Today my partner and I were driving around the refinery. As we were making our way around, we stumbled upon the Refinery Museum. It just so happened that we made it on one of the 2 days it's open, so of course we went inside.
The men and women who work at the museum were most pleasant. They were very kind and seemed somewhat surprised to have visitors. First thing when we entered the building, they invited us to watch a short film on the history of the refinery. With much pleasure we found a seat on one of the wooden pews in the viewing room. The film was a series of photos along with a narration of the history of the plant's past 95 years. The film's content is much of what you would expect: happy faces and a story of hard working Americans who, through good times and bad, kept their heads up and fueled God's blessed country. I was hoping to see more photos of the high school, or high school students in the film, which seemed to be shot in the late 80's or early 90's. Unfortunately I only caught one glimpse of a high school student out by the Roxana track (with an awesome perm).
After the video we took a self-guided tour of the museum which consisted of one larger room divided up into kiosks of information and memorabilia. Nothing much caught my eye, gas cans and old uniforms, newspaper articles and other like propaganda. I ran across some sexist safety cartoons but unfortunately that wasn't very surprising. As we were finishing up, I realized I did not come across much of anything to do with the high school, that is, Roxana Community High School, Home of the Shells, sometimes called Shell Country. There was a small pamphlet in one of the cases that said "Partners in Education" and a few black and white pictures of what I assume to be Homecoming but both lacked description or even mention in the kiosks. I was wondering if I had just overlooked so I asked the people who worked there. I asked if they had any information on the high school, when it was built and the refineries involvement. My question was returned with a moment of silence, a few glances at each other, and then they told me they didn't know.
As we drove away from the refinery my head started to hurt. For one reason, the smell was so potent near the museum it nearly made you choke and for another, I was dumbstruck that the refinery museum didn't have anything to say about the high school. It was as if the refinery didn't even know it existed. I just had such a hard time understanding how there could be such disconnection between the country of people they boast about leading towards progress and the real life community of human beings that live on the other side of the tank farm.
I think about how big the refinery is to the students and alumni of Roxana High School and how we barely made it into it's scrapbook. The refinery made an appearance in most of my cheerleading photos, it showed up to all of our pep assemblies and it even came to my graduation. It literally dictated the path I took to school, the quality of it's resources and the general quality of life for all of the area's residence. I left the museum feeling like I was part of an abusive dating relationship. I depended on the refinery for everything, I depended on it to keep me healthy and safe, for it to know better, but mostly for it's consideration. Unfortunately, as the museum seems to show, the refinery had other things on it's mind.
The refinery is a part of our community whether or not it chooses to engage in such an intimate matter. It has, in fact, fueled our economy, but that doesn't give it leave to disregard the health and well-being of its next-door neighbors. Maybe in 1917 having a school next to the refinery for its workers' families seemed like a good idea, but it's been 95 years, and with no mention of the high school in the museum, it seems like someone is trying to avoid a conversation and it feels like a slap in the face.
