The Power of Smell to Stir Up Memories

Scientific studies have shown that smell has unusual power to stir up memories. Most of us can vouch for that fact from our own experience. You smell old books and remember your grandfather’s den. You smell roses and remember the garden of the house you grew up in. And so forth and so on.

Today, while getting out my my car in the parking lot of Schlotzsky’s in Kerrville, Texas, I had one of those smell-stirs-up-old-memories experiences. I parked about twenty-five yards away from a construction site. The lumber was particular pungent today because of yesterday’s rains. As soon as I smelled the Douglas Fir 2x4s, I was transported back to the home my family and I lived in when I was young. At about five years of age, we built a family room onto the back of our home. For days, I smelled newly-sawn 2x4s. Today, I remembered watching the workmen and smelling the results of their construction efforts.

What strikes me as particularly odd about my experience in the parking lot of Schlotzsky’s is that I was remembering something I experienced about 47 years ago. Moreover, I don’t think I have thought about this for decades. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I haven’t ever thought of our family’s room addition since it happened. Yet one good whiff of lumber, 47 years and 1300 miles away, and I’m back as a small boy watching the workmen.

I also remembered, by the way, the smell of cheap cigars. At least one of the workers would smoke and then chew on these cigars. So, today I had a smell-sparks-memory-sparks-smell experience.

The mind is an amazing thing, don’t you think?

So, how about you, had any smell-sparks-memory experiences lately?