Originally Posted By: MasterSolenoid
It is amazing how smells trigger your memory.
Yes it is.
When ever I smell exhaust fumes, it reminds me of when I worked on a Dairy Farm (plenty of exhaust from the tractors).
I grew up on a dairy farm. Even today, I can't smell diesel exhaust without also smelling corn silage and manure.
As far as tires go, there's nothing like standing downwind of the dragstrip's burnout box.
Diane Ackerman said this in A Natural History of the Senses:
"Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the Poconos, when wild blueberry bushes teemed with succulent fruit and the opposite sex was as mysterious as space travel; another, hours of passion on a moonlit beach in Florida, while the night-blooming cereus drenched the air with thick curds of perfume and huge sphinx moths visited the cereus in a loud purr of wings; a third, a family dinner of pot roast, noodle pudding, and sweet potatoes, during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town, when both of one’s parents were alive. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of years and experiences. Hit a tripwire of smell, and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth."