“That is the live-oak,” explained Mr. Young. “It is really an evergreen, although it has leaves like our deciduous trees.”
In about two hours the train drew near the oil fields. Mr. Young did not have to tell Roy where they were, for Roy’s nose told him very plainly. The air was redolent with crude oil.
“Phew!” cried Roy. “That’s pretty strong. I don’t believe I would like to live in such a smell.”
“You’d soon get used to it,” replied the mate. “A person can get used to anything, apparently, though I’ve sometimes wondered how anybody could ever become accustomed to the smell of the factories where they turn fish into oil and fertilizer. I was in one once near the Delaware Breakwater.”
“If it smelled any worse than this,” laughed Roy, “I’m glad it’s near the Delaware Breakwater. That’s quite close enough for me.”
When they got out of the train they walked toward the oil field. Roy had seen pictures of the Pennsylvania oil fields, which were hardly a hundred miles from his home. He expected to see a derrick here and a derrick there, and so he was utterly amazed at what he now beheld. Oil-derricks rose before him in dense masses. From a distance it seemed to Roy that they were as close together as trees in a forest. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. Instead of being spread out all over the region they were crowded together. Mr. Young explained that this was because the oil pocket was in that particular neighborhood. As they drew nearer, they could see the pumps at work, the walking-beams going rhythmically up and down.
But what amazed Roy perhaps even more than the mass of derricks were the colonies of tanks to hold the oil. In every direction were clusters of tanks. These were great, circular structures of steel, each holding 30,000 gallons or more. Roy noticed that each group of tanks was laid out with mathematical precision, like checkers standing at even distances from one another on a checker-board. The idea was emphasized by the fact that each tank had a dike or low wall of earth thrown up about it in the form of a great square, like the lines in the checker-board. Roy asked why the dikes were there.
“Sometimes an oil-tank catches fire,” said Mr. Young, “and the burning oil gets out. If there is a dike about a tank the burning oil can’t reach the tanks next to it and set them on fire.”
“It’s a good idea,” commented Roy.
“If ever you see a tank afire, you’ll think so,” said Mr. Young. “Sometimes a tank explodes and showers burning oil all about. A tank will burn for days, and the entire field is endangered as long as the blaze lasts. Everything about an oil field is soaked with oil, you will notice, and if a fire spreads, it may sweep over the entire field. That has happened more than once. Whenever a tank gets afire, they begin at once to pump the oil out of the tanks around it.”