A fine, lightly oiled leather strap, attached to a vintage rifle or a pre-war stringed instrument....
Old Spice.
Woodshops, auto repair shops, machine shops, pipe tobacco, strong coffee, pre-dawn air, jet fuel, and whatever that stuff is that traditional barber shops put on you after a haircut. Love that.
Left out a good wet field dog after a long day in the woods.
New-mown wild grasses, hay, whatever it is the "mowers" along the rural highways are always mowing...
Hundred-year-old wooden-floored hardware stores (with their inventory - you could get about anything there!)
Marine fuel, and the smell around the docks...
How about lake/hunting cabin?
Deep woods?
Gunpowder, both black and smokeless.
ping
Whenever I encounter a teenage boy wearing cologne, I inform him that boys his age are supposed to smell like used motor oil. Drives the girls crazy.
You can't be a man by reading a website.....well maybe FR only!
My grandfather (born 1900) had some cologne or aftershave that I liked. He passed away in 1976. I only came across it twice in passing and it was several states away from where he was so I figured it was a national brand. I have bought the Bay Rum and Aqua Velva listed here but it is not the scent. He was an mechanical engineer and wore a white shirt and grey pants so I know it was not some wild scent.
Any ideas what was popular in the 1960’s and probably bought at a drug store or Sears or Montgomery Ward, JC Penny’s?
How about the smell of a Zippo lighter.
My paternal granddad was a building contractor and carpenter by trade. He kept a huge shop for his business, but what I most remember, is the smell of his garage at home, which was stuffed to the rafters with old tools and construction bric-a-brac of every description.
He had a huge work bench in there, and a potbellied, wood burning stove in the middle of the floor. We boys loved to help him stoke the fire in that thing on cold winter days, while he taught us the basics of tool use.
The aromas of real man’s work permeated that old garage and stayed with me to adulthood. When I started my own career in construction, the smells of the jobsite were like home to me.
Did anybody mention leather?
Hoppes #9 - it’s the “smell of Manly Freedom”
bttt