For Marcel Proust, it was the taste of a little cake called a madeleine that triggered a rush of memories. But olfactory associations can be just as powerful, as these three CL staffers have found.

Baked Fresh

I don't have clear memories of my grandparents as real people because they both passed away, one and then the other, when I was relatively young. But the smell of baking bread instantly takes me back to the car ride with my parents to Lakeland to visit them, a weekly outing that ensured my interminable boredom in the back seat (are we there yet?) until the delicious smell of baking bread from a factory near our desired exit wafted in through the windows and signaled that the car ride was nearing the end. The smell of baking waffle cones takes me back to another grandparent-related memory, this one situated in the cozy interior of Larry's Ice Cream, the place I used to walk to with my grandpa from the duplex apartments by University Mall, where he lived after my grandma died. I'd order Oreo cookie ice cream, he'd order mint chocolate chip, and we'd sit together and eat our cones in companionable silence while savoring the rich aroma of the freshly baked cones. —Leilani Polk

Egged On

My first summer job in Tampa Bay was working on a sprinkler crew installing big irrigation systems. Staying with my parents during break from college in upstate New York, I simply was not prepared for the ungodly heat and humidity on those sites. I was also unprepared for the wretched smell that spurted from the sprinklers. "Dad?" I asked my father, the foreman. "Why does the water smell like rotten eggs?" "It's sulfur water," he replied curtly, as if to a dumbass. (To which I wanted to reply, "OK, Mr. Sprinkler Wizard: What are some of the prevailing tropes in T.S. Eliot?")

To this day, just a whiff of a sulfur-water sprinkler transports me back to a summer that was one long slog: interminable days spent slinging a shovel and pining for that moment in September when I could haul my ass back up North. The following summer, I landed gigs as a busboy and DJ.

Lately, I haven't noticed the smell as much, so I called Johnny Sims, owner of Sims Irrigation. He told me that the sulfur smell comes from systems that tap into shallow wells. Newer neighborhoods don't have shallow wells, so overall the prevalence of sulfur-water sprinklers has diminished over the years. —Eric Snider

Orange Blossom Special

According to Wikipedia, "The orange blossom, which is the state flower of Florida, is traditionally associated with good fortune." Anytime I catch a whiff of that sweet citrus smell, I'm taken back to the year after I graduated from college. I was back in Tampa and writing a screenplay with a guy who was living with his parents in Lutz. Their home was just off U.S. 41. The clusters of houses were surrounded by uncut woods that must have contained thousands of orange blossoms. That smell still reminds me of the endless possibilities of a time in my life when dreams were numerous, outlandish and surely attainable. —Joe Bardi

Urban Explorer's Handbook 2007

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