Lamp oil smelled like the past. Kerosene in a glass bottle with a wick. You filled the lamp and trimmed the wick and struck a match and the flame came up yellow and the room changed. The room got smaller. The shadows got bigger. The lamp oil turned an apartment into a cave with furniture. Everything looked older by lamplight. Everything looked true.

My grandmother kept a kerosene lamp in the kitchen for when the power went out. The power went out on the Lower East Side the way the weather changed. Without warning and without apology. You heard the hum of the refrigerator stop and the apartment went dark and she struck a match and lit the lamp and the kitchen came back. A different kitchen. A quieter kitchen. A kitchen from before electricity that she remembered and I was just visiting.

The lamp oil was dangerous. One lamp knocked off a table and the apartment was on fire. Tenement fires started with a lamp and ended with a fire escape. The lamp oil was the most dangerous light in the building and the most beautiful. The flame moved. The flame breathed. The electric bulb is safe and still and it lights the room the same way at midnight as it does at noon. The lamp oil lit the room differently every time you looked at it. The lamp oil was alive the way the bulb is not.

You trimmed the wick. That was the maintenance. Too long and the flame smoked and the smoke blackened the glass chimney and the light turned yellow and weak. Too short and the flame went out. The wick had a length that was right and you learned it by trimming too much or too little. The lamp oil taught you calibration. The dimmer switch teaches you convenience. Calibration requires your hands. Convenience requires a finger.

They stopped selling lamp oil at the hardware store. You can find it at the camping supply or the antique shop. Lamp oil went from necessity to nostalgia in one generation. The thing that lit your grandmother's kitchen now decorates somebody's farmhouse table. The flame is the same. The need is not. The lamp oil did not change. We changed. We stopped needing it and called it decoration. That is what we do to everything we outgrow. We put it on a shelf and call it charming.

See also: Gas Lamp, Gaslight