William Philp Interview

Owens: First of all, I'll say that this is a recording of Reverend Philp at his home--

Philp: I'm not a Reverend.

O. Mr. W. J. Philp at his home at 615 Lavaca Street in South Park, near Beaumont. Will you give us your full name, Sir?

P. William Joseph Philp.

O. Where were you born?

P. In Wheaton, Wisconsin.

O. When was that?

P. In 1870.

O. Can you tell me something about your parents?

P. My father was an Englishman born in thirty-seven; came to America at thirteen years of age in fifty-one; and lived with his sister, who was in Illinois and on the farm. And he finally went into the lumber business because of - the Civil War had just been on, in fact was on, when he was a citizen here but he had never been made a citizen of the United States - naturalized. He was never naturalized.

Well, he couldn't go in the Army because he was a foreigner. Well, the government says, "Now Mr. Philp, you are a young man and the government needs timbers to build turntables for engines and various things on the railroad, and we want you to furnish us with this

lumber." Well, he went Into the piney woods of Wisconsin, along in the sixties, just after the War - about the time of the War. Well, he furnished those people for years until the War was over. Then, he went into the lumber business for himself and made - all during the wintertime he would out timber and haul it out to the Chippeway River, stack it up there, and after the winter thaw come, the logs would be rolled into the river and made a raft out, and then sent down to the Mississippi River to the towns along the Mississippi and sold.

And that's where he got his money to get married there in Wisconsin. And he made a nice little nest egg like, built a nice home there. But the cold winters and hard work throwed him into a rheumatism. And his kinfolks in Texas says, and the doctor says, "Now, you come down to a warm climate and this rheumatism will leave you," he thought. Well, he come to Texas in seventy-five, and I was five years old at that time.

I remember very little. I remember going to school and being knocked off of a horse going into the big stable that he had. They all thought I was killed and come a-running out but I just knocked off the horse and got up. And I remember of a very few things about a little schoolhouse that I went to. But when I come to Texas, it was a wonderful trip on the train. We landed in Bryan, Texas, in seventy-five.

Well, our folks all lived in Caldwell, so Father went over there to Caldwell and bought a nice place. But Mother was dissatisfied with the place and some other arrangements and so he sold out there and went to Bastrop County. And in Bastrop County he bought a flock of sheep and I was one of the main herders, about seven or eight years old, and I herded till eighty-one. I was one of his main herders, and

then he sold or swapped the flock of sheep for a farm in Burleson County. Father moved to Burleson County, my Mother and all of us children -- there were twelve children born in my Father's family -- I was the oldest boy -- and went to work on the farm. Got what little education I could going to the winter schools, two and three months during the winter. And then Mother says, "Now, Addie, we've got to go to where there is a school." So he traded that place for a place close to a good school and I got pretty fair education in the high school.

O. In what high school was it?

P. That was the Caldwell High School in Burleson County. It's still a good school. And after I got to be about twenty years old, the idea struck me I ought to become an engineer. Well, I just wanted to go West or go into a roundhouse and learn how to be a fireman on a locomotive and I failed to do that.

But one day one of the stationary cotton men says, "I want you as my helper in the gin business." Well, I hired to him-a dollar and a quarter a day and boarded myself. Well, I stayed there a couple of years and he said, "Now, I want you up to the gin stand." I was depressed. I took the gin stands for a couple of years and he said, "Now, I want you down at the engine room, to take charge of the engine." Well, I went down to the engine room.

And in the meantime, that was about 1900, I took a correspondence course with the Culler Engineering people of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and took that course and took drawing and electrical studies and stationary engineering. Well, I worked there at the gin until 1900 and then one of the citizens of the town says, "Now, let's go into the gin business and build a gin."4

Well, I was one of the partners in the gin, and I worked there until 1904. Then I sold out -- some little trouble between the partners and you know what that will bring on. Well, my brother says, "Come down here, I want a good fireman." And I says to my folks, "I'm coming down to the oil field." That was in -- the first time -- was in 1903; stayed here until August that year and then went back.

Then in 1904 I went to Rockdale and hired out to Ed Simms to run his gin at a little place called Tracy, north of Rockdale, for one season. Well, my brother still wanted me in the oil field, and so I landed in the oil field in November the thirtieth, 1904, and I've been in the oil field practically ever since. That was, oh, a good many years ago.

Well, my brother was foreman for the Yellow Pine Oil Company and they was drilling wells and they was putting big boilers in to run what they called, "steam heads." They didn't have the walking beams going then. But those steam heads would take lots of steam and I handled two boilers there for a year or two and then it went into the walking beam and still steam engines.

And that oil business was carried on by the Yellow Pine Oil Company, That included Ed Carroll, George W. Carroll and Monroe Carroll and It was a fine bunch of boys to work for. Three dollars a day and I thought I was getting rich--ninety dollars a month. And that went on for several years and they decided to give it up. Oil went down to about thirty cents a barrel and they just couldn't afford to run their plants and hire the men.

Well, that throwed us boys then to either get out and hunt new places to work or take a lease and live on the oil we could sell at that cheap price--thirty-five cents, I believe.Well, George W. Armstrong had a five-acre lease on Spindletop and he had four

wells on it. And my brother says, "Now, let's lease that from Mr. Armstrong because he says, 'I can't pay you boys any longer. You c can lease it or you can close it down.'" Well, we went ahead and drilled another well or two and pumped the old wells and done pretty well. We could pay our bills and buy our homes and oil went up to a dollar.

Well, we was making pretty good money, but our oil went down and more salt water come in on the oil field. Well, that water just made lots of work to store it and had great reservoirs dug out there and catch that salt water and put it into those reservoirs and come a big rain, we was allowed -- County Commission says, "Come a big rain, open the valve and let it go down the Hillebrant -- a certain amount of it" -- so that it wouldn't run over. And that went on for several years and we still was in the oil business and the First World War in 1914 come on and that made lots of work. And there got to be a big demand for oil so oil went to three dollars a barrel along in Woodrow Wilson's presidency time. So that price just -- well now, us boys were getting six or seven thousand dollars a month to divide among three of us -- why we'd get some money. But it didn't only just last a few months, and dropped right on back and went on down to about ninety cents a barrel.

Well, in the meantime we leased another little tract of land down there called the San Jacinto Lease. We got a hold of that and put down our well--my brother did-and went a little deeper and put another screen down a little lower and in come a well of a thousand barrels a day-on the pump! And we first started out with a two inch tubing in that well and for several months we got a thousand barrels a day. The Sun Oil Company took the oil and we had a contract, I

think, of ninety cents a barrel up to so many barrels a day. Well, we were getting a thousand barrels a day and I think the contract was a hundred barrels a day that they would pay us ninety cents for. Well, we went on and then they took what they called credit balance price for the balance of the oil. The Sun Oil Company took it all and just gave us credit balance. Well, that cut it down and pretty soon that big oil well went to water-partly--nearly all water. We was getting eight or ten barrels a day out of it, and in the meantime it was five of us in the company. We divided that high priced oil and big amount for several months there. And we got several thousand dollars apiece out of that one well.

Well, we just bought our homes and fixed up and in the meantime I saved some money and, fact of the business, the First National Bank wanted to borrow some money and I loaned them two thousand dollars -- the First National Bank here in Beaumont - for a few months so they could buy some rice -- they were buying rice. Well, they gave me that back and then I just lived out there and batched and along about that time I met a young lady out there, a Miss Allen, and we finally got married in 1909. Well, in 1910, I built this home here and we have been right here ever since in the home.

Well, I stayed in the oil business with my three brothers and as the price went up we was prosperous, as it went down, why we had to live on what we made, if it was fifty cents a day. And we stayed with the oil business until 1950.My brother John died, and my brother Pierce says, "Now, I've got three boys and I want them to take on the name of the Philp Brothers on that old five-acre lease that we got from Armstrong; and I sold out and my sister-in-law sold out. Well, the wells are out there today and they are

producing oil--lots of water and a pretty good bunch of oil. Well, in the meantime there was a corporation known as the sulphur people who had come along that wanted the rights of all of those producing tracts of land that had oil on them because there was sulphur down under those oil fields and they wanted to develop it. Well, we give them a sulphur right. They said, "Well, we'll give you twenty-five hundred dollars for your sulphur rights there." Well, we jumped at the chance. They said that if they damaged the oil production, why we would get damage suits -- that's in the contract -- damages if they hurt the oil business. Well, we jumped at that, and a little later they begin to develop the sulphur. Put up big plants -- have you ever been to Spindletop, lately?

O. Yes.

P. Well, you've seen the big plants out there -- pumps and the derricks. And I just says to the rest -- my sister-in-law said she had done with the oil business and had a little to live on -- says, "I'm going to sell out, too." So we just decided to sell out and we got fifteen thousand dollars for our one-third interest and my brother kept the other third with his boys and they paid us for the two-thirds and that's the way the oil business runs down to date. Well now, that's the oil business.

Now then, as a citizen -- when I landed in Spindletop in 1904, we was pulling a well and my brother was the engineer, pulling the crown block in. It was Sunday morning and I had never missed Sunday going to Sunday School back in the old home and it meant several days to fix that crown block back. So he said, "Will, you go down there and go to Church." So I went back and went to Sunday School

that morning, Sunday morning, and I have been working in the Sunday School -- it was a Baptist Church built by the people of Spindletop and old Dr. Smart was the Baptist pastor. And he was a wonderful Christian -- visited everybody and helped in the Sunday School -- would preach out there, upstairs over the Post Office -- carried that on for years until they got that Baptist Church built. Well, we had Sunday School in the morning and then the Methodist kinda started. There was a thousand people out there, I guess -- all denominations -- and we'd have Sunday School in the afternoon and Baptist in the morning. Well, I had worked in the Baptist Sunday School in the morning and then in the afternoon, I'd go up and help run the Methodist Sunday School, being a Methodist.

Well, it turned out that the Baptists got so strong that old Dr. Bentley was made a station pastor out there. And he says to us folks, Methodists, "We just need the whole day Sunday for Church services." So our Methodist pastor, L. N. Flower, says, "Philp, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll pitch in and build us a little chapel out here." So in 1908 he made out the plans for the little chapel and got a contractor to build it. I happened to have the money and went down to Turnbull Lumber Company and says, "Turnbull, can you fill this bill?" And he says, "Yes." And the teamsters on Spindletop hauled that lumber out free, and I gave them a check for the lumber. And they had it built in 1908 and that little chapel stayed there through the 1950 storm while the great big chapel down there that the Baptist had, blowed to pieces. Well, that was finally moved away and then the people began to leave Spindletop. And practically -- there is only one family on Spindletop at the present time, I believe. So, in

this meantime from 1908 I looked after the lease -- they wouldn't sell us no land. They just says, "Now, you can take a lease on that lot (I forget the number of the lot) and give us a dollar a month rent on it, and if you fail to hold services in that little church, after thirty days the little church and everything will revert back to the Gladys Land and Developing Company -- go back to the Company." Well, I looked after it and had Sunday School most every Sunday till 1941. And people had practically all left the little church out there, and we let everybody use the church, the Christians and the Apostolics and the "Holy Rollers," we called them. They would have the biggest meetings you ever heard of out there at night. Well, they finally all left and there was the little church. Well, we needed more room up here at South Park and I had pitched in up here and had built a nice chapel -- started a big tabernacle and it finally run into a nice little church and then from a nice little church we've hot one of the best churches there today -- this is 1953 -- we just finished it up this Spring-- and it is a delight to go to church in that Chapel. Well, that kind of brings me now to my age as, say 1870, this makes me about eighty-two years old.

O. Are you that old?

P. I'm that old, and I retired and sold out--I'm just kind of living on what I've saved up and got a couple of little homes here that I rent out and get enough to live on-me and my wife. But I had a big expense in the hospital with a doctor's bill, getting her on her feet again. And I'm just living here now and just staying here and the Good Lord says, "I got another place for you some day."

And that's about my oil business and the --

O. Do you mind if I ask you some questions now?

P. No. O. There a number of things that have occurred to me as you have gone along. You went to Spindletop first in 1903. Did you work for just a few months?

P. Worked for the Yellow Pine Oil Company.

O. What kind of living arrangements did you have then?

P. I boarded with my brother at his little home. He lived on Spindletop and his wife took in several boarders and I just paidmy monthly board until August and then I went back to Colorado where I had to finish up my gin business.

O. Would you describe the house for me?

P. It was a box house, four rooms, I believe. It was one long two big front rooms, and then a kitchen running back with a little porch on it. That was a -- just made out of a -- what is it -- good hard lumber, hard lumber, but it was just plain, rough--it wasn't dressed or anything. Just throwed up hurriedly, you know, didn't expect to stay there long. Well, I stayed there until they moved into town. They bought them a nice home about that time. And I batched it out there in a nice little house that I -- I don't say that it was nice -- it was just one of them little shacks out there -- two room shacks. And I would sleep there, worked twelve hours. Go on at midnight and work till noon for a month; and then go on at noon and work until midnight for another shift. Kept that up for several years, and then I got married in 1909 and my wife said, "Well, now let's get us a little home and live out there." And I says, "No, we're going to get off

Spindletop." I'd seen so many break-ups and failures with new married couples. They would get married and start off fine and first thing you know they would be taking in boarders. The boarders would tangle up the family affairs, and first thing you know there was a divorce or something like that. Well, I just come in here, as I said, built this home in 1910 after we was married --

O. I would like to ask some questions about your wife. You said she was living on Spindletop when you were married, didn't you?

P. Yes. O. What was her background then?

P. Her name was Allen. Her father and mother lived in Navasota, Texas. He was a newspaper man and in the meantime he had sent his daughter to the Huntsville--it was a normal school and then it went into a college, I believe, now. Well, she went there and got her certificates and her papers and she just come back home and as she wanted to do something went to teaching school. She taught up near Milam County and then she taught up near in Woodville -- up in that part of the country; and then she come back to Beaumont and taught here in the city schools for -- oh, several years. In the meantime our engagement went on and I says, "All right, you just teach school as long as you want to." We finally decided on a date, on the twenty-eighth of July -- that's this month. I says, "Now, I'm going to have to ask Mr. and Mrs. Allen for your hand. How am I going to do it?" She says, "I'll arrange that for you." He had bought a little home down there on the corner of Highland and Lavaca Streets. So she says, "Now, we're going to have supper some day and you come to supper." I said, "All right, I'll come to supper."

Well, they was all sitting around the table and that's where I got to ask the old gentleman for his daughter's hand. And the old man says, "A man of your character," he says, "I'm satisfied. Go ahead." Well, we finally got married. And Mr. Allen, he built that big house up there in 1911, lived there, he and his wife. She died first and then -- that was in forty-two, I believe. He died in my home here. He was eighty-four years old and couldn't hardly walk back and forth to his meals. He kept a room up there for a long time and he just come down here and he just finally went to sleep one morning, and that was the finishing up of the Allen family. And my wife, she's here now, and having that accident -- breaking her hip joint-- why, just throws her in bed and makes me run a little hospital right here, I guess.

O. Well, back to Spindletop again. You were a very serious-minded young man when you arrived there. How many serious-minded people did you find around you?

P. Very few. Some of the boys from Caldwell would come down there that was in the Sunday School and in the Church and walk around over Spindletop and they would take a look at it, and I remember this. One of the boys, he come around where I was working and he says, "Will, I see your saloons here, they've got a whiskey in it, that you can take that whiskey and put it on two brick bats and they would jump up and go to fighting each other, right there," he said. That's about the way Spindletop was. It was just a saloon here -- and around over it. That was about the time -- he was there about the time -- 1904, about the time between 1904 and 1905; and there was gambling and betting and horse racing, I guess. There were various

places they would go to a horse race. Well, the rest of the family -- the people -- there were some good Sunday School workers. Mrs. Barham was one of the good Sunday School workers. Mr, Barham was a good m man. He was a merchant then. Mrs. Barham took care of the literature for the children in the Sunday School, and Mrs. McKinney was another good woman that helped out in the Sunday School. She was Methodist and she had a son named Frank, Frank McKinney. He died not long ago. And I think Mrs. McKinney is dead now. And old Mr. McKinney, he's dead. But she was a wonderful church worker, Mrs. McKinney. She'd teach the Sunday School class. And the Riddel girls, they was good girls to come to Sunday School. Mrs. Riddel was a good woman, taught the children to go to church. And as long as I was running the Sunday School, I would help them out.

One season there we had quite a few children, and I put up the proposition: "I'll give you children a prize." They was from four years old, on up, and some young ladies. "If you'll learn the Ten Laws of Moses, I'll give you a dollar, provided you'll come out here before the Sunday School and repeat the Ten Laws and have a judge to see whether you made any mistakes in quoting the Ten Commandments or not." Well Sir, there was thirty children took me up on that privilege. And old George Duncan, he was a great church man, Jim Duncan and George, they was at Sunday School, they helped out too, and were great Christians. And we just tried to help the morals of the people, we did. And there was quite a few that would come to church and work and teach in the Sunday School class, and I just do not remember all the names that did help out in the Sunday School.

O. Did any of the roughnecks come to the Sunday School?

P. Once in a while we would have a big meeting and a very few would come to the Sunday School. One of the boys I remember, that come to our church the other night -- we called him Spec Howard. He would get drunk and he'd just -- his old daddy liked whiskey -- but he finally got converted, and he was one of the roughnecks of that day and time. And there was quite a few of the boys that would come that was good workers and would come to Sunday School and have to work on Sundays and couldn't always attend. But when we'd have a meeting at night, why we'd have a good houseful for a good many years at the little Methodist Church and the Baptist Church too, when there was -- the Baptist Church -- that was 1915, when the storm come and tore everything up. Blowed every derrick down but one derrick on Spindletop.

O. Were you there during that storm?

P. I was in this house and Mr. Allen was firing for the Unity Oil Company. They had some big boilers out there and were pumping some wells, and he stayed with those wells till long about ten or eleven o'clock. It started in the afternoon -- or in the morning -- that wind did, getting a little stronger and a little stronger. And it commenced to turn derricks over about sundown. Jo Myers says, "Allen, you better get away from here." Well sir, some of the firemen couldn't get away and they put the fires out, the derricks were all down, and they would crawl into the boiler for safety during that storm. It lasted nearly two days, and sometimes the wind would hit one hundred and fifty miles an hour -- just take the water in a straight line and just right over the tops of these houses and blowed all the derricks down but one. And we come out and in the meantime my brother had said,"Well, Spindletop's not

much good, I'm going up to Chriesman to wildcat." He had a cousin up there and he said, "Now, you come up here," he said, "I believe we got oil in Chriesman." That's in Burleson County. He went up there and he was up there during the storm. So he didn't have to crawl in his boiler. But it blowed hard up there. Then the 1900 storm, that was a terrible storm at Galveston. It -- that really hit before I was in the oil business, In 1900--killed five hundred people there in Galveston. That blowed our smokestack down that we had put up in Burleson-Caldwell- done quite a bit of damage to the little houses. But that's a hundred and fifty miles away from the coast and it wasn't near as strong up there. But the 1915 storm, it just whirred around and kinda went back to the Gulf. It kinda come this way and then it kinda got to the north and then kinda went west and then just played out -- that hurricane did.

O. But the water did come up to Spindletop from the tidal wave, was that it?

P. Well, there was a -- at Port Arthur in 1915 -- Jo Myers was a great helper and a neighborly man and he run down there and said the waves was coming over the Port Arthur banks ten feet high and coming up in the houses and the people were just getting out of there just as fast as they could. Well, they just all just had to come to high ground. They come to Nederland and they filled Beaumont with -- everybody that could get to Beaumont in that high water -- and it lasted several days. And the water went down after the storm and and people began to go back and they are going back there now and I'm awfully afraid for them. If another tidal wave comes in a hurricane, why look out little ones, Port Arthur will be drowned,

same way with Galveston. They built a great stone wall, a cement wall, breakwater at Galveston, maybe you've seen it, and that's helped to save Galveston during several storms.

O. Was anyone killed at Spindletop in the 1915 storm?

P. I don't remember of a single life being lost. No, there wasn't a one, I don't believe.

O. Again to the early days -- did the rougher element ever interfere with Sunday School and Church at Spindletop?

P. No. One time the boys thought they would have some fun and the Apostolics had a big houseful of people and there was a front door to the little church and a side door at the back end. They thought they'd have some fun. So they get some dogs that's running around with their neighbors and they get tin cans and a stout string and they tie-fill the cans with rocks-and tie to the dog's tail and puts his head in there and hits him a lick and there he goes right down the aisle. They thought there was [Laughter] the people all jumped up, they didn't know what was the matter. That was one of the worst little disturbances and that was more fun than it was doing a criminal act. No, I've had Christmas trees out there, once in a while the boys would come in drunk and I would appoint--kinda, once in a while a constable would be out there and I'd say, "Now some of you citizens, good worthy citizens, you sit around here where these men that are about half drunk because we don't want to tell them to get up and get out." And we never did have a disturbance. We had Christmas trees there most every Christmas for a number of years.

O. Did you ever go to one of the Apostolic meetings?

P. Well, I don't know whether you would call it Apostolic or not

but it was -- the greatest meeting I ever went to was held by a tent man. He built a tent there and he was a great preacher. He was a Protestant and he had been a Methodist, And he come down there and he began to preach and he had a good meeting and he built the morals of the people up. He brought his family with him. He had a couple of daughters and a little boy too, Threadgiver was his name. He come back several times and held meeting for us. But the old Apostolics -- I'd go to the side of the door, and once or twice me and our pastor up there went out and went to the meeting. Well, when we was there they'd just carry on a good, regular service, maybe called for testimonies or something like that. Sometimes when they would get to telling testimonies they'd get to shouting and hollering and jumping and it was enough to shake the whole house.

O. Is that right?

P. While I was there, why they was very Christian-like in their actions those Apastolics. Yes, we had one old fellow there, I believe his name was Gibson. He couldn't hardly read, and he'd pick up the Bible and he read and he'd get to a certain word and he'd say, "I can't call that name and call it 'Jim,' and go on, and then he'd get so happy he'd just grab that table and sometime maybe, jump plumb up on it. And he'd get the people kinda excited, or emotionally worked up, and then they would all get to shouting. Then they had what they called a "prayer circle" just before the preaching. They would all go up -- they had a railing around the little church there and they would kneel about twenty-five or thirty around it -- and they would all start to praying and they would pray out loud. And they would be shouting, some of them, some of them praying and some of them just a-hollering, I imagine. Well, I never

went -- I could hear it outside -- but I never went in to take part in it; and they're building churches now, I think, around over the State. Those, Assembly of God, they call them now.

O. How do you account for that great emotionalism among those people?

P. Well, Christianity is a wonderful power and when people know they are going to live again, why they try to prepare for that second life. And they would get so joyfully in their minds that they would, just knew that they was going to go to Heaven when they died, they just would give expression and they would get that excited; and that's the only way I can account for them to go into those extra emotional demonstrations.

O. How well educated were they?

P. Well, this old gentleman I was telling about couldn't hardly read. Lot of them was pretty well educated. This man in the tent meeting, he was a scholar, Threadgiver; and he was a Christian gentleman and he helped Spindletop to live better lives. But some of the others, they was just high-school graduates, I guess, some of them. And some of them, maybe, not through high school. They was converted. There was one little boy that went to high school here In Beaumont and was converted and he took to playing the piano and he's one of the greatest variations of the piano that you ever heard of. And he'd come to Sunday School and I'd say, "Son, let's have some music." Well, he'd just get on that piano and he would just go to playing and sing songs--he could lead the singing. And we'd have a lot of singing out there. That was in the Sunday School. But in the Apostolic meetings, why I didn't attend many of them out there.

I'd just say, "Here's the church, take care of It. Pay the bills for lights and so forth, wood and fuel in wintertime." And we had no trouble and we finally just decided to move the little church up here, and that little church was sold to Cary Tipton when we decided to have it moved out of the way to build our brick church. And he says, "I want a nice little storage room for my furniture business." He was a furniture man down here in Beaumont. And Cary bought the little church and it's standing there now, I guess, full of furniture. He's a good member out here and helps quite a lot. O. What kind of songs did you sing in your church--right out of the hymnals?P. We'd have what they call a "Young People's Hymnal" and we'd have the Cokesbury song book, and then we had--in the Methodist little chapel we'd have the regular hymnal, church hymn book, and if you're from Columbia University, why you know something about the hymnals. Well, in the Baptist Church we had a book called "The Bells of Heaven." It was a good big book, lots of nice songs in it, and we'd sing that and one time we had a music teacher come out there and teach us a little music, how to read the notes and to sing.

O. Were those shaped notes?

P. Well, there was both kinds. I believe most of them was the shaped notes.

O. Did they sing other songs like -- well, the white spirituals that have been handed down from one generation to another, do you remember any of those?P. No, not many of those. Once in a while some old timer would sing that old song that they called -- let' s see, the name of that

song was -- it just slipped my mind right now, but anyhow they would sing that quite often. And then we would sing some of the regular songs like "Amazing Grace," and "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," "Nearer, my God, to Thee," and that was the principal songs that we would sing.

O. I remember some of those songs they used to sing in North Texas "I am a Poor, Wayfaring Stranger." Did they sing that one?

P. I don't think they did.

O. "Traveling Through this World of Woe"? Another they sang was "I Will Arise and Go to Jesus."

P. Yes, we sung that song.

O. But you can't recall now, or perhaps later, you can recall the name of the other song that they did sing. What kind of songs did the Apostolic groups sing?

P. A good deal like our songs. They'd -- they had a song that was "The Shadow of the Cloud -- a fire by night and a cloud by day," I forget the tune of that. They would sing that, that's when the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt. You know the good Lord --

O. Yes.

P. Sent a cloud to shadow them in the day time, and I just forget. They'd sing that song and it was quite popular with them. "Shadow and the Cloud." Yes, morals was kinda held on with a wild saloon gang. We had Prohibition out there at one time. Did have whiskey. One drug man said, "Now I tell you what, when you run out of whiskey down here Saturday night by Monday morning, I can take a barrel of narcotics and mix it with water and I'll have whiskey just as good as what you drank up from Kentucky. He'd make a barrel of whiskey for the boys. But it would finally make them go blind. And we had

an old timer working for -- helping us out on the lease, Old Mac, He would go down there and he would get to drinking and the old boy just stayed there and he liked the whiskey and the old man like to lost his mind -- like to went blind. He says, "I've got to get out of that." He come back to the lease and finally got paralyzed and we put him in the hospital and took care of old -- MacChesney was his name -- and he died in the hospital. He was an oil man and in the way of leasing. He would get up leases, and then he was a hotel man. He had been to Florida and he was a well educated man. But he did like his whiskey and it just finally got him. He got paralyzed and couldn't hold a job and us boys kind of took pity on him and gave him a home with us on the lease -- had a little shack. He'd batch in it and do his cooking, go to town and come home on a drunk, maybe -- if he got a little money.

O. Well, how did you manage to get Prohibition out there?

P. Well Sir, things went a-rocking out there, kinda, and people decided just to close up the saloons and we just put it to a Prohibition vote and the Drys carried it. And that says, "Now you saloon boys just close up." So they closed up. But they got this bootlegging out there and the temperance people says to some of these bootleggers, "Now look a'here, if you keep on getting whiskey around here to these boys, we are going to get these oil men in behind you again." Well, it soon played out when they decided -- the oil men. Whiskey and oil don't go together. No, sir, you can't work derricks and drink whiskey. You can't handle the brakes nor the engine and be drunk. We used to have a man, old Fred Tuftully, he'd tank up on whiskey and he'd come out there and then he'd do more drilling in two or three hours than he'd do in two or three days--

be fired up, you know. He had a good clear brain but he'd finally get wild on some things so we just decided-and another, Mack McGowan, he was a great whiskey drinker but a good driller. Some of the best men we ever had was whiskey drinkers to work for us. Us boys were all temperance men--my two brothers and myself. I never tasted a lager beer and never took but one teaspoonful of whiskey in my life, and my mother gave me that for sore throat. And I have just been a teetotaler ever since and I think I'll go on to the end.

O. What year did you get the Prohibition out there?

P. I can't remember the exact year.

O. Was it fairly soon after you got there?

P. Dr. Thomas was running the drug store, and I don't remember, I know Walter Wherry was the postmaster out there and I just don't remember what year that was. The years just come and go just like day and night living out there and I don't remember the dates.

O. Well, what was your law enforcing agency out there?

P. We had a constable that would go around over the Hill and then we had an inspector for waste oil. There was a Commissioner's Court passed a law that no salt water could go loose over the Hill and go down the Hildebrand. And that inspector would go around on his horse most every morning and if he saw a leak in a pipe, why he'd just land on the producer of the oil and say, "You've got to stop that or I'll shut your wells down." Well, he'd get busy and house all the water with the oil. The Sheriff of the County, he'd pass along there every once in a while and a little fellow by the name of Head, Shorty Head. He is working for the school house up there I think now, as janitor.

O. He was the sheriff then?

P. No, Well, he was a kind of an officer, and looked after the waste oil and so forth. But Danny Read was our last constable, I believe. No, Danny Woods, it was. He was a young -- he used to be in my Sunday School when he was a little fellow and grew up and got to working for the Yount-Lee Oil Company and he was working on a boiler and the boiler fell over and broke his leg and mashed it pretty bad. Well, he's got one leg off now and he's still constable. They keep him on and I seen in the paper the other day where he was in the hospital but he's back home, I think. He lives out in the south end of Beaumont here, In the Lamar district somewhere.

O. Well, how much help did you get from the law enforcing men in keeping order out there?

P. Well, whatever the salary that was paid in the constable would come through the courts of Jefferson County. We didn't have any particular man hired to act as a scout to see where the saloons was. The fact of the business is, we was all scouts, pretty near, when it come to enforcing the whiskey drinking, especially the ones that was interested in producing oil. We'd get around -- us three boys -- we was there -- one of us -- all the time. And we'd route men, we lived up there in Beaumont after 1910. The Hill just gradually went to salt water and it's still going to salt water and sulphur, now. The sulphur people have got the big holdings out there and making money, I understand.

O. Did you have any officers who were pretty corrupt in their operations or not?

P. Well, no we didn't. Now,there was a Doctor Madkins that loved to drink whiskey and he was sort of a family doctor among the boys that would get hurt or get sick. And he'd come into the church --

old Dr. Smart was the Baptist preacher, and old Dr. Smart was lecturing on drinking whiskey, and saloons and first one thing and then another and this Dr. Matthews was back there in the crowd and he took exception to it. Well, he started up to get at the preacher a and stop him. Well, that was noticed and the boys got him, saying, "You sit down, Doc." [Laughter] And he sat down and then Dr. Smart sort of changed his delivery a little more mild and he got to saying, "Well, you just as well take a keg of tacks and pour them down your stomach as to pour that whiskey down your stomach." The old doctor, he took exception to that -- you can't drink tacks. Old Dr. Smart was putting it to them.

Well, we've had a wonderful place out there to make money for people. Looks like the good Lord -- the earth belongs to the Lord "and the fullness thereof," and He just said, "Now you go down there and then you can get some of the fullness of it." And that's the way the sulphur people are working and a lot of oil people is good men. You take Joe Meyers, he's got a family of three boys. There's Walter, he's managing the oil field now. He's a good man. Dr. Mills, he's his son-in-law, he was my practicing physician here for years. I understand he is in Houston in the hospital, now. He fell sick. But the Meyers boys and old man Jo Meyers -- he had suddenly heart failure and died when he was out wildcat ting somewhere, looking around, and that left his boys to run the lease and they brought it in. And then Rothwell come in and bought over and Yount-Lee they bought all the deep production in the oil field and went down six and eight and ten thousand feet. Well us, we was all shallow up on the Hill. Six and seven thousand feet was about deep as we'd go and we'd get all the oil we could handle, enough to get by on. We

didn't care to go to that deep stuff, because it cost ten thousand dollars or a hundred thousand dollars sometimes to go down ten thousand feet. So we just left it alone. But when Rothwell and Yount-Lee and Phelan went in there, they was a big company and rich men, and they just found out what was under the earth and they got some gushers and a big lot of production. And in the mean time Rothwell and Yount says, "Now, oil went down to less than a dollar a barrel. Well, us little fellows was getting by on it but he couldn't make any money on a dollar a barrel on a deep well; so he pitched in and put up a hundred of five hundred thousand barrel tanks out there on Spindletop and they're out there today. Just built those big tanks and he says, "I'm going to put that oil in there and I'm going to save it and when oil gets scarce, why I'll ship it all over the world.

And he began to do that. Well, he made money. And Frank Yount said -- Now, I think the Texas National Bank went broke. Depositors had thousands of dollars in it. And Yount says to them, "Now look-a here," to the managers, "you've got to pay them depositors." So he put up several million dollars and just saved the bank, and the bank finally went closed. And then the Gulf National Bank there in Beaumont -- it was a wonderful bank. We done business with them a good while and they finally went into the First National Bank. The Gulf National was organized by a fellow from Pennsylvania -- it was old man Guffey, I believe. Guffey was up in your neck of the woods, come down here and saw there was lots of money and lots of trade so he started that Gulf National Bank and then it went to First National and First National has changed hands. And we had an American National Bank that was here when I come in 1904. They had just started in the Temperance Building. Well,

they held on pretty good -- the American National. And the First National is changed. And then there has been two or three other little banks that have been-- jumped up. Citizens Bank, I think, they run several years. They stayed open at night just to accomodate the oil men that get a check at night and they would come in town at night and get it cashed, and they finally went out of business. Then old man Niece says, "I want to organize another City National Bank." I took a little stock in it. It run pretty nice for a while but something went wrong in that they closed out and the American National took them over. And the First National, they went on in the Gulf and they have got the three banks here now. The other one is the Texas State Bank and we've got pretty good banking business. There are Federal Banks there but I never have any business with those Federal Banks.

I had a little money I just -- what I didn't use in building and taking care of my home and giving away, I just put up a few Government Bonds on it. It isn't drawing any interest, hardly. And then I have got two daughters. One has married a Methodist preacher. His name's Calloway N. Glasgow; and a drug store man by the name of Askew, Hubert Askew, in Houston. He's got two stores over there. I pitched a little money into them to help them along. The fact of the business is, I'm just living on my little rent here and little income and little stock that I get hold of.

O. Did you have any big temperance speakers come here? I noticed that you mentioned the Temperance Building aid so on.

P. Let me see. George Carroll was the greatest temperance man that we had. But to especially have a temperance drive, we never have had one in Beaumont, I don't believe, since I've been here -- a real

big temperance drive. Now we have had some big Baptist meetings. For the Conley meeting they built a tent down there that would hold five thousand people -- had a big meeting there. Well, old Beaumont is kind of growing but the trend is for pleasure and to spend money, and the government -- old Woodrow, not Woodrow but Truman, says, "Now look-a here! We got a war over there and I'm not going to let those little Koreans get whipped." Jumped up the boys and sent them over there. And then here comes the taxes, taxes on everything. And they jumped up the price on everything and rolled money into the government up there to carry on the war.

Well, we are still paying taxes on everything. We got taxes on our oil and on our gasoline and, oh, on most everything, they're taxing it. And they're rolling money into the Treasury and now it's up to the Congress to push it out and it looks like that every union wants a little higher price for everything that they do. Now just the other day the carpenter says, "We want a forty cent raise. We want from two dollars and thirty-five cents an hour up to two dollars and seventy-five cents an hour for our work on building a shack for a contract building." There's over two thousand men, I understand, on a strike this morning; and all carpentry work is just dead. There's no sense in that--and then wanting more money! What are they doing with it? Buying automobiles and just blowing the money in going up and down the roads burning gasoline. Well, the more gasoline they burn, the better it is for the oil men and the automobile men. Why, the more cars there are; why, the more they can sell. And that's just about the way the world's going, as I see it now -- for the last forty or fifty years.

O. Did you have any labor troubles at Spindletop?

P. Well sir, in 1918 there was a strike that went on out there. Everybody quit. They was working at three dollars a day and they wanted drillers, I think, to get five dollars a day -- eight dollars a day, I think it was they wanted. And a laborer, he wanted about three dollars and a half or four dollars a day raise. Well, the strike went on for quite a while, but us boys -- there was three of us -- and we didn't hire, we couldn't hire anybody because they was all union and they finally compromised and they went back to work and got paid at better prices. And today they were getting paid way up there -- two dollars and a half an hour -- a lot of those workers.

O. But there was really no serious trouble during that strike there?

P. No, not anything at all. Now one time there was a bunch of colored folks went out there to work and I had a brother in that gang. He says, "Now, they won't allow no nigger to do oil work. They can drive a truck and go through there with a little lumber and anything like that, you can have nigger drivers. But you can't get out and take the brake and drill for oil. We just won't stand for it." They rounded up a bunch of niggers working out there and scared them pretty bad and that's about all the trouble they ever had. They never come back no more.

O. How did they scare them?

P. They just says, "Don't let a nigger here in Spindletop after sundown." And they stayed out. That's about all the trouble they had. Well, has that thing been taking down everything we've been saying?

O. Yes, There's still more questions that I wanted to ask and--

P. Run out of tape?

O. I think we'll go over to another tape, if you don't mind, and ask some more questions on it.

End of Tape