John Crowley's LJ (RSS Feed)
03-25-2008, 05:00 AM
So what did I learn about Ponca City, location of my new novel, which is already written, and about O-K-L-A etc.?
The main thing I missed, though I could have gathered it from the websites I visited, was that Ponca City is the home of the Continental Oil Company (cable CONOCO, now its actual and only name). The city of Ponca City, 25,000 people in 1940 and about the same now, is matched by an oil city almost as large -- well pretty large anyway, a tank farm a mile square I bet, and the entire refinery, the works all alight like the towers of a fairy city, and the flare stacks burning off gases all night. The smell of petroleum prevails throughout. I have a photo of the evening settling cloudless over the refinery, the torch of the gases burning, and a white full moon arising behind. I will post it soon.
So that will merit a mention.
And there's Cuzalina's drugstore, where my hero buys his condoms (in three-packs, as I learned from the Smartypants who answered my condom questions here). And the moonshiner, who had the rock house out behind the pigstand on Route 60. (I understand these terms even if you do not.) I didn't know that the train station (which L and I were taken to by a local antiquarian) was overshadowed by the immense grain elevators and flour mill of the Robin Hood flour company, which still stand, though now deserted like the station itself. (Oklahoma tends to leave abandoned structures to die natural deaths, declining into deracination and Alzheimers, rather than tearing them down; they don't seem to mind living with their aging relations and abandoned machines. Something about Christianity?).
Anyway I know much more now. A few pages must change. But not many.
(Original Post) (http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/82931.html)
The main thing I missed, though I could have gathered it from the websites I visited, was that Ponca City is the home of the Continental Oil Company (cable CONOCO, now its actual and only name). The city of Ponca City, 25,000 people in 1940 and about the same now, is matched by an oil city almost as large -- well pretty large anyway, a tank farm a mile square I bet, and the entire refinery, the works all alight like the towers of a fairy city, and the flare stacks burning off gases all night. The smell of petroleum prevails throughout. I have a photo of the evening settling cloudless over the refinery, the torch of the gases burning, and a white full moon arising behind. I will post it soon.
So that will merit a mention.
And there's Cuzalina's drugstore, where my hero buys his condoms (in three-packs, as I learned from the Smartypants who answered my condom questions here). And the moonshiner, who had the rock house out behind the pigstand on Route 60. (I understand these terms even if you do not.) I didn't know that the train station (which L and I were taken to by a local antiquarian) was overshadowed by the immense grain elevators and flour mill of the Robin Hood flour company, which still stand, though now deserted like the station itself. (Oklahoma tends to leave abandoned structures to die natural deaths, declining into deracination and Alzheimers, rather than tearing them down; they don't seem to mind living with their aging relations and abandoned machines. Something about Christianity?).
Anyway I know much more now. A few pages must change. But not many.
(Original Post) (http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/82931.html)