The following is an excerpt from an oral history done in December of 1999 with Albion Hart by Linsey Lee. Mr. Hart lived near Uncas avenue in Oak Bluffs and is remembering the day the gas tanks blew up on May 25, 1921. Recently some of the tanks were uncovered when contractors began clearing a lot on Uncas avenue.

Electricity and gas were all sent into the Camp Ground in the summer only. The local people did not have electricity and gas. Occasionally when I dig up in the back yard I come against a piece of pipe which is about a one-inch pipe and it’s the gas line that came in here. We had a big red meter at the back of the house and our stoves were gas stoves.

The gas company belonged to Commonwealth Edison or whatever company was running the thing there, and it was generated there and it was generated by coal. One morning somebody forgot to open a valve when they started it, and the tank blew up right in the air. Bob Hughes says he was in the school, in the third grade or the fourth grade or something like that, and everybody jumped a mile. John Phillips said that he was across the street feeding his father’s horse. His father must have had a little livery stable or a stable across the street when this thing blew and it just blew right up. You had a big tank, which floated in water, and when you put the gas in, the tank would rise. That gave the pressure to push the gas out through the mains. That was the end of gas and we all went back to kerosene.

Our stove, originally it was kerosene. Then it went to gas until the gas thing blew up. Then we went back to kerosene, and I can remember the smell of everybody’s back porch, because the kerosene was delivered in cans and, of course, people took the container from the stove out and put the kerosene out on the back porch and if anybody was sloppy at all, some kerosene went over the back thing. And it was quite a while after the gasworks blew up and the kerosene stoves were there before propane gas came in. Propane gas finally came in, which is what we heat with and what we cook with and so forth, but it was quite a while, and we just used kerosene.