The brain is an amazing thing. Specifically, how certain odors can imprint memories within your brain that come flowing back after decades of being tucked away with just a minor whiff.

I was walking through an Ace Hardware store in Libby, MT this afternoon looking for some endcaps for 1/2" PVC. I found what I was looking for and was headed for the register when I passed an end-of -the-aisle display for an outfit called Duke Cannon Supply Company. It seems that it is a veteran owned/supporting soap and other cosmetic type company.

As I walked by, something hit my nose that made me stop in my tracks. I hadn't smelled that smell in 40+ years, but it immediately took me back to the early 70s and to my grandfather. It was the scent he wore and I was a kid again. All of these memories came flooding back.

There was lady walking behind me that must have thought I was crazy as I rifled through the display trying to find which product it was, and found this bar of soap.

Even though I have for several years made my own soap, I had to buy the bar just so I could continue to smell it on the way home. I took it home and did some looking up on the scent and will try to replicate it with my own recipe.

I still have this damned bar of soap stuffed under my nose. It smells so good...and I'm a kid again.

I recently got a bar of one of the scents and liked it.

My wife's girlfriend runs a shop and got her hands on Duke's. Came back with ten different bars.

I'm using the Leaf and Leather one right now, I think it is. I love it.


I also like their shipping policy:

quote:

SHIPPING LOCATIONS
DUKE CANNON SHIPS TO EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD EXCEPT FOR NORTH KOREA. WE MAY AT ANY TIME CHOOSE NOT TO SHIP TO FRANCE, AS WELL.

I look forward to hearing your journey to recreate the "scents of Bergamot and Black Pepper."

Do you think your grandfather used a similar soap or do you think it was simply something in the environment?

To your point on smell, I remember shortly after I started smoking smelling my dad's hands as a child. He smoked and when I started, my hands smelled like his.

You're right the sense of smell is powerful. Even more so if combined with taste.

Duluth Tading Co had lots of those. I can't recall that scent but they were all geared toward men.

It's pretty cool when a scent can take you back. The last I can recall was getting a new pair of dress shoes. I closed the bedroom door and when I opened it, the smell took me back to the clothing store I got boots at as a kid. It had a huge section of all the quality, US boots. A very distinct leather smell.

I had an older BMW which, when you opened the trunk, smelled like a 1970's (cheap/K-Mart) children's Halloween costumes. That rubbery plastic that was used for your Batman/Superman cape etc... I could smell it for hours. Totally immersive memory experience. Smell is a very powerful memory connecting sense.

I had the reverse experience just two days ago. I was remembering something from my childhood. My dad got a new 8-track of Melanie. I would listen to "Brand New Key" with him. I searched for the song on YouTube and explained to my wife how it was one of my earliest memories. As the song played I could smell the xmas candles and the hot tubes in the radio. A song actually brought back a scent that I could actually smell.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
I had the reverse experience just two days ago. I was remembering something from my childhood. My dad got a new 8-track of Melanie. I would listen to "Brand New Key" with him. I searched for the song on YouTube and explained to my wife how it was one of my earliest memories. As the song played I could smell the xmas candles and the hot tubes in the radio. A song actually brought back a scent that I could actually smell.

Yup, works both ways for me. Almost overpowering sometimes.

About 20 years ago I revisited my junior high school from 1957 era. There was a particular floor wax/cleaning solution they used in those days.

This building was scheduled for replacement/destruction in a couple years, and I was visiting it for old times.

Walking into a particular bathroom just off the auditorium/stage where much of my time was spent in those days, I was unexpectedly smacked by a thousand micro-memories that were dormant for a half a century.

I'm going to check out that soap company Gustofer, as my own grandfather had a particular 'personal flavor' from his toiletries. Thanks for the link.

I suspect that if dogs knew how poor our sense of smell was, compared to theirs, they’d pity us as we pity blind folks.

One whiff of a garment, and a hound dog goes racing through the woods on the trail of the person that wore it. Astounding.

 
Remember "scratch 'n sniff" cards? Some got pretty far out.
 

I suspect humans' sense of smell is much like our natural ability to ready body language in that thousands of years ago, they were important parts of our daily lives, and now we usually hardly utilize them.

Does it smell anything like English Leather? I certainly remember that from 40 years ago.

In medical school we learned that the olfactory organs (your sniffer) is connected directly to the brain--the only sense that is like that. A likely explanation for the intensity of memory connected with smells.

I'm overwhelmed with nostalgia every time I open a can of tuna.

I hadn't been to an Army Navy surplus store in decades and happened to drive by one a couple of weeks ago. I decided to go in and check it out for the hell of it. As soon as I opened the door and walked in, the smell of old canvas and leather hit me in the face and took me back to when I was a kid. Wow! I wish I could capture that particular aroma.

Jim

I have fond memories of Lifebuoy soap, you know, that orange soap that was so popular in the forties and fifties?
During WWII, my grandparents operated a Texaco gas station on the east side of Stillwater Oklahoma. They lived in back and upstairs in the station. They didn't have running water but had a pump outside and one inside at the kitchen sink. you washed in a small , white enameled pan with the orange rim around it. The water was always cold and the two bars of soap that were present were Lifebuoy and Lava. I will always remember the cold water and the aromatic smell of the Lifebuoy.

My trigger is some women's cologne that smells like green apples. When I smell it, my teeth tingle.

I also can still remember the eucalyptus trees coming off a bus as I walked downhill to my junior high school in San Francisco, Hoover Junior High. The trees aren't there anymore.

quote:

Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
I suspect that if dogs knew how poor our sense of smell was, compared to theirs, they’d pity us as we pity blind folks.

I swear my dog gives me the: "Don't you smell that, dumbass?" look every once in a while.

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Shugart:
I'm overwhelmed with nostalgia every time I open a can of tuna.

Takes me back to my first tour in the PI...

My favorite it the smell of tomato vines. My wife now buys tomatoes in a cluster of about a half dozen that are still connected on a vine. I'll take a whiff of the vine and I'm back to a kid when we grew our own in the family garden.