Showerthought: I finally understood why my dad's old camera shop smelled like that.

I was cleaning a 1970s Minolta SRT 101 last week, the kind with the heavy leather case. I opened it up and that smell hit me, a mix of old leather, metal, and a kind of sweet oil. It was the exact smell of my dad's repair shop when I was a kid. I never knew what it was back then, just that it was his space. Now I know it's the smell of decades of gear, of CLA fluid, and of work. It's funny how a smell can connect you to a whole trade. Does anyone else have a smell they link to the job?

3 comments

3 Comments

lucas1654mo ago

Funny how those old trade smells are basically a recipe, right? Like the camera shop mix of leather and oil. Wonder if a plumber's kid would know the smell of pipe dope and solder flux before they even knew the words for it. Makes you think about all the lost smells from trades that don't exist anymore. What did a typewriter repair shop even smell like, wax and metal dust?

reese5504mo ago

Yeah, like ozone from the electric motors and that weird typewriter ribbon ink smell. Kinda sad we can't bottle that stuff.

anthony9891mo ago

Wait, pipe dope and solder flux? My uncle was a plumber and I swear I can still smell that green paste and burnt metal combo thirty years later. Never thought about that being a universal childhood experience for plumbers' kids though. That's wild to think about, that whole childhood smell dictionary thing. And typewriter repair shops must have smelled like a bomb went off in a pencil sharpener mixed with WD-40.