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What music or smells conjure up the past?

Like many oldies I am nostalgic for my past life and times. Music and scents are particularly evocative for me. I can't afford to travel much any more, but luckily I travelled and lived in several locations in my younger days. Whenever I get a whiff of Nina Ricci's L'Air du Temp perfume, I am instantly transported back to my years spent in Hong Kong, where it was my own favourite scent. To listen to Kenny G's Silhouette has me relaxing with a rum and coke at dusk on my verandah in Barbados. Ambre Solaire sun oil and I am back in my childhood with my mother on seaside holidays and when I listen to Rod McKuen's Beautiful Strangers I recall many happy years spent in Germany when my children were small.

What music and scents conjure up happy memories for you?

Update:

It was a real privilege to have shared so many diverse memories with everyone who answered this question. Thank you all so much. It's really difficult to choose a best answer!

12 Answers

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  • S
    Lv 7
    8 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    At Thanksgiving the smell of turkey take me back to arriving at my grandparents and sitting a round their dinning table sharing the best food imagined. My gram was a good cook. If I catch old Lawrance Welk show and they play The Yellow Rose Of Texas I am transported back to dancing with my daddy. That was our song. Soon as I heard it I would run over to my dad for a dance. The smell of rain takes me back to running out of the house to play in mud puddles and sail little paper boats down the gutter. The smell of lilacs take me back home where a long garden stone path was lined with many lilac bushes. The smell of newly cut grass reminds me of mowing our yard with an old push mower as I loved yard work back in the day. I don't hear the song much now, but a Bushel And A Peck take me back to my mom ironing clothes and her singing to me while she ironed away.

  • LOL I still wear that perfume!

    Any music from the oldies and the smell of baking homemade bread and cinnamon rolls and the baking of homemade Apple Pies brings back memories for me!

  • 8 years ago

    The smell of a steam railway locomotive going past at speed takes me back seventy years to my teens as a train spotter, to a world before Dr. Beeching when trains went everywhere.

    Gregorian chant takes me back even further, to what is now Turkey, in the sixth century, to a world before Mohammed, when there was peace throughout the whole Middle East .

  • 8 years ago

    The fog, briny air and the smell of fresh fish do it for me.

    Throw in some Celtic blues and I'm home =)

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  • 8 years ago

    The smell of rose bushes, honeysuckle, and lilacs bring back memories of my Grandmother's garden.

  • 8 years ago

    Allot of music takes me back to the 50s, when I was a kid. Allot of movies, too, I can still remember going to the drive-in theatre every Saturday night.

  • 8 years ago

    "Cashmere Bouquet" soap. That fragrance was soooo strong.

    Bought some the other day - it's not the same. Less, or no fragrance.

  • 8 years ago

    Jurgen's Lotion (the original honey/almond aroma). A favorite cousin used it.

  • ?
    Lv 6
    8 years ago

    The aroma of orange blossoms brings me back to my high school/college track and field days. There were many orange groves around the school and when working out you could smell the blossoms.

  • 8 years ago

    "Crystal Blue Persuasion"

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