I don't know if I agree with this for one simple reason - I spent the better part of my early and mid 20's stoned to the gills. My fondest memory is a smell - the perfume my first real girlfriend (who will remain nameless for self-preservation purposes) wore - it was called 'Brocade' and it was an Avon product. I can literally conjure that scent when I close my eyes...
What is your fondest memory? Share it with us.
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I don’t think I could say when my strongest memories are from but I also remember my first serious girlfriend’s perfume. No idea the name but I can smell it right now and the memory of the bluest balls in the county… ouch!
ReplyDeleteI remember every stupid thing I did in my pre-teens, teens, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties. I think I've finally wised up. Nope.
ReplyDeleteAnd they take turns entertaining you at 3 AM.
DeleteIndeed, Giusepp', smells form the most intense memories.
ReplyDeleteHaving grown up in the East, my first acquaintance with saltwater smells were of the Hudson River, Newark Bay, Barnegat Bay, and the sea-side of the Jersey Shore's barrier islands. Imagine my surprise when, stationed later on the West coast, my first sniff of the aroma of the Pacific Ocean struck me as being distinctly different from those earlier East coast saltwater smells; that first inhalation of the Pacific's scent was a delightful and it remains a fond revelation that never fails to make me smile. I can still bring to mind those two distinctly different sea-scents.
The aroma of my Dad frying cracker meal breaded pork chops forms an everlasting pleasant haunt. Then there's the fragrance of Pechter's Jewish rye bread on Sunday morning's following Mass at my Grandma's house, where Grandma sliced the bread with her well-worn, yet ever sharp big kitchen knife, then slathered the slice with Breakstone's whipped butter. Another dear aroma came from a big pot of Grandma's homemade halupki - stuffed cabbage (I still home-make these, so the memory of the scent of Grandma's is constantly reinforced). Up in Connecticut at summer evening family barbecues, at the end of a yard-long fork my Uncle George seared a big slab of slanina - a pork product somewhat like bacon, and as the slanina sizzled and began to drizzle its fat, he repeatedly sopped the fat on slices of rye bread until the bread was almost saturated with the slanina drippings: the scent of the hot bacon drippings on the bread (topped with a sprinkling of salt & pepper, sometimes also with shreds of raw onion), together with the smell from the big masonry barbecue fire are unforgettable. Once the slanina had given up all of its drippings and had turned hard, its then disaggregated cracklings made for another smell and taste treat.
Last, but not least, Giusepp', with you I share the delicious memory of freshly-baked hard rolls whose aroma is somewhat delicate, yet unmistakably enjoyable.
I lived on both East and West Coasts. The Jersey shore smells different because of all the pollution from New York City.
DeleteJohn, I also was stationed briefly on the Gulf coast whose water smelled very close to the aroma of Jersey Shore seawater - there's no New York City pollution down in the Gulf. The Gulfstream current would likely carry New York pollution to the northeast, away from the Jersey Shore. New York city stopped dumping garbage barges off the east coast about two or three decades ago. I surmise that the West coast's kelp beds, which don't exist along the East coast, and its sea creatures that differ from East coast sea creatures, have much to do with the difference in the two coasts' smells - that, plus the East coast's continental shelf grades shallowly out into the Atlantic, while the West coast's continental shelf has a very steep drop off into the depths of the Pacific.
DeleteMy first girlfriend's perfume was "Charlie".
ReplyDeletecoppertone suntan oil and baby oil, talk about trigger smells :)
ReplyDeleteI am 77 years old, and my most vivid and happy memories are from my 40's.
ReplyDeleteThe stronger the emotion, the stronger the memories. The first serious girlfriend -- due to all of the emotions being new. Fond memories. Glad we broke up, but fond memories.
ReplyDeleteEverything about my grandson being killed. Where I was when I heard. How I reacted. His funeral.
The way I felt when my wife of nearly 30 years decided we should get divorced (felt like a weight lifting off my shoulder; I no longer had to solve the unsolvable problem). It's only been five or six years, and without having a picture of her, I have a hard time conjuring up her face. No real emotions for way too many years.
Late 70's after HS in the Mid-Hudson Valley. Worked at a body shop, every Friday was allowed to wash and detail my 1970 Boss 302 (grabber blue, sports slats, magnum 500 wheels, no shaker hood or rear deck spoiler) at the shop's wash/detail rack. Would get up early Sat. morning, burn a huge fatty, and drive across the river around Highland and New Paltz. Didn't even have a radio, that outstanding B302 engine was all the music I needed, absolutely alone and each time I got to do these drives, especially in the fall, it was a limit experience. The B302 engine, with its solid cam (after a fresh valve lash) would easily turn 7,000 rpm, and fed by the Holley 780 cfm carb that was on top of aluminum intake (all OEM),enabled absolutely the high water mark of my early motoring enlightenment. Pussy and partying was just the icing on the cake....
ReplyDeleteThat wonderful burble of water over a certain rock in a trout stream just below the NY Rte 315 bridge near Deansboro, NY. I’ve fished streams all over the world but haven’t heard that special sound in any of the others. Seem to recall there was almost always a willing (or stupid) brown just behind it… Haven’t worked that stream in 40 years, but I can still hear it.
ReplyDeleteMy dad was a beekeeper and during the summers my brother and I were free labor. To rob the honey off the hive, you put a fuming board on the top sprayed with a product call "Bee-Go". The smell would drive the bees out and you grab the "super" off when it was empty of bees. Some say it has a very concentrated almond smell but to me it it was like acidic barf. 40 years later I will never forget that smell.
ReplyDelete