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Coke
The air smells faintly of coke.
Not cocaine or coca-cola, but coke as in Coketown- the processed coal they still allow you to burn in smokeless zones.
The smell of a 1950s winter.
Only then the reek was sharper and harsher. Everyone was burning the hard stuff. If weather conditions were right we had visitations of that thick, sulphurous, man-killing fog that Dickens called a “London peculiar”.
Up on Croham Hurst. Snow on the ground, fog among the trees and me alone and terrified of ghosts. Of one ghost in particular. The ghost of an Edwardian lady rider who’d gone done the slope at full tilt and broken her neck. Friends said that if you scrabbled among the scree you could still find stones with her blood on.
There’s a sound that goes with the smell. It’s the sound of sacks of coal being emptied into the concrete bunker in the back-yard.
(The coal man had a horse and cart)
A sliding roar that ends in a whisper.
Not cocaine or coca-cola, but coke as in Coketown- the processed coal they still allow you to burn in smokeless zones.
The smell of a 1950s winter.
Only then the reek was sharper and harsher. Everyone was burning the hard stuff. If weather conditions were right we had visitations of that thick, sulphurous, man-killing fog that Dickens called a “London peculiar”.
Up on Croham Hurst. Snow on the ground, fog among the trees and me alone and terrified of ghosts. Of one ghost in particular. The ghost of an Edwardian lady rider who’d gone done the slope at full tilt and broken her neck. Friends said that if you scrabbled among the scree you could still find stones with her blood on.
There’s a sound that goes with the smell. It’s the sound of sacks of coal being emptied into the concrete bunker in the back-yard.
(The coal man had a horse and cart)
A sliding roar that ends in a whisper.
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I remember an era when horses and carts were quite common on the streets of suburban London (I can't speak for other places.) Jesus, how long ago and far away that is!
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But it does feel like a century ago. It's so strange. I long for it. I want to go back there and smell those childhood scents that make you feel safe and make everything cozy and warm.
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There was a railway viaduct about half a mile away and I'd lie in bed and hear the trains go rattling over it. For some reason it was a very comforting sound
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Yes, the sounds! Magical. So comforting, though loud and strange. I wonder they would still comfort now? Would they wake me and keep me from sleeping again? Would they annoy me? Is my room the same? When will I go there again?
Strange thoughts.
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Only an Old World South American and a Brit could come to this sort of conclusion.
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Oil well pumps were replaced long ago by silent electronic devices, silencing that unique mechanical music.
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Ah, the vanishing sounds of the Industrial Age!
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"The first pumping was done by water wheels, boilers, even mules. A hand pitcher pump (farm water pump) served when Drake brought in his 1859 well. Steam-powered central pumping units arrived about 1880. Natural gas from the oil lease wells replaced steam as soon as engines were developed to handle it. Gas engines became common in the mid 1890's and drove many powers (still do)."
"In their heyday, engines for the powers had barkers which emitted a signature sound for each power when it was working. I remember these sounds in the oilfields. On crisp mornings in the late fall, the sounds would fill the valleys, each in its place in the musical score. You could even tell if the engine on the other side of the ridge was working or not. You could also hear sundry sounds caused by friction on the metal rod lines and from the pumping devices. A pumping lease creates a medley, soft to sharp, pleasantly repetitive, but one must be prepared for the staccato punctuations of the barker and backfires of the engine."
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Spookiest experience I've ever had. I'd lost a toy soldier up in the woods and I'd gone to retrieve him. My friend, who had earlier offered to accompany me, chickened out, but I went ahead
because I knew I wouldn't respect myself if I didn't. I got to the clearing, did a quick 180 degree scan, then plunged back down the hill.
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this sounds so wonderfully ominous... this whole post is so well written. i wish i had been around to see such things. when i was a kid i used to love to run out to the mailman's truck and get the mail, because the mailman smoked a pipe and it smelled like vanilla. i had never smelled vanilla before.
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No-one smokes a pipe anymore. It's a shame. I'm not too keen on cigarette smoke but pipe tobacco is a completely different matter.
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I have often considered purchasing a pipe myself, merely for home use, at it would seem too pretentious for a student of literature to walk around with a pipe... -Especially on days of bad weather, when I have to make concessions to the cold and damp and stick on the tweed jacket!
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I'd love to see a picture of your mother with all her gear.
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I could almost smell and hear this!
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It was a smellier, noisier time.....