Signal Hill
You don't know what petroleum smells like, do you?
It's interesting - our entire lives are built upon the bounty conferred on us by these elegant liquid fossil hydrocarbons, yet the vast majority of people have no personal experience with the substance. They've never actually seen, or touched, or smelled, or tasted crude oil themselves.
Used to be, you couldn't avoid knowing what petroleum smelled like. Just drive through an oil field! It was hard not to if you lived anywhere in the LA area in the old days. One of the early "big finds" there was Signal Hill, north of Long Beach. I remember my dad driving our family through there when I was very little, like around 1960. This is exactly what it looked like! The oil derricks were as thick and tall as a forest. It was quite an impressive sight.
And you never forget the smell. Petroleum smells delicious! It's really something; it almost smells like food. You wouldn't think a chemical coming out the ground would smell edible, but this is no ordinary chemical. It's the liquified essence of Life on Earth. Of course it smells good!
It's weird how people nowadays don't know where their life comes from. They don't understand that all of this - ALL OF THIS - is made possible by the energy, distillates and inventions that we extract out of crude petroleum. Yet nobody today - almost nobody - seems to give that any thought or consideration. I wonder how that disconnect happened...
It's interesting - our entire lives are built upon the bounty conferred on us by these elegant liquid fossil hydrocarbons, yet the vast majority of people have no personal experience with the substance. They've never actually seen, or touched, or smelled, or tasted crude oil themselves.
Used to be, you couldn't avoid knowing what petroleum smelled like. Just drive through an oil field! It was hard not to if you lived anywhere in the LA area in the old days. One of the early "big finds" there was Signal Hill, north of Long Beach. I remember my dad driving our family through there when I was very little, like around 1960. This is exactly what it looked like! The oil derricks were as thick and tall as a forest. It was quite an impressive sight.
And you never forget the smell. Petroleum smells delicious! It's really something; it almost smells like food. You wouldn't think a chemical coming out the ground would smell edible, but this is no ordinary chemical. It's the liquified essence of Life on Earth. Of course it smells good!
It's weird how people nowadays don't know where their life comes from. They don't understand that all of this - ALL OF THIS - is made possible by the energy, distillates and inventions that we extract out of crude petroleum. Yet nobody today - almost nobody - seems to give that any thought or consideration. I wonder how that disconnect happened...