The Slice: Sometimes you get the good with the bad

It’s a bit late to be coming up with new ideas for Expo ’74 exhibits.

The fair is, after all, long over.

But I have one: The Edwin Drake Pavilion. It could house an interactive exhibit telling the story of how Drake ushered in the petroleum industry when he drilled the first successful oil well at Titusville, Pa., on this date in 1859.

Now that might sound like an odd thing to salute at a world’s fair celebrating protection of the environment. But hear me out.

First, full disclosure. I am one of Drake’s descendants.

I grew up hearing about him and wondering, where’s my trust fund?

But though a decent engineer and possessor of an impressive beard, Drake was not much of a businessman. He never got rich from his invention.

What he did do, though, was effectively sound the death knell for the U.S. whaling industry. And wouldn’t that have been something Expo ’74 could have noted?

Now, for all I know, Drake’s name was indeed mentioned at the fair. In 1974, I was in college in Vermont, not far from one of Edwin Drake’s childhood homes. I did not attend Expo ’74.

Truth be told, I always sort of thought of him as a failure. I mean, how can you launch the oil industry and not become Scrooge McDuck wealthy? (By not securing a patent, for one thing.)

Then I came across a reference to the implications of his well for the whale oil market. The light bulb snapped on and I began to take familial pride in what was once called “Drake’s Folly.”

I can’t help but think an Expo exhibit would have been a hit.

The hall could have had a state-of-the-art sound system filling the space with whale sounds and music such as the haunting Crosby, Stills and Nash song, “Wind On the Water.”

There could have been a family-friendly replica of Drake’s pioneering well that allowed for a hands-on experience. Kids would have liked it.

OK, I realize saluting the oil industry at an environmental fair would have been fraught with conflict, even before heightened awareness of Global Warming. I also know Drake did not set out to save the whales.

But he did. Some of them, at least.

Sometimes the good we do is inadvertent.

So was Edwin Drake a failure or a pathfinder? Ask a whale.

Today’s Slice question: What’s the No. 1 reason you are not a typical Inland Northwesterner?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. How old do you have to be to know who Ozzie and Harriet were?