I Use Public Transportation, Walk, Or Ride Bike

On the bus into Seattle last Thursday morning I saw the striped sweaters on the trees in Pioneer Square. Then I had a few peanuts as a snack and gradually realized I was staring at an old clock – it was nine o'clock - on the sidewalk where the jewelry store was a hundred years old. I walked around a block to Westlake Center and as I passed a clothing store a door opened briefly. The aroma that swung out was the artificial holiday department store atmosphere-scent from days when I was a girl going to department stores at a mall. My earliest downtown shopping for Christmas presents had not included a solid wall of immense perfume – what I remember while I was a child selecting a tie for my father was something more subtle.

That brought me around to an old clipping about Nose knows: Smell a potent link to memories – this list of identifiable aromas from decades of birth is still on the internet – except, in my clipping from Friday, December 25, 1992, the 1940s also responded to gas.

Gas was memorable to me – although I have never owned a car, I was at the flying red horse station Mobil with my mother when the attendant, who had been there for a long time, filled up my mother's tank. Well, I use public transportation, walk, or ride a bike. I do not really know where the idea of smell a potent link to memories lost the smell of gas.

This is from the internet:

1970's - Baby powder, mother's perfume, moth balls, plastic, hair spray, suntan oil, chlorine, felt tip pens

1960's - Baby powder, mother's perfume, chlorine, window cleaner, dad's cologne, detergent, paste, Play Dough, disinfectant, refineries/factories, motor oil, exhaust

1950's - Baby powder, mother's perfume, dad's cologne, crayons, pine, Play Dough

1940's - Baby powder, mother's perfume, hay/cut grass, flowers, sea air, roses, tweed

1930's - Flowers, hay, sea air, pine, baby powder, burning leaves

1920's - Flowers, grass, roses, pine, soap, manure