Humbled Oil David W. Jardine Nice, eh? Strange how the past is always turning out to be different than it used to be. We are all right in the middle of a pandemic whose outcome is statistically projected but not known. The numbers and their models may be clear in their own ways, but what we will have to come to live with, how we will come to live it, even exactly who will live is not modellable in this way. Our actions and inactions, our panics and calm, reactions and over-reactions will be read and re- read for as long as we live. Panic can make real- or felt- or imagined-imminence illegible and unbearable as well. We are right in the middle of events whose consequences fade off into an unforeseen distance. So, then, this Life Magazine advertisement from 1962. I clearly remember Humble Oil stations. And, same company, Imperial Oil. But thus goes language, names, hopes, aspirations, brags, salesmanship --"80 tons each second!" Humble and Imperial are now legible in ways that they were not before. Part of the problem with this legibility is that it can come cloaked in contemporary, ironic and condescending retrospective metaphorical overloads that don't, in fact, clarify much: Imperial indeed! Humble? No! Save the Earth! "Happy Motoring" is still "the World's First Choice!"