Have you ever smelled something that brought back a long ago memory? If so, you have experienced the “Proustian phenomenon.”

Named for French writer Marcel Proust, the phenomenon is what the Psychology Dictionary defines as the “sudden occurrence of a powerful memory so powerful and vivid it can also contain a number of sensory and emotional components.”

Many of us experience the Proustian phenomenon when we pick up a freshly bathed and powdered baby. The scent of Johnson’s baby powder generates memories of our own children as infants or even our younger siblings.

Some time ago I drove by a set of grain bins from which corn was being augured into a truck. The process was whipping up significant dust which I had to drive through and, as I did, I detected the very subtle fragrance of corn.

The aroma took me back to my teen years and reminded me of the farmers who hired me to help pick or shell corn. It was good to take a good whiff of corn once again.

There are a number of smells that will send us down Memory Lane. Our hectic lifestyle makes it preferable to do all our laundry indoors these days. How I use to (and still do) enjoy the fragrance of bedsheets and pillowcases fresh from the clothesline. They always smelled good, but particularly so in the winter when they had freeze-dried on the line.

My mother made homemade bread frequently while I was growing up and I still find the aroma of baking bread to be among my favorites. It always reminds me of my childhood.

We live about four blocks from the Chicago, Central and Pacific railroad tracks in our little town. As I’ve watched the long coal trains pass through town on their way to a power plant I recall the unique smell of coal.

One of the houses we lived in when I was a kid was heated by a coal furnace. As I grew older one of my chores was to shovel coal into a hopper from which it was augured into the furnace. While I didn’t necessarily enjoy the job of feeding the stoker furnace, the oily smell of coal has come to remind me of the warmth of home on a cold winter day.

I recall the odor of burning coal, too. Just after my fifth birthday we moved from the farm into a downtown apartment in Ellsworth, a block or two from the railroad tracks. Steam locomotives were still in use at that time and their coal smoke often drifted our way. That increasingly rare odor still reminds me of life as a 5-year-old.

There’s another smell that takes me back a few decades. After I’ve made sure no one is looking, I’ve been known to open a box of crayons in a store and sniff. The odor of crayons takes me back to blue jeans, Big Chief writing tablets and No. 2 lead pencils. And a teacher’s voice saying, “It’s still an hour until lunch, Arvid; just sit down and shut up!”

The wintergreen scent of school paste will take me down that same nostalgic road.

Now that many families have home freezers most of us seldom get into meat locker plants. The freezer section of a locker plant has a unique aroma that takes me back to childhood.

Before my parents acquired a home freezer they rented a drawer in Otto Kalvig’s locker at the rear of the grocery store in Ellsworth. It was a treat on a hot summer day to accompany Mom to the locker, push the big latch on the thick door and enter the frigid chamber where you could inhale the icy air with the rarefied scent of frozen meat a memorable aroma.

What smells trigger your memories? Freshly turned earth? An apple pie baking in the oven? An old book? The scent of a perfume your grandmother wore? A wet dog? A barn or stable? New tires? Old automotive oil? Model glue?

We’re coming up on a season of memory-inducing aromas. In the next several weeks we will again experience the wonderful aromas of Thanksgiving and Christmas and sweet memories will abound thanks to the Proustian phenomenon.

To my large nose I say, “Thanks for the memories.”