Clint Wood Interview

PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL TOPIC: Spindletop, Sour Lake; Founding of Humble Company, 1908 NAME: Wood, Clint INTERVIEWER: Boatright, Mody C. PLACE: Mineral Wells, Texas TAPE NO. 59 DATE: 8-17-52 RESTRICTIONS: None

Boatright- G. Clint Wood?

Wood- Yeah, and I's born over here at Weatherford. But I went to Beaumont in '91(*1891).

B.- That was ten years before there was oil, wasn't it?

W.- Yeah, and I went to work for the Beaumont Lumber Company; Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Carroll owned it.

Went to work for 'em stackin' lumber, seventy cents an hour. Then I got to be shippin' clerk, and then I got to be manager of the planning mill, and then I got to be superintendent.

I'd always said, when you go to work for somebody, if you do twice as much as you're gittin' paid for, you'll soon be the big boy.

So when Spindletop opened up, I had been four or five years manager of the mill, and old man Lucas, who drilled the first well at Spindletop, got to be quite a good friend of mine.

He used to come into Beaumont at noon and have dinner with me and my wife; he and his boy and his wife lived out near Spindletop.

And he was a wicked old scowl -- good man, and he bought this land from Mr. Carroll and the McFaddins' wives and Kyle, who owned all this land practically.

B.- Spindletop?

W.- Spindletop. Patillo had gotten a hold of a little section and he cut it up in town lots. And that's how it came to be, to be so many wells on Spindletop. They were drilled on town lots.

And Patillo Higgins was very fond of children, little girls, and he give 'em, lots of 'em --- they called it Gladys City. That was a little girl that belonged to - oh, I forgot her father's name. Anyway, he was workin' for the Beaumont Lumber Company.

He'd take 'em out on Sundays, ten or fifteen of 'em, and watch 'em, just like he was watchin' or herdin' a bunch of sheep, you know. And entertain 'em - that was his peculiarity.

Well, they had no fuel except, uh, slabs and sawdust from the sawmill, and course, him bein' acquainted with me, why he bought these slabs and things from me.

That is, the contractors did, who was the Hamill brothers, Al Hamill, Curt Hamill, and Jim Hamill. Owned this little wreck of a rig - you couldn't - well, I think they worked nearly a year drillin' 900 feet.

B.- Uh-huh

W.- The worse thing about the oil business, it never was developed till twenty years later, because the supply stores wouldn't make machinery, equipment, that you could drill a hole with.

Two thousand feet is far as you could go them days, or even afterwards, for ten years afterwards.

An old man Johnson, American Tool Company, built the first rotary rig, and those rigs were built for oil well drillin'.

These contractors were oil well drillers; they weren't --they were water well drillers; they weren't oil well drillers.

B.- You mean the Hamills had been drilling water wells?

W.- Water wells. First oil wells they were drillin' except up at Corsicana, them little shallow wells at Corsicana.

And, uh, before this the Sharp brothers, Walter and Jim Sharp, had drilled a well there on Spindletop. They got down 400-500 feet and they couldn't go any further because they didn't have machinery, equipment for it.

This well, about every thirty minutes, would blow off. It was a gas well, and the gas would burn out there for weeks and weeks until a storm would come along and put it out, and then it'd be just a gasser.

And I used to go out there on Sundays -I had a bicycle- and light it again, and it'd pop off and burn up about twenty or thirty feet. But it'd make a lot of noise when you'd put a match to it.

That was funny to me, to go out there and light that thing. And I had a friend lived out there too, close to it. I don't know whether that interested you or not.

B.- Yeah, that's fine. Go right ahead.

W.- But then the Hamill brothers moved in there in 1900, and started this well.

Then on the tenth of January, 1901, they had their pipe settin' up in the derrick, eatin' their dinner at noon, and the damn thing just blowed the top off the derrick.

It blowed there, run wild for ten days, I guess, or more. Estimated all the way from 20,000 to 75,000 barrels a day.

It made the lake over there cover a couple hundred acres. And it caught fire, and boy, just scared the niggers to death there in Beaumont. Most of the population then in Beaumont was niggers, sawmill workers.

It made an awful fire, and the gas would accumulate up about 300-400 feet up above the smoke. Just go off like a cannon; it'd shake the town.

And of course, that was big excitement for the natives around there.

Claimed they made about half a million, or a million barrels of oil -- oh, yes, more than that, they estimated, because then they had no way of gaugin' it.

They claimed it was makin' 75,000 barrels a day, but I expect it was makin' 20-25,000 anyway, easy.

And, uh, finally the Gulf laid a pipeline to Sabine Pass and hooked this well up with a pipeline, and it floated right in to the barger to Sabine Pass, till it got weak -- the pressure, and filled it up with sand.

Then they had to build a pipeline -- uh, put in a pumpin' unit.

The people come from everywhere. Hell, they sold land for $500 an acre ten miles from there.

And there was just one little bank there, the First National, and they just shipped money in there by the sackfuls. Got where their bank wouldn't accept any deposits, because they had it piled in sacks around the lobby.

It was just a little, bitty twenty-five-foot space --- till they couldn't git in and out. It was full of money. It was piled up in sacks.

I know there was a couple of fellows come there from the East, and couldn't get out to Spindletop - it was three or four miles out there, and they bought a team from an old soup peddler, team and wagon.

Unloaded it, drove it out there, drove it back, and turned the team loose. It was, of course, sorts of little things out there.

B.- How far was it from Beaumont out to Spindletop?

W.- About three and a half miles.

B.- They bought a team just to ride that far?

W.- Just to ride that far and drove it back into town and just turned it loose on the street.

And there were just thousands of little things like that happened there just as funny.

I know people that put cots in their front yard just -- just filled their front yards full of cots and leased 'em for $1 apiece for a cot to sleep on. 'Course January the weather was fine down there, you know.

And I know people well-to-do just put cots out in their front yard, sell 'em for $1 a throw.

B.- How many hotels were there?

W.- There wasn't but one, old hotel, the Crosby House, old Crosby House and it was just a boarding house. 'Course everybody filled their houses full of people.

B.- Well, who were these people that came in -- adventurers, promoters ---?

W.- Promoters B.- ---workers looking for work or ---?

W.- Oh, just fellows with money, all kinds of money, from all over the United States come there, from the East, New York, Chicago, Kansas City.

Old W. E. Brice came from Kansas City, he got to be a pretty big man around there and he sold out to the Gulf.

But nobody in them days knowed anything about the oil business or the value of it. Most of that oil was stored from three cents up to ten cents a barrel.

The Sun Company bought from the old man Cranfill. He had, the, uh, what did he call it?

B.- Was his ---?

W.- The Dime Oil Company. Sold stock all over the country to the Baptists for ten cents a share.

And he sold three million barrels of oil, or five million barrels of oil, for the Sun Company, at three cents a barrel.

Well, of course, the wells finally quit flowin'; they didn't deliver much of this oil, and, uh, he -- the Sun Company sued the Dime Oil Company and old man Cranfill, David Cranfill -- he was a cousin of mine.

B.- Well, you knew him pretty well then.

W.- Yeah, and they sued him, and boy, if they didn't take his property away from him, that's all he had, I know I had my wife's grandfather at Spartanburg, South Carolina; bought a world of that stuff, because he was a big Baptist, at ten cents a share.

That old man was pretty well-fixed.

B.- Well, did he later organize another company?

W.- Yes, two or three, but he never did git nowhere.

B.- He didn't?

W.- No, you know them days nobody knew anything about the oil business; it's all Greek to 'em.

They didn't, they couldn't, they wasn't no way to sell it except to those fellows that knew the oil business, like the Mellons and them, old Judge Brooks, Judge Swayne over at Fort Worth, Ed Brooks, and the Sharp brothers organized the Texas Company.

And they set out to Corsicana and got old J. S. Cullinan to run it, made him president, because he was the only man knew anything about the oil business. Standard had sent him over there to Corsicana to run a little refinery, the Clay-Co Oil Company.

B.- Do you know---? Oh, pardon me.

W. - And, uh, the Texas Company built a lot of -- that's how they started, got to be somewhere. They went to buildin' some big earthen tanks down there.

The Sun Company did too, and the Gulf Oil, all of 'em did -- went to fillin' 'em with this cheap oil that cost 'em nothing.

They had to have this three by eight deckin', ship deckin', to line 'em with, you know, and so old Ed Pew was active -- boy, he was a worker too.

He headed the Sun Company, and he placed a order down there for a big lot of that stuff.

It all had to go through the dry kiln, go through the planin' mill and be worked up because it wasn't regular stock, that come out of the yards.

He went and got his teams and then come down there, and wanted to go to haulin' that stuff.

I says, "Tell you, Mr. Pew, that stuff has to be cut special by a blue print here, and we have to cut it. We have to have loads sorted out that'll make this stuff. And it'll be some time before we can git this out -- three or four days anyway."

Well, he says, "I'll tell you, I've been down here in the South now for three weeks and I haven't seen a son of a bitch in this South that can do anything."

Well, when he opened his mouth, I just climbed on his back. And I gave him an awful lickin'. (LAUGHTER)

And I made him take his damned orders and git out of there with 'em. Well, he went to three or two other sawmills there, and they wouldn't touch it, because they had all they could do, runnin' regular stuff through there.

And so Mr. Gilbert come down to see me; he was the president of the mill. Asked me to take it just to help these oil men out.

I said, "No, now I'm not goin' to fool with him." Well, he finally told me to take it, and I took it. Mr. Pew come down, and boy, we were the best friends from then on that ever was.

Because they never was a better man lived than Ed Pew, but he just got on the wrong foot.

B.- Now, I guess you sold a lot of lumber during that time?

W.- Oh, more ---

B.- Derricks were all wood, I suppose, then.

W.- Huh? All long-leaf pine. 'Course, we didn't cut anything those days except long-leaf. This short-lead and this willow, hog willow timber they're cuttin' now we didn't -- we throwed that away.

Just cut strictly long-leaf. You couldn't sell two-dimension stuff, like two by four, two by eight, with a knothead them days. Now that's all the kind they got.

B.- Yeah

W.- And, uh, the Texas Company -- I was goin' to tell you -- Cullinan, they got him, J. S. Cullinan, and turned the thing over to him. And he took the Sharp boys there; he had known them up at Corsicana.

And Tom Dunahoo was the office girl and the telephone girl and bell boy and host and cashier, and I used to sell 'em lumber, wait ninety days and then take a ninety-day note, from the Texas Company.

Because they was puttin' all the money they could git into those earthen tanks, storin' out oil, Cullinan was, Tom Dunahoo run the office.

B.- Did you know the Sharp brothers pretty well then?

W.- Oh, yes, slept with 'em in tents. They were fine boys, workers. Yes, first time I met Mrs. Sharp she was -- that's when Sour Lake come on, in 1903.

They lived in a tent over there at Sour Lake. Well, they was several families in this little tent town, lived there.

That's where I first met Mrs. Sharp. But I know Walter and Jim well. Jim was quite a boxer and a fighter.

I don't suspect you ought to record this. Well, you can cut it out, can't you? Well.

B.- Yeah

W.- Well, anyway he had a nigger there from New Orleans that bought a bunch of teams and was doin' the haulin' around there, you know, around the oil field.

So something happened that he didn't do just what Jim wanted with it, so Jim jumped on him, right out in front of the loggin' hotel, Crosby House, old Crosby House. And this nigger just whipped hell out of him. (LAUGHTER)

B.- (LAUGHTER)

W.- Anyway, he went back in to git his gun. That nigger, they told him, said, "Now you better git out of this town, because he'll kill you." And I'm sure he would too.

B.- Walter wasn't such a fighter?

W.- What?

B.- Walter wasn't such a fighter?

W.- Oh, no, Walter was a more refined fellow. Old Jim was tough. Yeah, he was tougher than a boot.

He'd even taken boxin' lessons and gone to Chicago at different times and went through the clubs up there. Took boxin' lessons, because he was proud of himself.

But he hooked a tough one with that nigger, who was probably fifty pounds bigger.

B.- Did you get in the oil business at Spindletop yourself?

W.- No, I got in it at Sour Lake, Walter Fondren and I were partners for years. Walter had been doin' a little workin' on rigs up there on that shallow stuff at Corsicana.

And when Spindletop opened up, anybody from Corsicana -- a druggist -- could git a job as a driller, because they thought, all them suckers thought if you didn't come from Corsicana, you didn't know anything about drillin'.

Yeah, anybody could git -- because Walter'd been workin' on a farm, been roughneckin' a little.

He and I went in partners, because I knew all the oil companies, like the Paraffin Oil Company, those that was organized by local people, and I could git the work, and so he and I went in a contract together.

And then Sour Lake and Batson opened up next year. We done pretty good.

I'd been gittin' $500 a month and that was good wages them days. But he and I made about $40,000 the first year we started out. Then we got in the producin' business.

And went over then, Humble opened up, and we had -- got quite a bit of production. And Sterling wanted to git in the oil business, and I sold him a little bit of production.

Charlie Goddard put in a little, and his brother-in-law; Sid Warner put in some. And so Sterling asked me to act as chairman.

B.- That was Ross Sterling?

W.- Ross Sterling, yeah. Wanted me to be chairman of the stockholders' meeting, first meeting they held in a little bank out at Humble.

Because he wanted to be president. Well, he didn't have no production, and he had money though.

He owned those little banks and that'd give him a big lot of credit, you see. He said, "Now, Clint, I got to be the president. Sid Warner and them's goin' to have a good deal of stock because they're puttin' in two or three wells. I don't want no complication."

Well, we had the stockholders' meeting. I appointed myself and two other boys as rig builders.

No, one of 'em was a rig builder and the other was a ice hand -- Smith. Old man Hay was the rig builder.

I put them on the nomination committee to recommend the officers, and I told 'em, I says, "You've got to nominate Sterling because he's promotin' this thing, Humble Oil Company."

So we did; we went and recommended Sterling, to be the president. Of course Sid Warner didn't like that because he thought he owned more stocks in Sterling and he and Charlie, his brother-in-law, he oughtta be the president.

Anyway, it went through just like it was planned. That's -- I think that was 1908. Maybe '09, for Humble.

That's where the Humble Oil Company started. 'Course it went on and went on.

B.- Did you Incorporate as Humble Company in 1907?

W.- No, it was incorporated, I think, in 1908 or '09. The record would show ----

B.- Yes, uh-huh.

W.- But I think it was 1908 or '09. So in 1910 I got hooked up at Wichita Falls and had to move up there.

And I sold my stock to Walter Fondren, my partner, because Walter always had a bagful of money.

He told me, he says, "This stock, it ain't worth a thing, with Sterling runnin' it." I says, "I know, but you can hold him down and you know it's worth par." "Oh, yes," he says, "it's worth par."

So he give me par for that Humble stock, and I guess the damn stuff's worth $25 million now, maybe more.

B.- Yeah

W.- But we were just like kinfolks. When he got married he lived at my house there in Beaumont; he couldn't git a place to live.

The Fondrens and the Woods are just like kinfolks. And that just about leads you up to where Hamilton started.

B.- You went to Wichita Falls there in 1911?

W.- Yeah, yeah, I had -- my folks were up in Colorado, and I went up to git 'em, and I stopped in Electra; they had a couple of little wells there.

And uh, McFarland and Jim Chapman had leased some lots there and drilled a couple of wells and got a couple of nice wells. I bought 160 acres off Chapman.

When I come back from Colorado, I stopped off there, and that thing was gittin' pretty hot and I had 'em ship a rig up there.

Drilled some nice wells there and sold that lot out to the Texas Company. Then I kept drillin' around there. Schultz and Sharine (?) over there -- I brought their first well in; that was about six or eight miles from production.

But the oil business has come a long way since then, for we never did really git into the oil business till about 1917 and '18 and it shore popped up.

B.- Were you out at that Wichita Falls area when that -- at that time, '17 and '18?

W.- Oh, yeah, 1920, '25. Let's see, I think I rode out of there when East Texas opened up. Went over to East Texas.

'Course the oil business really didn't open up till about 1916 or '17 when they went to drillin' these West Texas deep wells because we couldn't git no equipment to drill 'em with.

These supply stores. National Oil Supply was the only supply store there was; the Continental come in about that time.

They wouldn't make any equipment that you could drill with. California made these Texas people wake up; they went to drillin' those big rigs, drillin' deep wells way back yonder in 1908 and '09.

Fact they come down there in Humble and hired every driller in the Humble oil field and took him out to California, doubled his wages and paid his expenses.

Fellows like Cy Bell, and oh - Todd, Will Todd and Ed Todd. Took all of them out there and they got to be big boys out there too. But they just stripped the oil field of drillers, what you'd call drillers. (BREAK)

W.- Had three or four dead men layin' around in alleys and on the street. Couple of my best friends held me up one night about 2:00 in the morning over at Batson. They was a big torch out there from one of the Texas Company's wells.

I guess it was makin' 10,000 -15,000 barrels a day, and they'd lay a line on it and light it, you know, burn the gas, and that gas would spurt up 75 or 100 feet maybe, make a great big light.

And there was a big pine tree out about 100 feet from it, and I's comin' in about 2:00 in the morning and a couple of fellows who'd got to be good friends of mine held me up.

B.- They take your money?

W.- Yeah, and I says, "Well, Bill, you and Pat wouldn't hold me up?" I knew 'em right away, because -- but they were in the dark. And they said,"Well, old Clint, we didn't know that was you, but we got to have a little money."

And I said, "I haven't got it with me." Said, "That's aright; we can git it*"

B.- Well, were they workers?

W.- Huh?

B.- Were they workers out of a job?

W.- Yeah, they were roughnecks out of a job.

B.- Uh-huh.

W.- One night, one morning there at Humble -- or was it Batson? Batson -- they picked up five fellows that was killed that night. They's layin' around different places, you know. Some fellow'd knocked 'em in the head.

At Sour Lake it was not uncommon[recording ends] to go down in the morning, any morning, to go down through the oil fields and find somebody that'd been hijacked and knocked in the head.