Dec 3, 2008

Picturesque California


I thought it was and odd postcard. Do oil fields really count as tourist attraction? What's next, earthquakes, brush fires and drive by shootings? But then I found this photo:


Now I'm completely flummoxed. Is this normal, living next to oil wells? Isn't it, you know, unsafe?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

they sort of look like a cluster of Eiffel Towers. And they don't seem to have harmed this family's birthrate. Maybe the mother used lysol.

Petrea Burchard said...

Ha! AH. Too funny.

I like the oil fields in Los Angeles. Love to drive by them, would love to get out of the car and explore them but haven't had the nerve. But I never thought of them as a garden spot for gracious living.

Katie (of Katiefornia blog) collects post cards. She needs to see this.

Katie said...

Love this postcard! (And thanks to Petrea I've found your blog. Thanks for the tip Petrea!). I have quite a few postcards of odd things that don't exactly seem like what tourists would buy, but I've never seen an oil well postcard. Cool!!

Vanda said...

Hi Katie. There was an era when these type of postcards were common. They look like BW photographs hand colored. I found then visually very appealing. The intriguing subject matter is a plus.

Petrea, where are the oil fields? I've never seen one.

AH, it's most definitely the lysol. There was no web of indifference in that marriage.

Patrizzi Intergarlictica said...

There's a place called Oildale on the way to Lyons Speedway in between manure mountains and vineyards there are oil wells. The landscape becomes a strange other planet.

Anonymous said...

You know what? That sounds like a very tempting place to visit, in a kind of gatsby valley of ashes kind of way.

Petrea Burchard said...

If you take La Cienega Blvd. south to Baldwin Hills, you'll see a bunch of them on both sides of the road. They're not the kind of towers like in your post card anymore. They're more like those plastic drinky-bird toys.

Laurie Allee said...

That photo of the little house on the oil field is too much! I grew up in Texas where it's teeming with oilfeilds and I don't recall ever seeing anyone build a house between them.

I can't believe I just now discovered your wonderful blog! Now... to look through your archives...

Vanda said...

Hi Laurie, I hope you like the archives.