Every smell I have smelled in my life left an impression. Some of the smells are great: The smell of bread baking in the oven; and, some smells are simply bad: The smell that opens your sinus cavities when you are cleaning out a chicken house; like raw ammonia. Churning butter smells good to me and I still like to smell freshly churned butter.
The first smell was my mother when I was nursing. I can no longer remember what the smell was like; and all children nursed in those days. When their mother got sick or her milk dried up, babies still had to eat. Mother had a kind of deal with a lady in town who would nurse me if she couldn’t and mother would nurse any of her children if she was not able to.
Another smell I like is the smell of bacon frying in the cast iron skillet. And coffee boiling in a pot was something I learned to love to smell but not taste — that came later in the Army. I learned to love the smell and taste of Army coffee. I'd walk a mile for a cup of Army coffee straight out of the 5-gallon pot.
And oh my, the smell of vanilla extract was so good it made my go crazy during the Second World War. I was so starved for candy and ice cream that mother made snow ice cream and always put some vanilla extract in the mix. It made that snow taste so good; I thought it would taste even better if I could just drink — I took one drink. That was the last time I ever did that. First: It smells a lot better than it tastes and second; you are not supposed to drink vanilla extract. Mother said drinking vanilla extract would make the hair on my chest fall out; and I only had 6 hairs on my chest for many years after that.
Sugar cookies; like those the old ladies used to bake, had a smell that is almost better than bread baking in the oven.
Oh my; I love to smell my dog’s feet and all of my dogs didn’t like for me to smell their feet. They have scent glands in their feet and I suppose that was their objection. But to me there is only one animal smell that I like better.
That would be the smell of a horse when you are sitting on their back. Nothing smells better than the horse you are riding.
Whiskey smells worse than it tastes and while beer has a smell I couldn’t tell you if it was beer or coke by the smell.
Puke smells bad period. But on a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, puke from many seasick men, slopping around in 55-gallon drums that you have to walk past on the way topside, really grabs your gut and sometimes is bad enough to make you puke in the barrel. And I puked in the barrel. The barrel stunk. I wonder what the Navy did with those 55-gallon drums of punk?
