Memorial Day 2010 - Norwell

I've been out of touch with Norwell, despite living there from 1940 to the early 1950s. I've always wondered about the circumstances under which my parents would have moved away from Braintree, just as WW2 was heating up.

The narrative at http://tinyurl.com/34hwamx explains a lot.

Norwell was "out there." We had a problematic well. Our phone number was "Hanover 176."

Names like Breezy Bend and Dead Man's Curve, Church Hill (fire company), Civil Defense and the Etrusco all have personal significance to me.

The trigger for this little adventure into the past was remembering the way that the volunteer firemen's graves in the Church Hill Cemetery, including my father's, are decorated on Memorial Day.

My mother sold the old house in 1957-58.

Syphoning Oil?

Am I the only person in the world who is put off by BP's bleating about using a siphon to catch the oil leaking from their deep water well?

Wouldn't that require catching the oil and delivering it to some place lower-down than the well?

Or perhaps they mean just putting a pipe on top of their private volcano and having it burp its insides all the way to the ocean surface?

Doesn't there have to be some pumping going on somewhere? Or at least an elevator to the surface...

Or am I missing something that - perhaps - wasn't taught in EE school?

And, by the way, where is the news about other oil companies and other countries - trying to help? Where is Red Adair when you need him... oh yes, he died a few years ago.