Claude Deer Interview

  • Topic: Spindletop Name: Deer, Claud Interviewer: Owens, William A. Place: Wilson-Broach plant, Spindletop Tape No.: 8 Date: July 7, 1952 Restrictions: None D.- Well, the first drilling was very crude. We'd- we didn't have what we call the rig builders now and derrick fellows.
  • We built our own derricks. We didn't have any rule of building them.
  • We'd lay the lumber out on the round, get the taper of our derrick, and cut that to fit.
  • Then we'd build the derrick. When all our rigs was [sic] very small in those
  • days, small rigs, small- had the old fashioned wooden crown block.
  • Some of them we had were manilla lined before we got wire lines in.
  • We-- old line shaft rigs-- we know today all the rigs is [sic] unitized, but we didn't know anything about what a unitized rig was.
  • We had two posts, line shaft, small drum, those engines those days were around 8 x 10's or something of that kind, small engine.
  • We had small boilers at that time, around 35.
  • Well, I believe Hamill Brothers had some 30 horse boilers when they first drilled this well down here,where we have hundred horse boilers now, 150.
  • All of our pumps were small, eight by ten pump was a large pump.
  • The rotary was small. The old American Well Works rotary was built In Corsicana.
  • Two men could pick it up and carry it away. We had a very crude elevator.
  • I remember the time when we got what was known as the old Fisher elevator.
  • We thought we had something then. Then we got the old, what we call plumb busters now, old style elevators.
  • Then kept improving up until we got the Wilson elevator now.
  • We had swivels, very crude, very small, but, of course, that is the way we got our mud, when we carried through-- washed through those swivels.
  • The swivel would give the pipe a chance to turn.
  • We had what we called the grips rings on the rotary. In those days, we didn't have what we call a Kelly joint. We had an old time -- we
  • drilled with the pipe we set, an old six-inch drill stem, just practically all ____________ [muffled] pipe, short couplings.
  • Drilled with the old style fishtail bit.
  • Those days, we -mud engineers was unknown. We had to mix our mud to suit our formation.
  • Hold the sand back.
  • We didn't have any core barrels at that time to core our sand and know what we were in. We just had to watch for sand and use our own judgment whether it was oil sand or water sand.
  • A lot of times, we made a failure. Other times, we made good wells, but we-- that- I tell these fellows now they're all rig runners.
  • They haven't got anydrillers any more. In those days, we had to do it all ourselves.
  • We had to know our formations, where we wanted to go, how deep we were, how many, how much pipe was set, what size pipe.
  • O.- You always kept a log?
  • D.- We always kept a log. And, of course, we -- I suppose --guessed a whole lot of it.
  • We didn't have any, as I say, we didn't have any engineers then to run a test on what those formations was [sic].
  • We had to give them a name -- gumbo, or sand, or shale, or rock.
  • We'd give it some name along on our log.
  • O.- Well, how could you tell that you were getting into oil sand?
  • D.- Well, it begun [sic] to soften up and we'd watch our for-
  • mation on the ditch. As you know, oil began to show on the ditch.
  • That's where we- of course, we could tell our changes from our drilling-- where-- the change in the drill, how fast we were making hole, how hard our pump was running.
  • We just had to judge our formation then.
  • If it was down in the neighborhood where we'd been finding oil, sometimes we went ahead and set, and we had a well, and sometimes we didn't have a well.
  • But, we had to judge oil by-- of course, the sand would wash out in the ditch.
  • We'd look at that sand. But we went mostly on our ditch showing, whether there was any oil showed on the ditch.
  • You take the present way of drilling wells now, and coring, and engineers running tests.
  • There was many a well passed up in those days. Getting It now.
  • We didn't have no way of-- just a crude way of passing your judgment on it whether it was oil or not oil.
  • So that's just about the history of the old oil wells.
  • O.- Did you ever smell the sand to see--
  • D.- Oh, yes. We'd smell it, feel of it and taste it, put it on the boiler and heat it up, or dry it out, and see how it looked.
  • Different-- several different ways that we, as I say, they was all crude ways.
  • It was more of a guess of what we was doing,
  • O. - Why wasn't the cable equipment successful here?
  • D.- It was too soft a formation. It was all sand and soft formation, sand and shale and gumbo.
  • The hole wouldn't standup.
  • O.- Well, how did you start using the mud drilling?
  • D.- Well, we--, well, of course, that's been used for years back. Started with mix-up of mud, take the water and the clay.
  • The clay that we have now, they have this manufactured mud they buy, ship in sacks. Those days, well, we taken [sic] this old yellow clay and sometimes we'd have to steam it, heat it up,mix it up with steam.
  • Other times, we had meals of different kinds we'd run. We'd get in there with our hands or a shovel, hoe and one thing or another.
  • It was a crude way of mixing up mud, making a mud that we could circulate around that would wall our hole up and wall our sides up where it wouldn't cavein on us,
  • O.- Oh, yes. Did the old water well drillers use that system?
  • D.- Oh, yeah. They used that. That was something--
  • O.- Mud. D.- Mud.
  • That they had been accustomed to doing that with water wells.
  • O.- You don't know who actually developed it?
  • D.- No, I just-- different old drillers that way-- figure out some way that he could get through.
  • He'd run onto some place he couldn't get through and he'd keep mixing mud and get certain work that he could get through.
  • Other times-- as I say,
  • we all had to work it out. There wasn't any one well that lagged.
  • It wasn't drilled to lag. Each driller, the old-time drillers, one man would have a way of drilling and mix mud, make more hole than the others.
  • So there wasn't nothing uniform about it those days.
  • just how we could get a well down, that's the best way we drilled it.
  • O.- Were you working here when they were developing the rotary bit?
  • D.- Yes, in fact, I was very well acquainted with the man that first got up the roller bit, the Hughes roller bit,
  • old man Johnny Wynn, now down here on College Street running a little shop down there sharpening saws and mowers and one thing and another.
  • He got up that crude roller bit, known as the Hughes bit now.
  • And Mr. Hughes, I understood, gave him $1500 for his patent.
  • O.- Is that right? D. - And that - O.- That's how Hughes started.
  • D.- Hughes started on the Hughes roller bit.
  • Mr. Wynn now, he's up-- I expect he's up toward 90 years old.
  • O.- Do you suppose I could talk to him?
  • D.- Yes. You could talk to him. He's the first rotary driller that I ever knew.
  • I was about-- I guess about 11 years old when I met him. He drilled a water well for a little town,
  • Arlington, up close to Fort Worth. He came in there with a crude outfit, little pressure engine boiler there, small pumps,
  • fought that down seven or eight months there before he ever got down and made a water well, but they made a water well and I think the water well is still getting water, producing water up there at Arlington now.
  • I was about 11 years old at that time.
  • And he's the first man, first rotary man, that I ever knew, I didn't know anything about it.
  • My father run [sic]a blacksmith shop there at Arlington. He did the bit sharpening.
  • O.- Is that right? D.- And done all the blacksmithing for those people at that time, drilling that water well.
  • It was Eweless and Shaeffer, I believe, out of Fort Worth, water well bunch then, contracted there with the city, a little town of Arlington.
  • They drilled that well.
  • O.- Did you know Howard Hughes?
  • D.- Yeah, I knew him. I wasn't personally acquainted with him. Just knew him.
  • O.- Yes, sir. Just knew him around here. D.- Yes.
  • O.- Did you work on any of the rigs when they were experimenting with the Hughes bit?
  • D.- No, -- not just, well, you might say it was more of an experiment, anyway, When they first got them out.
  • O.- Yes, sir.
  • D.- I used some of the first bits that the Hughes ever manufactured.
  • O.- But those were not the days when they were planning them so much?
  • D.- No, oh, no.
  • O.- Well, I'd like to go back to ask you about the crew on your rig in those early days. How many men did you work?
  • D.- Well, three to four. We paid 'em two, two-and-a-half,three dollars a day, and they worked 12 hours a day.
  • O.- Twelve hours a day. How many days a week?
  • D.- All. Seven days a week. We didn't know when Sunday came.
  • No, you take two and a half-- If you get up to three dollars,we was [sic] getting big salaries here then.
  • O.- Yes, sir. well, the- what kind of money did the drillers get?
  • D.- They got five dollars a day. For several years, that was standard wages, five dollars a day for a driller.
  • And it began to get up a little, six, seven, eight dollars a day.
  • And they all worked from ten to twelve hours a day anyway,most all.
  • We went for years before we ever went to eight hour work. Three shifts.
  • It had been two shifts for years and years.
  • O.- Yes, sir. The workers here now are unionized, are they?
  • D.- No, we don't have any union men in the oil field.
  • O.- None In the oil field?
  • D.- They're ell in the refineries, pipe lines, but we're nothin- no union men in-- out in the oil fields, that I know of.
  • O.- Well, what hours do they work now?
  • D.- Eight hours.
  • O.- Eight hours.
  • D.- Well, you see, of course, according to government wages,we-- hours, we work 40 hours and then we're paid overtime after the 40 hours a week.
  • We-- our bunch works 48 hours.
  • Time and a half for the last eight hours.
  • O.- But in those days there was nothing like overtime or -
  • D.- Well, we never knew anything about overtime. We got a lot of overtime work.
  • We didn't get paid for it. We didn't know what it was.
  • Every fellow was trying to see what he could do most of.
  • O. - Yeah. D.- You take two of the rig gangs and drilling crews, day and night man, every driller was trying to beat the other, to make the most hole.
  • O.- Uh huh. -And the one who brought in a well, would likely get a better bid than someone else.
  • D . - Yes.
  • O. - Some of them really became famous drillers?
  • D. - Oh, yes. We've had a bunch of them that've become famous drillers.
  • O.- Who were some of the outstanding ones? You've mentioned the Hamills.
  • D.- Well, I don't-- Now, of course, Mr. Sharp was well acquainted with Walter Fondren.
  • He's a- but I don't know whether Walter-- I don't know whether he ever done any drilling. O.- Any actual drilling?D.- Any actual drilling.
  • He was more-- he was one of the first men that started In the contracting work around there for himself, and one of the first single young men that started producing that I know of, with his own--
  • O.- He later went into the Humble Company?
  • D.- Yeah, he was later with the Humble Company.
  • Mighty fine man from the time I first knew him up till he died. I knew for- up till the time he died.
  • O.- Is that right? D.- He was a great church man, a man in the Methodist church.He was one of our-- the old saying, "He was the main pillar"of the Methodist church of this Texas conference.
  • O.- Yes, I know the buildings for him at SMU, the Fondren buildings there.
  • He did a great deal. When did you first know him?
  • D.- Oh, I-- must have been back 1905, or '07, or somewhere back there.
  • It's been so far back I can't remember it.
  • O.- Yes, sir.D.- Just when it was.[end of tape]