Down the Rabbit Hole

MEK and Dusty Shelves

30 Day blogging Challenge
PROMPT May 2nd
What smells or sounds bring back great memories of your childhood?

For me, it seems my childhood was spent in the basement of the tiny Raymond Hill Library. It was my happy place. They kept the Dorrie the Little Witch book in the children's stacks and it always smelled like moth balls and dust down there. I would curl up and read while my mother would attempt to corral my younger siblings into listening to story time or using the Lego tables. I moved quickly on from Dorrie to other more astute works but that musty combination of old books and dusty shelves always takes me back to the time when I first fell in love with books.

MEK is another smell that connects me to my childhood. MEK is a noxious smelly lubricate that the aviation technicians use. I spent many hours at work with my Dad at the airport and the smell pervaded the hanger and has become part of my permanent olfactory landscape. Even to this day, walking through the hanger on the way to my office, it transports me back. It has been a smell that has been part of my earliest memories and it grounds me like no other.