The environmental disaster (nightmare) in the Gulf of Mexico has forced me to consider my lifelong relationship with oil. From the opening credits to The Beverly Hillbillies to the many years (age 10 to 22) working in family owned service stations and auto repair shops, I've been around a lot of oil.
I've pumped tens of thousands of liters of gas and changed the oil on hundreds of vehicles. As a kid we played on the oil soaked (a dust suppressant) streets of Clifford, Ontario. We didn't always exercise the most responsible disposal or cleanup methods, either. Many a gallon of old oil was thrown carelessly behind the garage or burned in the wood stove. Gasoline spills were often washed down the storm drain, sometimes so much that vapours would rise from a neighbour's kitchen sink.
This was the 1970's - we didn't know any better and no one was rushing to provide information and education about safe petroleum handling practices!
I like to think that I've evolved, at least a little, over the past thirty years. I have a gas mower, but it has been abandoned in favour of a reel mower. I'm even working to put back in service a vintage reel mower found in my father-in-law's shed. Instead of the two-cycle weed wacker I've been using a 12 volt trimmer for nearly three years. Both alternatives are gentler and quieter - I don't need to announce to Eagle Place in Brantford that I'm grooming the Demerling acreage.
When I change the oil on our vehicles, I save it for disposal at one of the monthly household hazardous waste disposal events at the local landfill. Yes, going to the dump is an event, just as it was when I was a kid.
And for the first time in a number of years I have a bicycle, and am taking great pleasure in the brief and not frequent enough rides along the trail system near our home.
I hope everyone is rethinking their oil dependency (addiction) and finding small ways to lower consumption so that one day (if we don't use up our nine lives in the process) we can avert environmental catastrophes like the BP disaster.
