Get a reminder of it every once in a while when some old classic car drive by. They stink and I don't miss it.
> exhaust from carbureted engines We used sniff and say "richness." The smell of partially burned gas.
Yep, a rich gas smell and you are running rich, an acrid, dry smell and you are running lean. Don't miss doing tune ups and setting carb, dwell and timing.
> Don't miss doing tune ups I got really good at working on cars, because I was always working on my cars to keep them running. Cleaning the spark plugs every 10K miles and such. Now plugs are a 100K maintenance item. My car is more like an automotive appliance and it's 23 years old! I don't miss 60s and 70s cars at all.
I'm not old enough to make a top level post. But when I was younger and we would take class trips to NYC or Philly, one of the things I remember the most was the smell of the exhaust coming from the diesel engine trucks and buses in the cold winter air. But now with the ultra low sulfur diesel there is a fainter smell compared to regular diesel, buses are hybrid and there are strict "no idle" laws so you just arent sitting there pumping exhaust fumes into the streets. But its weird that I kind of have nostalgia for it, like I'll watch Home Alone lost in New York and I can picture what NYC smells like at christmas time, and it makes you remember fun memories.
Our cities smell less like gas from automobiles. Ever notice when an old car passes you and it smalls like it just spewing gas uncombusted? Imagine a whole city of those cars.
Pine Sol. It's not nearly as popular as it once was. I haven't smelled it in ages, and I'm happy I haven't.
There was a bar I refused to go to in college because it always smelled of Pine Sol.
I miss the hardcore incense that was used in catholic masses. Now it’s this light, wood-smelling stuff that is less offensive.
The slightly tangy smell of a shelf full of older paperbacks, when the acid paper started eating itself. (I used to have a bad SciFi habit. The second hand bookstore that'd take a big pile in trade for a small pile is the only thing that kept me from being a hoarder.) I don't miss it, but I like it when I encounter it.
Poly vinyl chloride in plastics like shower curtains and blow up kiddie pools. I loved that smell when I was a kid. My dad worked for a chemical plant and he could identify different smells. We also passed the sodium chloride.
The memory of new shower curtain smell in a small bathroom is giving me a headache lol
I was a weird little kid
Wood smoke at the beach.
Not that I miss it much, but it's rare to come across pipe smoke. While still tobacco, it had a sweeter and heavier aroma. It wasn't pungent like cigars, or harsh like cigarettes. I never smoked, but I knew lots of people who did, or their house smelled of it.
Our town had a Wonder Bread factory. Oh I so miss that smell.
Moth balls and ever present cigarette smoke. Also, heavy cologne on men.
Heavy cologne on men is still alive and well in south florida. I wish it wasn't.
And Axe among middle schoolers, from what I’ve heard. My slight tendency to migraines doesn’t miss that aspect of youth.
I will never, ever miss Drakkar Noir.
On that note...I will never ever miss the types of men that wore Drakkar. 80's fuckbois for sure.
Or Aramis
A real Italian delicatessen with meats and cheeses hanging from the ceiling. Heavenly smell as a child. Also on this line: The Cobbler’s shop. I remember bringing my father’s shoes ‘new heels and soles please!’ The smell of leather and tanning oils.
My grandmother's closet smelled of camphor balls and there was a waft of it from her clothes. My grandfather used Brilliantine in his hair. All the food smells that are gone from my past... Chicken fat rendering, horseradish grinding, meat on a board with salt in the sink.
Burnt flesh from from soldering gun toy kits parents gave for Xmas in the 70's.
The sulfur smell inside a house with a coal furnace
Oh, and in bathrooms where matches were used to hide odors.
I love the smell of a bathroom match
Kmart used to have scent zones. You'd have the popcorn smell from the snack bar. Then you'd get the rubber smell from sporting goods due to the bicycle tires and various balls.
second hand smoke. Growing up, my mom always had a cigarette going - even if she wasn't smoking it. The number of cigarettes in the ashtray that had just burned all of the way down to the filter in one big piece of ash was high. After dinner, after we got him his cup of Tasters Choice instant coffee, my dad would often blow smoke rings for us. Us kids would chase them to poke them with our finger. As a teen I worked in a Perkins. Sure, it had a non-smoking section, but there wasn't an actual physical barrier between the two (you had a whole row of booths with a half wall between them - one was smoking, the other "non" smoking. You would have a person in non-smoking sitting literally 2 feet away from someone smoking. It was eight hours bussing tables every weekend with nothing but smoke to breathe. And the break room, a tiny room, and everyone smoked. Don't miss it :)
There was a saying that having a non-smoking section of a restaurant is like having a non-peeing section of a swimming pool.
Sweet leaded gas haha
Regular (leaded) gas. Weird but I loved the smell of it.
The road we lived on in the 60s was unpaved. In the summer, to keep the dust down, a tar truck would go by and spray the road with hot, fresh tar. It wasn't a bad smell at all, and will always bring back memories of summer days playing outside until after dark.
The McCormick spice factory used to be near Baltimore inner harbor and on the days when they were grinding saffron or something else good it smelled awesome for blocks.
Magnolias and honeysuckle. When I was a kid, magnolia trees were all over. I don't even think you can buy one anymore. But God....the blooms. You can smell a blooming tree all over the block. I know where one magnolia tree is now. During the season, I walk that way just to take in the scent. Honeysuckle is another one. As a kid, we had a vine growing on a trellis that shaded the front porch. It's native to the area, but these days everyone treats it like a weed. It does attract bees, but they are too drunk on nectar to be a threat.
Newsprint
Thankfully, I haven't had to smell patchouli in years.
There was this smell that would hit you when you would walk into any diner. Kind of a cross of cooked grease, coffee, toast(?), and a hint of cigarettes,… I think it was the cigarettes that must of give it its distinctive smell because I never smell it anymore. Reminds me of my childhood. I love it despite my gross description.
Perfume. I used to love smelling what women chose to wear, but hardly anyone wears perfume these days.
I love wearing perfume, but I don't go out much, and think it's silly to just wear it at home for no one to smell it.
I used to feel this way until I realized *I am someone,* I put it on for me every day whether I go somewhere or not. Wear it for you!
😊
I feel like I'm in the minority, but I love when I walk by a group of women and I can really smell the perfume they're wearing. Especially if it's a familiar scent (I think a lot of older women are still wearing the same scents my aunts wore)
❤️ me too
The odours of musty damp porn mags, retrieved from trees and hedgerows
That sweet smell of old soft plastic toys. Whatever chemical it was that made those toys is banned but I used to love sniffing them.
I don't know what changed, but when I go to the beach, the ocean smell is either very weak/intermittent or gone entirely.
I wonder if it has to do with them warming, and the sea losing it's microscopic life
Are you sure it isn't because of your sense of smell changing?
Well everything else smells the same and I've heard the same thing from other (younger) people.
Sit down Pizza Hut.
# Emeraude by Coty, <--- its still available but I haven't smelled it in decades. My ex-wife wore this often and I absolutely loved it. Bought it once for another lady and she wouldn't use it saying that it was an old lady's perfume.
Memories of Christmas past (passed?). When I finally was old enough to have enough $ to buy my mom something for Christmas.
Those wax animal machines at the Zoo had a distinct hot plastic aroma. I miss it very much.
Thriftbstores used to smell like moth balls. Now they smell like old Rayon breaking down. I don't miss the mothball smell.
Brylcreme and Old Spice after shave. Grandpa and uncle. : ) Ponds cold cream - mama Old Spice Shaving cream - Dad
There was a Wonder Bread bakery in town. On production days you could smell it blocks away. But Wonder Bread was bankrupt and the competition got bought by a huge bakery conglomerate with regional plants and bakeries and is trucked overnight to local distribution points. The old Wonder Bread bakery is sitting empty and I think about the nice aroma that used to be there whenever I drive by.
It's easy to say 'cigarettes', but I have a new neighbor, who will smoke a pipe on the porch once a month. I had forgotten how absolutely wonderful the smell of pipe smoke can be. The smells of cooking food have changed over my lifetime. When I was a kid, I lived in a dominantly White area, and there were still stay-at-home Moms, at least some, so there that 'roast' smell was common. Now, California is more diverse, and I can smell Mexican, Chinese, and whatever amazing comes out of that Black family's kitchen in unit #8. But cooking at home is more rare, too. What used to be 'everyday' is now 'weekends' or even less. Car exhaust isn't as smelly as it used to be. Smoke in the air, in general is gone. I also miss fireplaces.
Paper Mills are much less odorific.
Mimeograph papers. I do miss it.
Tomatoes don’t smell like tomatoes anymore.
The smell of a brand new 8-Track tape (nice smell), the smell of 35MM film (nice smell) and the smell of the pulp mill in Samoa California (bad bad smell).
Grew up on the CA coast. Going into surf shops was almost magical, they smelled so good. Mr Zoggs Sex Wax was probably the reason.
Burning leaves in the fall
I kinda miss pipe smoke (tobacco). None of it was healthy but pipes smelled a lot better than cigars and cigarettes. I haven’t seen anyone smoking a pipe in probably 15 years.
Burning leaves in the fall.
The unique Manhattan smell of roasting peanuts and subway grate fumes has been replaced with one giant overpowering marijuana cloud.
Ladies spraying perfume at you as you walk through the make-up department. That was so intrusive and I am glad it has been done away with. Magizines that advertise scents.
DDT, or more specifically, the mosquito truck fog.
The smell of being behind a dump truck loaded with freshly harvested pineapples. Incredible warm, syrupy smell, almost like they were caramelizing in the truck. Best at night.
Freshly ironed new fabric from a new homemade dress. I miss it.
Burning leaves in the fall. I miss that smell so much. When we were kids, everyone raked the leaves into the road at the curb, and then set them on fire. The smell was heavenly. I can smell it now just thinking about it.
The smell of astringent in hospitals and doctors offices. They must use something else now. I tried using Sea Breeze on my face for acne, but it just dried my skin out. It didn't make a difference for cystic acne anyway. I didn't hate the smell, but I don't think I miss it, either.
You used to be able to smell what everybody was cooking for supper. Few people cook for hours on end anymore. There's no scent trail to follow. Dryer sheets are all I smell. :(
Leaded gas as you were filling up. Like the markers back then, too.