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poliphiloThe 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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Date: 2004-10-22 11:32 pm (UTC)"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."
no subject
Date: 2004-10-23 10:27 am (UTC)