What is/are your favorite smell/ smells ? Mine is bread baking.

[Codifer]

110. I have two:

First is a pipe tobacco shop and the second is the nostalgic smell of castor oil as was used in now vintage racing cars.

Years ago I drove an Alfa Romeo and one year (mid 1980s I think) it was the featured marque at the Monterey Historic Races. The historic harkened back to the days when the tires were skinny and the drivers were fat. That was the year that the Alfa Romeo factory had prepared an Alfa Tipo 51 (?) from their museum in Milano and shipped it to California so that the 72 year old Juan Fangio (who had driven it to his fifth Grand Prix championship) could demonstrate its speed and beauty and fill the air with the shriek of a high revving straight eight.

I spent four days there camping out (and smoking a pipe). I was up early on Friday morning and wandered over to watch the warm-up session for Grand Prix cars from the twenties and thirties. I found there someone I knew; an elderly fellow named Howie who at age 80 or so more or less volunteered at a local Alfa garage so that he could run parts and generally act as a gopher just so he could be around sports cars. I had always assumed that he had had some involvement with racing cars in Europe. There was, hung about the track, the aroma of burning castor oil which I always had found so enfolded in the love and lore of fine old racing cars and their histories. On this morning session the cars were deep red Alfa P2s and light blue supercharged Bugatti 36sc and British Racing Green Sunbeams (IIRC).

When I said good morning to Howie I saw that he had tears in his eyes. He said that the vapor burned. I do not think he told me the truth.