what did your childhood neighborhood SMELL like?

[datasuspect]

i remember around dinner time, you'd walk down the streets and it would smell like onions and garlic, maybe sausage. you could sense that people lived there.

at times, if the wind came from the south, you'd get trace odors of the corn processing plant in argo-summit or the shit plant in stickney.

when the breweries were still there, there was an often sweet smell at night.

[NewWaveChick1981]

1. Fresh-cut grass, pinestraw, and occasionally bus exhaust.

:) I lived five miles from downtown Atlanta. Our neighborhood was a nice, quiet little neighborhood off a busy thoroughfare.

And when it rained in the summer, I loved the scent of the rain on pavement. :D

[Patiod]

11. Mmm...fresh cut grass

The smell of the 'burbs!

[NewWaveChick1981]

18. Exactly...

:D I lived in what was technically a suburb of Atlanta, but for all practical purposes, it was and is Atlanta. :)

[Blue Diadem]

2. Ketchup or sauerkraut..depending

and if they left the fields of cabbage to rot..well..you can imagine.

We were downwind most of the time from a manufacturing facility for tomato products and sauerkraut. As a kid, our class took a field trip through the facility..it smelled so good outside but inside the smell of tomatoes being dropped in boiling water to release the skins left a sickening smell.

[seemunkee]

3. Malted barley, hops and yeast

I grew up near a Pabst brewery. My grandfather retired from there and my uncle worked until they closed, luckily he had enough time in to get his retirement. I still love the smell.

[datasuspect]

7. falstaff was within walking distance from where we lived

several other brewers as well.

[Aristus]

4. Tree sap and honeysuckle.

Suburban San Antonio.

[Jokerman]

5. Livestock

I grew up on a farm.

[ohiosmith]

6. Cheap wine, cigarette butts, and dog shit.

[Sugar Smack]

8. Grownups.

B-)

[spinbaby]

9. Slightly sulfurous

The steel mills were still operating in Pittsburgh. Before that, I lived in the Alps which often smelled of burning coal. To this day I love the smell of burning coal.

[datasuspect]

10. i still like the smell of diesel exhaust

reminds me of when we'd go downtown to state street and look at the christmas displays in the windows of marshall fields and carsons.

[billyskank]

12. Cheese on toast

No wait, that's what I'm smelling NOW. :wtf:

[datasuspect]

13. i can't place this smell

on my fingertip.

[greatauntoftriplets]

14. Lake Michigan.

It was especially noticeable on those occasions when dead alewives would wash up on the beaches.

My sister lives a couple miles north of the shit plant in Stickney. There is a reason we have always called that town Stinkey.

[datasuspect]

15. used to live around 57 court and 37th st in cicero

and 38th and gunderson in berwyn. practically across the street from that plant.

F-U-N-K-Y

[greatauntoftriplets]

17. She is in Berwyn, but north of Ogden.

Living that close to it would have made me :puke:

[elocs]

64. My daughter lived in Berwyn a couple of years ago on Kenilworth Ave.

Small world.

[femmocrat]

67. I hope an "alewife" is a fish?

Otherwise, that is a frightening scenario!

[greatauntoftriplets]

68. Yes, it is a fish....

http://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/greatlakesfish/alewife.html

I think that they are not as common in Lake Michigan as they used to be. When I was a kid and a storm would wash thousands ashore, the stench could be overpowering. I lived four blocks away from the lake until recently.

[SOteric]

16. Garlic and spices, tomatoes, strong coffee and the sea.

San Francisco's North Beach. Very Italian. Very San Francisco.

[Arugula Latte]

30. Ah, yes. I love the smell of North Beach.

Although, now you're likely to get some wonderful Asian spice scents in there, too.

[Arugula Latte]

31. Whoops. Posted in wrong place. nt

[SteppingRazor]

19. burning crack and gun powder

OK, OK. Maybe it wasn't that bad. I'd say it smelled more like hot asphalt and car exhaust than anything else

[datasuspect]

23. mmmmm . . . crack

lemme guess, children used to make action figures out of the used syringes and glassine bags the dope was sold in . . .

[SteppingRazor]

26. Hey! Quit making fun of my Mr. Needlepants dolls, dammit! n/t

[Omphaloskepsis]

20. I grew up on a farm.. If clean air is a smell...

I will go with clean air.

[azmouse]

21. Trees and cows

with the occasional whiff of the landfill that was just a few miles away.

[momophile]

22. Cow shit. I lived in Greeley for a bit.

sweet sweet cow shit...

[SteppingRazor]

25. My brother went to school there for a while...

I remember going to visit him, you'd know you were near Greeley when you smelled the cowshit.

[Phillycat]

24. Garlic, fish, and filth

South Philly. :loveya:

[datasuspect]

27. i've heard as many good things as i have bad things about philly

i have to admit, that part of the country is alien to me though.

[Phillycat]

28. To me, it's the best city in the world.

You need an in, though. Someone who loves it. Otherwise, it's like beating your head against a wall.

[Oeditpus Rex]

29. Band-Aids

We were really good at bein' kids. :bounce:

[Arugula Latte]

32. Honeysuckle, hot pavement, pool chlorine, juniper bushes, orange blossoms.

Suburban California in the 70s.

[HEyHEY]

33. The ocean, or smoke from fireplaces.... I still am taken back

Everytime I smell either.

[PlanetBev]

34. The only smell I can remember when I was very young

Was the smell of a burning incinerator. They banned them in Los Angeles on January 1, 1954, but I can still remember that smell when I was three years old. Bad as the smell was, it still reminds me of the old days.

[JVS]

35. Usually nothing, but some mornings it would smell like burning coke

[GoddessOfGuinness]

36. Grass clippings, roses and lilacs (in season)

Wet pavement, sweaty kids, rotting green apples, and now and then, somebody's batch of cupcakes.

[KurtNYC]

37. Pizza dough, cut grass and rain water

and, in season, wet leaves

[ChoralScholar]

38. Pickles -

because we made Atkins Pickles in my hometown.

[Karenca]

39. Coal.

and Automobiles

[Bridget Burke]

40. It depended on the wind.....

A Norther? Like the paper mill in Pasadena.

From the South? Like the petroleum-product recycling plant in Friendswood. (They usually operated at night, hoping nobody would notice.)

On dry days, like dust. (From the lane--paved with oyster shells in the early years.)

After the fogging trucks came through, like DDT!

[Road Scholar]

41. Tobacco curing, honeysuckles,magnolias, corn growing in the

fields.:shrug:

[yellowdogintexas]

82. spring, summer and fall, there! Mine was a pigsty across

the road! LOL

[mulsh]

42. once upon a time Oakland, Ca

would smell like tomatoes, usually late summer when the Del Monte plant canned the tomato crop. Out in East Oakland/San Leandro every few days it would smell like roast coffee thanks to the Hills Brother's plant. Closer to home on my little street in the hills we'd get every thing from bar b que to fancy sauces, lots of onions. two older neighbors had cooks who would spoil the neighborhood kids with cookies and cakes every couple of weeks. Of course when my friends and I were in our teens parts of the neighborhood smelled of pot.

[scarlet_owl]

43. The Kraft factory down the street.

Some days it smelled like ranch dressing. Other days it smelled kind of like black olives.

[rug]

44. The crosstown bus, M7.

[RedStateShame]

45. I'm not sure what it was, but I never smell it any more, so I assume it's.

..hope.

[ceile]

46. Magnolia and pine and fresh cut grass.

West Houston was wonderful in the spring time. I miss it.

[datasuspect]

47. was this back when the katy freeway was still 4 lane?

and old katy road still existed.

i think everything west of 610 was originally designed to be a rural interstate configuration.

if i am not mistaken, go about 20 miles west of katy and there are still original "short slip" ramps where you right turn directly into the flow of traffic on the IH-10 main lanes.

interesting historical photographs of katy freeway and other houston roads:

(http://www.texasfreeway.com/houston/historic/photos/houston_historic_photos.shtml#10w)

[ceile]

74. No, later than that and not Katy.

Dairy Ashford/Memorial area. But I do remember Old Katy Road.

[El Fuego]

48. Brackish water, salty and sometimes fishy

[Saphire]

49. like a dirty armpit with gas.....grew up in a refinery town in texas.

[flamingyouth]

50. The beach

Ergo, occasionally low tide. :D

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

51. We used to get the cookie baking smell from the Nabisco plant

at 71st and Kedzie when the wind was blowing the right way. The other smell I remember was burning leaves in the fall before it was outlawed.

You can still smell the shit plant in Stickney whenever you drive north on 294 or south on the Stevenson. That hasn't changed.

[datasuspect]

52. or the blommer chocolate factory by milwaukee/kinzie

but i think they outlawed the chocolate smell released from roasting raw cocoa or whatever it is they do in there.

walking to northwest station was a treat on some days, as the whole area smelled of chocolate.

[OnionPatch]

53. Hay and sometimes manure

Flowers like lilacs and honeysuckle, rain-soaked dirt, grass and fresh air. I was lucky to have grown up on a beautiful little piece of farmland out in the country. My family grew tons of our own food, so there were always a lot of good food smells, too. The scent of fresh-grown tomatoes or strawberries still takes me back.

[Tikki]

54. Nuclear waste (,)

rotting thyroid glands and shriveling prostates.




The Tikkis

[Taverner]

55. The smell of laundry detergent in the air

I can smell it still...

[BrotherBuzz]

56. Tidal wetlands...

High and low tides smell different, but both were wonderful. Damn, Oneighty and I shared the same love of it even though we experienced it on opposite coasts.

[cwydro]

57. Softball gloves and

tennis balls, green grass and dusty playing fields, clean sweat and rain, popcorn and snow cones...We lived next to a park...

[Skittles]

58. which one?

I had over a dozen childhood neighborhoods :o

[YellowRubberDuckie]

59. Fresh cut grass, wet grass, and lilacs.

My grandma, who lived next door had a HUGE lilac bush.
Duckie

[MichiganVote]

60. Oak trees, damp Oak trees...Fall was bliss

[maxfisher]

61. kudzu smells like grape koolaid, blooms in the fall

[MichiganVote]

62. That would be a new smell to me

I love Fall and fallen leaves....piles and piles of leaves to rake, fall in, spread around, make into rooms, throw at your friends, crunch under your feet on the way to school, burn at the curb....

[elocs]

63. My daughter currently lives in Stickney.

There is so much in that area that does not smell well.

[elocs]

65. It's funny, but I was just talking with someone about this today.

I lived close to the Sunbeam bakery and so I remember the wonderful smell of baking bread. I did not live far from the Old Style Brewery and so from there was the odor of the malt and hops. Finally, if the wind was coming from the right direction, the waste water treatment plant--yuk. But I did love the smell of the baking bread and still do. The bakery is now owned by Sara Lee and makes croutons and that smells just as good.

[femmocrat]

66. The coke ovens. The sky would be bright orange at night from them.

I'm surprised we survived... God only knows what was in those fumes!

[graywarrior]

69. Steam turbine.

[DBoon]

70. Automobile exhaust

The Harbor Freeway (110) was built through the backyard of our house.

[UncleSepp]

71. Smelled like shit and sounded like a war.

We lived near a sewage treatment plant and police pistol range.

[aaronbees]

72. Spaghetti sauce, baseball mitts and oak trees

At least those are the strongest smells I associate with childhood.

[VelmaD]

73. Basketballs

and trees. I lived out on the edge of town...there was pasture behind our house. And our driveway was where the kids all played basketball...there's nothing like the smell of a basketball to take me back.

[underpants]

75. it was HOT

it was the 70's he spent the summer time in toughskins for reasons I never understood and it was hot as hell. Oh SMELLED

[tigereye]

76. cut grass, I think

[Lisa]

77. not as nice as the next one over, which had the LifeSavers factory!

Peppermint or butterscotch were the most noticeable scents there.

The nicest smell on my street was the flowers on the Norway Maples in the spring.

[Throd]

78. The Spreckels sugarbeet processing plant in Salinas, CA

It emitted an odd, almost but not quite unpleasant odor.

[skygazer]

79. I didn't grow up in a neighborhood

I grew up in the country. Nearest neighbor was about a quarter of a mile away.

It smelled like trees. Pine trees and hardwoods. Hay from the horse barn, and manure. Fresh grass. In the spring, it smelled like dampness and new leaves. In the summer, it had a hot, warm smell. In the winter, it was a sharp, fresh, clean scent with a hint of pine. And in the autumn, it smelled like turning leaves, a smell that's impossible to describe but one of my favorite scents on earth. A smell like adventure, and possibility, and horseback riding.

Down by the brook in the spring, it smelled like tadpoles. And in the summer, like cool water and hot sunshine. And over all of it was a light scent of dust from the dirt road that ran by.

I'm a creature of smell. Sometimes I catch a scent and it can bring me right back to a specific place or moment in time. I love that.

[Montauk6]

80. I remember the scent of fried food and barbecue as well as freshly cut

grass in the summers. Burning wood in the winter from the fireplaces. Also, being in Michigan, there was always the faint smell of gasoline; and since Inkster's close to Metro Airport, the scent of plane fuel.

ahhh... memories...

[ganeshji]

81. powdery grandmas