Humour · fictional vignettes · № 001 — METROLOGY · APPRECIATION
In Praise of the Humble Drum.
Two hundred litres of industrial immortality, stacked three high, waiting patiently for its second act as a barbecue.
WORDS: CRUDE AWAKENING EDITORIAL · ARTWORK: GENERATED EDITORIAL ILLUSTRATION
Nobody writes poems about the 200-litre drum, and this is a failure of the poetic community. Here is an object so recognisable that a drum of hydraulic oil in Apapa can look like a drum of paint in Rotterdam. Dimensions and closures vary by specification; our drawing is an illustrative example, not a universal standard. The bung holes still stare up at you like the eyes of a very patient robot.
The drum is the true unit of account of the industrial world. Accountants may deal in naira and dollars, but the yard, the site and the depot deal in drums. How much gear oil does the quarry need? Four drums. How much EP2 does the plant go through in a quarter? Two drums and a pail, and the pail is only there because someone dropped the last one.
Consider the drum's material humility. It is rolled from steel sheet, given ribs not for vanity but for strength, painted a colour that can only be described as 'industrial', and then asked to spend its life being dropped off the back of trucks. It complies. It dents with dignity. A dented drum is not a damaged drum; it is a drum with a biography.
Civilisation does not run on oil. Civilisation runs on the 200-litre drum, and oil merely lives inside it.
And the sound! Kick a full drum and it answers with a low, satisfied thud — somewhere around a G, though our laboratory has not confirmed this because we do not have a laboratory. Kick an empty one and it rings like a church bell in a country that has mislaid its congregation. Experienced storekeepers can estimate fill level by ear. This is not a skill anyone teaches. It is absorbed, like humidity.
The drum's second life is even more glorious than its first. Retired drums become barbecues, water storage, incinerators, garden furniture, and — in at least one documented case — a bass drum in a highlife band. No other packaging format has a retirement plan. The plastic pail dreams of such things and wakes up in a landfill.
So the next time a delivery arrives and the drums roll off the tailgate with that particular ringing thunder, take a moment. You are not receiving packaging. You are receiving a small steel institution, two hundred litres at a time.