Texaco's Fire Chief gasoline

As so often, reading about strange coincidences seems to attract them. As I mentioned in my Copper State post, I have been reading the conspiracy classic "King Kill 33" by James Shelby Downard, which ostensibly argues that the Freemasons killed JFK but is in fact an extremely thoroughgoing catalogue of impressive and not-so-impressive coincidences, only a small fraction of which could be explained by a Masonic conspiracy even in principle. Today, for example, I read this.

[Elm Street in Dallas, Texas,] was also the home of the Blue-Front tavern, a Masonic hangout in the grand tradition of "tavern-Masonry." . . . The Blue-Front was the site of the "broken-man" ritual in which various members of the "Brotherhood of the Broom" swept the floor and tended some fierce javelino pigs. The Blue-Front was once a firehouse and was still sporting the pole in the late '20s. This is extremely germane symbolism. The national offices of the Texaco oil corporation are located on Elm Street, Dallas. Its chief products are "Haviland (javelino) oil" and "Fire Chief" gasoline.

As you can see, this is all pretty bizarre even by conspiracy-theory standards. I mean, suppose you were a Masonic Grand Master responsible for orchestrating a presidential assassination. Obviously, the first order of business would be to make sure the president's motorcade passed through a street that was home to a company whose chief products had names reminiscent of random facts about a Masonic hangout that once existed on the same street! Apparently, among Masons this is what passes for leaving one's calling card at the crime scene. What Downard is doing isn't a conspiracy theory; it's just random coincidence-noticing of the sort to which I am myself addicted.

Anyway, when I read this, I thought, "I know Havoline motor oil, which must be what he means, but Fire Chief? I've been to a few Texaco gas stations but never noticed that name."

While I was reading Downard, my wife was watching TV -- one of those reality shows about very fat people. Just minutes after reading about Fire Chief gasoline, I happened to glance up at the TV and saw that the very fat woman who is the star of the show had just ordered a genuine vintage Texaco Fire Chief gas pump and had it delivered to her house.

Those Masons!

Copper State

The flag of Arizona, featuring a copper-colored star

This afternoon I happened to see someone on the street wearing a T-shirt that said “California: The Golden State.” The thought this prompted was: “California’s the Golden State, and Nevada’s the Silver State. I wonder if there’s a Bronze State.” (I had seen and heard references to the Golden State countless times before without ever wondering that, but this time the thought just popped into my head.)

Several hours later, I read a few pages from James Shelby Downard's "King Kill 33," where I found the sentence "Arizona is the 'Copper State,'" followed by three paragraphs on the supposed occult significance of that nickname.