Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It was the same chase that everyone else cuts to. Whether they're celebrating the fossil
fuel economy or execrating it, everyone genuflects to oil's market-finding, world-powering
genius. In both cases, there's an undercurrent of fatalism in the cataloging of oil's uses, a
recognition of how difficult it would be simply to unmake the choice of fossil fuels as a
basis for our society. The investment is so total—in infrastructure, in industry, in our way
of living—that oil cannot simply be swapped out for another source of energy or materials,
however much promise the alternatives may hold. Until another industry actively displaces
its uses—or until scarcity makes it impractically costly—oil will not simply abandon the
markets it dominates. Nor will the uncountable people and companies that make up the uni-
verse called
the oil industry
simply give it up. Not while it still has life in it.
Maybe, then, Spindletop is not only a relic of oil's past but also a vision of its future,
however distant. Maybe one day this is what it will come to: every oil field a field of strip-
per wells, managed by a single family. A lone oilman, with his own derrick and his own
bulldozer, producing locavore petroleum for refineries down the road. That's the power of
the long-since-taken path. You don't unmake such a choice. You ride it into the ground.
On my way out, I visited Lucas No. 1.
Earlier, Radley had pointed out the spot, down a short gravel road that dead-ended on a
shallow pond. A flagpole stood on the shore. But there was no flag. Just a lonely exclam-
ation mark of metal planted in a squat trapezoid of concrete. “That's the one that done it,”
Radley had said.
It had been raining, and we didn't stay long. But today was windy and bright, and I had
the run of Spindletop. I drove along the dirt service roads until I found the turn.
It was a peaceful spot, the only noise the blind pinging of the flagless, wind-driven rope
against the flagpole. I ran my hand over the rough concrete of the base. On one side, it wore
a metal badge embossed with the tiny image of a derrick fountaining oil to twice its height.
I leaned over to read the words engraved on the medallion.
SPINDLETOP GUSHER—LUCAS NO
.
1—ORIGINAL LOCATION
I scrambled onto the top of the base and hooked my arm around the flagpole, looking
out at the marshy lake. It was streaked with some kind of algae or floating weed, pushed
by the wind into clumps on the near shore. The distant sound of a train floated on the wind,
the clanging of tanker cars being jolted together. Far off to the right, I could see the pump
on one of Radley's wells.
