John Little Interview - John Little Interview [part 3 of 3]

p. l 45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL

TOPIC: Humble and Corsicana Areas NAME: Little, John

INTERVIEWER: Owens, W. A. PLACE: Belton, Texas

TAPE NO. : 45 DATE: August 7, 1952 RESTRICTIONS: None

Owens- Would you outline for me briefly the places that you worked,

the work that you did, from the time you left Humble until you

started again at Pierce Junction? Little - We moved to Diboll and

drilled a water well for the Diboll Sawmill Company and then we moved to

Blue Ridge and drilled two wildcat wells for oil but

didn't git anything but a little seep oil in the salt dome. Then I moved back over to--

to Hockley and drilled

on a wildcat well with Lane and Moore and Dr. Butts of Houston.

They didn't git any oil there, and Patillo Higgins was adjoinin'

in 2-300 yards, lookin' for oil himself. He had his camp there.

And he never got any oil-- only salt was all they goto

Then the next well I worked on was--

was water wells just from place to place. Then went

Into California and drilled on a oil well, 4200 In Maricopa and didn't git any oil there.

Then I went back to water well drillin'

with Lane and Moore of Los Angeles, and then from there I came back to Texas and ran a gin

one or two years and drilled a well or two

at San Antonio for the Houston Packin' Company and for a rice farm out of

Louisiana where Kelly Field Is now. From there I went to Arizona and stayed five years

on homestead 2

45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL land and drilled several little

wells, water wells, there in that valley, in Casa Grande Valley.

Then I sold the place out in 1918, and came back to Texas to Scott

and White Sanitarium with a broken leg, and then I went to work then--

broken leg kept me out of work for about a year and a half.

I went back to Houston for Judge Brook's son and Cullinan out at Pierce Junction.

We finally got a well there,

12,000 barrels a day. O.- I'd like for you to

describe that well, how It came in. Lo- Well, the well-- we got along

pretty good, all the way down, into the oil sand. Then we had a

little trouble. When we went to ream, we got a rock

that fell out of one place and didn't fall on the next layer of rock straight up,

and Instead of boring a hole straight on through, it sidetracked

us and we had a 4OO-foot more hole to make,

before we could git our screen set. Finally we got the screen set and went to wash the well. They's

goin' to pull out the wash pipe,

and then put on the Christmas tree. The well came in before they got the Christmas tree on--

was wild. So then we finally-- we got it on, got the valve on,

and they closed it off, which they had it flowin'

through a six-inch valve. But when they closed it off and put on chokers,

it blowed it loose. They didn't have the Christmas tree fixed good.

Then they had to go ahead then and

revalve the well. They got Mr. Crosby and his crew-- as

we were just about given out, and they were rested up.

They went ahead and capped the well and let it flow without chokin' it down until they got

the Christmas tree 45 3

PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL all made up. They buckled the

well down to the chokers and it made about 12,000

barrels, 1200 barrels a day, not 12,000. It flowed-- the extent of the flow was 400,000

gallons. Then they put it on a pump.

Then we moved over to the next-- well, we skipped down twenty

acres and on the last ten acres we drilled 42OO and couldn't find

it. Then they sold ten acres to the next one below this well, and

Wynn Crosby, the contractor, drilled it, and they drilled down and

got the same lookin' sand that I got in this well and they never did

git a drop of oil out of the well. Then we moved back, in 100 feet

of the first well and drilled 4200 and we never got a drop of oil.

From there, let's see, where'd we go to from there? We went to---

Go- Is that when you went to Corsicana? L.- We went to Corsicana from there.

O.- You went to Corsicana from there, and what was your luck In

drilling In Corsicana? L.- Well, in Corsicana they'd already

found the deep oil, and the company I's workin' for had

a pretty good-sized lease. So they sent for me to come out of Belton,

and I went up there and was to drill one well and then take

charge. After I drilled one well, he says, "I hate to ask you, but I'm goin'

to ask you to drill another one." And so I drilled

another one. They were about 3800 feet deep, and I think we drilled three wells,

and then he was goin' to put me-- they's goin' to put

electricity to pump with, reversable 45 4

PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL electric engines.

So about that time he got a good offer to sell it, and so he just sold the whole lease out.

Then we moved from there back down to--

down to-- Rosenberg,

and ten miles south of Rosenberg on Cow Creek we drilled a well and

got a little oil, but they never could make a producer out of it.

Then we moved the rig back from there to Bastrop, where they had a

little lignite coal showin', but never did git an oil well there.

That's about the extent of my work with those oil wells there then.

O.- And you gave up drilling about then? L.- Yes.

O.- Then what did you start working at? L.- Well, I went into Belton,

and I bought two lots and a house, and I bought two more lots,

and I put up a store, and I'd had experi- ence before I started in the oil field,

in the grocery business, With the Texas Company, I took their

new oil-- they's just then puttin' out the new gas called the Hoffman

way of makin' the gaso-

line, I took that and did well until the panic in '31, and then

after that I never did do so well. So I finally ran the store on,

until the war started. No, I believe it was '44.

Then I bought a little farm, and so I rented my store out. I kind of fooled around the farm.

Finally sold the farm and went back

into town and built all the little camp houses, I have six now and buildin' another one now.

Now let's go back to some of your earlier experiences. You

worked many men while you were working in the oil fields.

45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL 5

L.- Yes, yessir. O.- Did you ever

have any difficulties with any of them? L.- Well, yes, I have. There's always

somebody that's an agitator or something or

he don't want to do his part; he's afraid he'll do too much and not git paid enough. So one man in

Sour Lake in 1903 that I-- I was the boss, and I told him what to do and

he just didn't like me anyhow as a boss. He finally called me a liar and I just passed it

back to him. He wanted to fight, and so I just give him all I had. Finally we fought three

rounds and had all the Sour Lake businessmen out there, some of 'em sayin', "Don't, don't,

don't." As I say, he was just bigger than I was, and he couldn't whip me with his fists because

I learned quite young to handle my fists pretty good. So we finally were friends after that

and that's all there was to it, you know. The next difficulty I had was one

did the same trick in Lane and Moore's office in California,

He called me a liar one morning,

and I told him, I says, "Look here, I've got the goods right here

to show you. I don't have to be goin' on this and that-- you

callin' me a liar. Here it is right here before you."

"Naw," he says, so and so, and I told him, "All right, just

call me a liar another time." And he wanted to fight, and so

I told him I'd give him all I had. So I knocked him down

three times and the last time he didn't git up. It was Just before the

office hours opened up, and I thought I'd just walk around and see the boss and

git my time and that'd be 6

45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL the last.

But when I walked in-- why, the boss was just goin' up and

down, laughin' just as loud as he could, and I says, "What is it,

Mr. Bowler [?]?" He says, "You did the best

thing you ever did in your life this morning."

And I says, "Well, I hated to do that, but he wanted to fight."

He says, "He's been braggin' what a man he was over in Scotland;

he's from Scotland. He's a policeman and says he could just whip

great big men." "Well," I says, "he never did hit me at all."

So the boss asked me was I

hurt and I said no, just knocked a finger out of joint. He told me to go ahead and have it fixed.

I said, "No, I want to git this well

started. Got three men workin'." "Oh," he says, "I'll give you a

man to work, send out there and set the pumps---" twenty

miles out; so we got in the car and went out there and set the well.

I never have got the finger fixed yet. (Laughter)

That sort of difficulty-- that some people just

want to squabble, in the labor. O.- Why were there so many fist fights

in thos boom towns, do you suppose ? L.- Well, one reason that I look at

the fist fights, that the people when they came down, in Mr. Walter

Sharp's first history-- why, they came down from the North,

and the northern people don't believe in six-shooters and cuttin'. They

believe in fightin' with your fists and if you git whipped in a saloon--

why, just acknowledge it and 45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL

7 take a drink and go on.

But I say that's one reason there's so much trouble during this man

Cullinan's time in Corsicana-- too many that drank a little beer or something,

the pipeliners, and then they wanted to fight.

Those things was all uncalled for.

O. - Who was the best roughneck you ever saw? L.- Well, this little fellow that I just

mentioned about the fellow hittin' with the six-shooter,

was named Tommy Hale. He was a man known all over, and there was nothing that

he was afraid to do with work, and he didn't

slack back on one of it at all. Another fellow I had was a good helper, but he let booze git him,

was named Oscar Carlock.

O.- Oscar what? L.- Carlock.

O.- Carlock, yeah. L.- I took him to the

oil fields. He begged me to take him back to the oil fields in 1901. I took him to Spindletop

and got him a job workin' with the derrick

builders. Finally he went to drillin' and was a good hand, but he just couldn't let

gamblin' and booze alone. O.-

What kind of stories did these people tell when they had an off

period, when they were not working? L.- You mena the-- when the-------

O.- When they gathered around the water keg or something like that.

L.- They's a lot of 'em-- you mean when they paid off and didn't

come back or----- O.- No, I mean just the stories they

told to entertain each other. 8

45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL L.- Oh, around the well rig?

O. - Yes. L.- Well, they's a lot of 'em

that do that-- the stories around the well rig when they ought to be

straightenin' up the well rig. That's one of the first lessons that my brother,

Tom Little, learnt me, when I first went to Spindletop. He says,

"Come over here: I want you to go with me this morning." We went over there and went down

this well rig and went over that well rig and went over that well

rig over there. Well, he says, "How did you like those things?"

I says, "Oh, all right." He says, "Do you see any difference?"

I says, "Yeah, in one place went over there, everything's just

as nice and neat and clean. Other place just throwed around over there

and you walk over it, don't know where nothing is."

He says, "That's the idea I wanted to git to you, is to be a

workman, be a first-class workman." And that's what I tried to do, and

that's the kind of papers I got from my boss in Houston, that

I's honest and conscientious and did all my work as near

up to now as I knew how to do. O.- Well, what kind of songs did

they sing? Did they sing any oil field songs that you know of?

L.- They did pretty much with me. I remember in Sour Lake in 1903

we sung kind of religious songs, us boys did. But

we wasn't as good as we ought to have been,

and still may not be that now. O.- But you did sing

church songs around the oil rigs? L.- Yeah, kind of like the person wrote,

which you know it and I 45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL

9 know it too-- there's

one song that never changes and that's reli- gious songs. They never change. They can

write all those different songs out of Hollywood, but

religious songs never change. O.-

You don't know any songs about the oil fields? L.-

No, the only one I know, that I've heard of quite a bit is--

"Around a nine-inch hole," dancin' some kind of something-- I don't

know what. I've forgotten now, what it is. It was an oil field

song. O.- You

don't think you could recall it? L.- No, I can't recall what that is,

about a double shuffle now, and a nine-inch hole and all such stuff as that, that

I never did allow any, much of that if I could keep from it,

to refrain from that kind of evil stuff.

O.- Yeah, you think that was a bit shady? L.- Yeah, that's right. If I--

there's a boy told me once, "If you can't associate with the best,

don't associate with none." And I found that out and It's

pretty much so. And a man told me the other day, confessin', I suppose,

said, "Dad told me that half your business is to leave other people's

business alone and the other half tend to your own business."

So I says what my daddy told me when he brought me in to a little

town out of the country, he says, "John, I'm turnin' you loose at

ten years old and there's the jail down there. You're old enough

to know where they put people that disobey, and if you git in there

in bad company I'm goin' to let you stay there."

O.- You believed him. 45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL

10 L." (Laughter) I believed

him, Oo- Well, I'd like to

ask you some more questions about the people you knew. I'd like to ask about Howard Hughes,

for instance. L.- Well, Mr. Hughes,

I just heard on him that he came into Sour-- into Humble,

a hobo on a freight train. Now that's gossip perhaps,

but I know he was a man that seemed to be well educated. Then I

remember in 190^4-, he had a well there called Hughes No. 1c, and they

was shy a man one night and so my contractor told me to go over and

fill in that night. I went over there and drilled one night, and

that was just before they got oil* They finally got oil in the well.

Then I don't know how many more wells that they ever had because

I left out of Humble in 190^,

just after that. But I'd heard that he had this invention on this bit,

Hughes rotary bit. O.-

Do you think that he invented the bit? L.-Well, I've heard it that he was not

the inventor. He juwt bought a man's rights,

to use the patent. Now whether that's so or not I

don't know. O. - You don't know what the man's mme is.

L.- No, I don' t. O.-

How well did you know Jim Sharp? L.- All I know about Mr, Jim Sharp

was just that I saw him & f@w times and they told ms that he

more on th® sthlitis styl© and feaok boxin* lessons every year out of some

athletic school, which I started to do th©

same thing myself at on© time but didn't, I know he wps high tempered. If you'd que©r

him too much, he'd fight. O.- Did you ever see him fight?

45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL 11 L.- No, I didn't see him fight.

I knew the people that he fought though.

O.- Was he a good fighter? L.- Yeah, because he knew how to handle his fists.

O.- What did the men who worked for the Sharps think of them as bosses0

L.- Mr. Walter--- O." Walter,

Jim, either one of them. L.- Well, I-- you know, I couldn't say for sure,

but I've heard it said that, Mr. Sharp was the one I

was told as said it, but it's just as likely to be

him as anybody else-- that the Little people are Irish and you can't run over 'em any too much.

In Corsicana there seemed to be something wrong with the

Hamill brothers or something, and they'd say,

"Well, old Tom Little, he works so long, you make him mad and he'll quit."

And so I don't know whether Mr.

Sharp ever hired my brother or not. Never heard him say, but

I know he worked for Hamill brothers up there, In Corsicana,

and then I worked for him in later years. That is, on Spindle top in 1902,

Had these rigs after Mr, Forney had resigned as manager, and we bought

the rigs from Guffey and Galey and started in with

A1 and Jim Hamill and George Forney, contractin',

O.- Well, I'd like to ask you about some of the narrow escapes you

had. L.- Well, they had one

on Spindletop, I believe it was, or Humble, where a well blew out and the rocks was fallin'.

I crawled under a 12

45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL boiler; rock fell on the boiler and

made a leaky stay-bolt on top of the boiler.

And one time at Humble the whole underground seemed to be

shakin'. You could just look out anywhere at a point of water and

see the water bubblin' up. Then they said out on the ocean, the ocean

steamers saw oil out on the ocean where it'd come out on the ocean.

That's when Humble was in its prime, and-- oh, I've seen several

times there, you'd look up in the air and see something floatin'

in the air, blowin' out of the well. It's dangerous.

But that well that I just spoke of, I think,

out there where we ran out from under it, on Moonshine No. 10--

it blew out 300 feet of pipe. Then another time in

Mildred, ten miles out of Corsicana, we

had a well that was throwin' outside the casing and come up and was

around the ten-inch. One of the men wanted to take the plug cut.

So they wouldn't let him take it out until he asked the boss in

Houston. So the boss in Houston said, "Yeah, go ahead and take it

out if you want to." He took the plug out of

the casing head and the well flowed out, blowed the wrench and the plug

out of his hand and the well ran loose for twenty-four hours.

We had to take and have a steel taper nipple made and git two

chain hoists and put up forty feet of pipe with clamps on it

and pull this pipe in that steel nipple back in this plug,

and hold it there with the chain hoists until enough men turned the pipe with chain tongs to

screw it back in this outlet, two and a half outlet,

to cut it off. They had the place 13

45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL roped off that night because it

was throwin' gas maybe 100 feet. And then another time on

Spindletop for Guffey and Galey they had a gas well. So the gas well-- they

turned it loose one afternoon, and I's workin' for 'em,

and that gas well would blow two-by-fours and two-by-sixs 200 feet away,

just blow 'em just like a storm. Then they wanted it cut off and they told

me to cut it off. I didn't have strength enough to cut it off,

and I took a monkey wrench and tightened down on one of those

ribs on the valve and turned it off until my whole drum of my head-- I

didn't know nothing, couldn't hear nothing. The people saw

it-- my brother was there that after- noon and said, "Don't never do that again.

If that had've bursted there that would've

killed you dead as a nip," O.- Did you ever save a person's

life in the oil fields? L.- Well, in Sour Lake

we's runnin' with a two-inch manila rope. My brother had told his brother-in-law

to go up on top of the crown block and another would stand down

under the crown block, hold the double line up

while he changed sheaves. The man on top took the sheave out and let the rope git loose

and the man couldn't hold it, and it slipped down around his

neck and was about to jerk him sixty- four foot down to the bottom.

And my brother saw it. I ran up there and held the rope up myself.

The man came down and just had to sit down; he was so weak and-- in fact,

all of us, because a man like to have got killed,

just came very near jerkin' him out of the derrick.

And when I was workin' in 1901,

they had no life belts then, I used just a rope, just tied a rope around my

waist and tied it up in 45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL 14

the derrick-- oily derricks or icey derricks or if it's slippery--

if you slipped-- why, you's hangin' up in the derrick.

Then afterwards in Hull we had a well there and in that well,

there!d been three or four drillers on it, and they'd hired me to

work on a well. So I was drillin' daytime and one morning they sent

a man, said, "You needn't come down. The well burnt up last night

The man that night was drillin' and it blew out and a little rock hit

the electric light globe and ignited and burnt the whole thing up.

But they built back over it and

went back in the hole. O.- Was there a great deal of

carelessness among the roughnecks' work? L.- Well, there was, especially

when a new field was in; they's all in too big a hurry.

There's lots of 'em got cut up and killed and

things like that, through carelessness, too big a hurry.

In Hull when I was there--

why, one of the wells there, the second well I drilled on, I drilled it down and made pretty

good time. Drilled into the oil sand and

every time I'd drill in the oil sand, it'd blow out. It blowed out once or twice and so

I finally told the field manager, "What're you goin' to do?

No use goin' back every time it blows out, first thing you know, we'll be stuck."

Well, he says, "Tell you what you do, now you go ahead in the

morning and have one of the men to fire another boiler up and then

you fire your own boiler up and be down on top of this plug but don't

go into it till I come out." So here came an old fellow,

old man Shively out of Houston; he was with the Empire Oil and Gas Company.

He came out, and boy, he 15

45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL just roared about the driller

being sittin' down. So I told him, I says, "Now the boss told me to

wait till he came back and that's what I intend to do."

He says, "Aw, come on out here! Come on out and start it! That's

the reason you don't git nothing done."

So I told him, "Now when it starts down there and drills this

plug out, what are you goin' to do when it starts to blowin'?"

"Just let her stay down." I says, "All right, sir,

you're the boss." And I let her down in there and it blowed out

and so, it blowed all the water out and then went to blowin' sand. You couldn't

hold the water in the ditches; they got full and ran over.

They had no water and the pump was clogged just plumb full of sand,

fine sand. I said you said let it stay there, and that's what I did

and it stuck it. So when the boss came-- why, I told him what the fellow

said, and he said, "I don't blame you,

and I'll let 'em pay to have it fixed up." We went ahead though and

cleaned everything up, got all the sand out of the way and everything,

ran over it with six-inch pipe and got it loose. But it took

a week or two to do that. O.- What was it that made people

keep on working in the oil fields once they got started?

L.- Well, one thing it is exciting in a way, and then another thing,

it's pretty good wages. O.-

Now you quit it several

times and always went back again. L.- That's right, yeah. Right now--

and I say one thing right now 45 PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL

16 that I've worked with

people that always pretty much had good material or would buy them. I've never

worked with junk very much and I don't want to.

To make a well or something that you can't see under the ground, you want the

best of materials to work with.

O.- And the men were pretty well treated, the oil field workers

were fairly well treated by their companies. L.- Yessir, as far as I know, you bet they were.

O.- Were you involved in any of the strikes at Sour Lake or---

L.- Lucky, I must say that I never was in any of them, just always

gone out somewheres else when they started. I worked for Mr. Sharp

over there and just after I left they had a strike over there. I

saw one of the men in California and I introduced myself to him and

he said, "Well, my brother worked for Mr. Sharp." And I said, "What's his name?"

Said, "Ed Todd." Well, I says, "I worked

with Ed Todd on one of the rigs." So this fellow's name was Bill Todd,

and I think the Texas Company had sent him over in the foreign lands,

seekin' oil leases. So the Standard Oil Company in California

bought about three combina- tion rigs. They put him on one

and so this fellow Todd gave me a job drillin' against him.

But we didn't git any oil. [End of Tape]

John Little Interview - John Little Interview [part 3 of 3]

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