W. M. Hudson Interview - W. M. Hudson Interview [part 1 of 6]

PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL TOPIC: Beaumont; Tampico, Mexico drilling NAME: W. M. Hudson INTERVIEWER: W. M. Hudson, Jr. PLAGE: Austin, Texas TAPE NO. 79 DATE: 9/16/52 RESTRICTIONS: None

Hudson, Jr.- Originally intended as a test, but I decided to preserve it.

Hudson.- Now in the year 1901, I went from the Osage Indian Territory down to Beaumont, Texas, the Spindletop field. And worked with the London Oil and Pipeline Company for ninety dollars a month. And, as a gauger. Knew nothing about oil or less about gauging.

H., Jr.- Whose compaany was that?

H.- The London Oil and Pipeline Company was formed by Senator,ex-Senator Jonathan Lane, and T. W. Lane, his brother, Ed Arnettof Flatonia, and T. P. McCommren of Flatonia.

H., Jr.- I didn't know Mr. McCommren was in on that.

H.- He had a little interest in it.

H., Jr.- Well, what did you do?

H.- Well, the first day they took me out and showed me the wells that, the tanks that they was receiving oil from, showed me how to gauge them, showed me how to open them up, and suck out the tank that was gauged and go back and take the back gauge, and close the valves and put a lock and key under it with a chain, on the valve, cause they wouldn't back up oil from the other tanks.

H., Jr.- Well, you learned the oil business step by step then--didn't you?

H.- Well, if there was any bottom to it, I started at the bottom.

H., Jr.- Well, the earliest drillers came from Pennsylvania, didn't they?

H.- Yes, nearly all the early drillers came in, well from Beaumont, they came in from Corsicana, but most of them originally from Pennsylvania, and then when Beaumont begin to get on the boom, they came In in flocks from Pennsylvania.

H., Jr.- Now you told me about old Dr. Griffith. He was from Pennsylvania, wasn't he?

H.- Well, yes, I think so, I'm not sure. But when I first time I saw Dr. Griffith, he always wore a long black, Prince Albert coat, with a stove pipe hat, or a square derby. First time I saw him he was climbing out of a slush pit. He'd found a bunch of nice, dry looking sand on a smooth place, and stepped off into a slush pit, and almost up to his neck. His derby wasn't worth recovering afterwards.

H., Jr.- Well, how did he happen to fall into the slush pit?

H.- The dry sand on top, on top of the mud, the mud pit, why he thought It was a nice, smooth place to walk across, and he stepped right off in it.

H., Jr.- Why, didn't they have slush pits up in Pennsylvania?

H.- No, they, that was slush pits, mud and slush pits was made in this sand country, in the cross country, to block off the sand so they could go on down. With that loose sand why they just pump out sand and get no where with it until they learned how to make, make mud and carried these slush pits fulls of mud --p.3-- all the time.

H., Jr.- Well, was, was the mud for washing out the cuttings or --

H.- No, no.

H. , Jr.- --or was it for lining the holes.

H.- No, mud, mud was to block up in the sand to keep from the, the water from all going away in the sand. And it made a false kind of, false curb in the well, and as a consequence the water, that returns to water and washed out the cuttings from the pit.

H., Jr.- Oh, you mean the mud would dry down there?

H.- The mud, the pressure, the pressure or the water on the mud and pumping in forced the mud into the walls of the sand, and held it to keep It from caving, and from, from absorbing all the water.

H., Jr.- Well, they don't use mud for that now, do they? They just use mud for washing out the cuttings.

H.- Why, no. Par as I know, they strike sand, they use mud, I don't think they found any better way.

H., Jr.- Well, they use mud all the way in drilling today, don't they?

H.- No, not necessarily. They use clear water, but it's not clear when they cut, when they bring out the cuttings, It washes out all the cuttings, but they're drilling with a drill ---

H., Jr.- Well, I think everything they put down into the hole now is mud, they call it mud if they just got a little bit of stuff in it at all, just any colorations, they call that mud.

H.- Yes, well, where it's not coarse, it doesn't need to be thick mud, but where it's sandy it does.

H., Jr.- Yes, some of the stuff is just muddy water. Well, now let's listen to this and see how it sounds. Let's just start all over again. Go ahead ---

H.- Sometimes, about November, 1901, I left the Osage Indian Reservation, and went to Beaumont in the oil field, where I was called by the London Oil and Pipeline Company, which was organized by the ex-Senator Jonathan Lane, his brother Tom Lane, Ed Arnett, and T. P. McCommren of Flatonia, Texas. I was put on as a gauger and relieved Percy Fason of La Grange. Percy was a happy-go-lucky, well-met fellow, and was content to let things take care of their natural course, and didn't seem to be very careful of the company's interests. Anyway, the company was losing from eight hundred to three thousand barrels of oil a month due to his inattention. The manager, Mr. T. W. Lane showed me the flow tanks, which they were receiving oil, and instructed me on how to dispose of this oil.

H., Jr.- You talking too loud.

H.- Yes. How to gauge the back gauge and ---

H., Jr.- Just talk as if you were talking to me.

H.- And it was all new to me, I was very careful to see that nooil get away from me. Well, the first month I was three hundred barrels over, and from then on I was never short.

H., Jr.- Now you're getting too low.

H.- Except once in the spring of 1902, when I couldn't resist the temptation to go fishing. We were receiving oil from the Texas Company who had connections with the Arrow lines, enabled them to load at our loading rack on the Sante Fe. I took the gauge, gauge, and left ray brother J. L. Hudson to take the back gauge and went to Port Arthur. Early the next morning, went out on Mr. Gage's private dock and took a swim, and then started fishing from the end of the dock. And such as luck would have it I dropped my hook into a school of nice trout, and in a very short time filled the basket full.

H., Jr.- You mustn't clear your throat now. Go ahead.

H.- Took the chain back to Beaumont, same day, and on my arrival was met by my manager, who had a rather long face, and wanted to know why I had gone away, him not being present, and that as a consequence, they had lost twenty-five hundred barrels of oil. Naturally my face was longer than his after that information. I reached, I racked my small brain for about two months, and came to the conclusion that there could only be one place where there was any mistake or leak, in the gauges. So I asked the manager to contact the Texas Company, and see if they had taken any oil out of that tank since I had measured it. And on being informed that he had not, requested that he have his gauger to meet me at the tank the next morning, to take a back gauge. As at that time there was some blest in most nearly all the tanks. I found that the gauge that my brother had taken had been taken from the top of this sediment, and that I had made the gauge from the bottom of the tank; there was the difference. About that time we were receiving oil from the Nickel Plate. One day I took a gauge on one of their flow tanks, at the same time had a look at the other flow tank, to see how long it'd be before we'd have --p.6--to receive it. And saw that there was about three feet of oil in the other tank. I opened the valve on the tank gauge and for some reason went back on top of the tanks again, and saw the ungauged tank, and saw that, it was half full. On examining the valve of this tank, I found it open and locked with the chain I had put on it, so I started the pump and didn't leave until both tanks were sucked dry. And the manager cut off the communications, cut off the connections.

H., Jr.- Well, you're ---

H.- This fellow asked him for a quizzing, says what the, what is that shoestring, what was meant by the shoestring district. Well, he says, it's a very narrow strip of land cut up through there, about, he don't know exactly how wide, maybe forty feet wide, just wide enough to put a derrick on, and says maybe a mile long. Run back, he didn't say just where it run back from. It run back from the Texas Company road, the Texas Company had a road with a toll gate, toll gate. Anybody that had to bring any material in on it to get along the shoestring had to pay the Texas to get through that gate. And they had to have a pass to get through there, bringing in their material.

H., Jr.- Now you say the Nickel Plate. Was that the name of an oil company?

H.- That's the name of an oil company.H., Jr.- That's the name of a railroad. And then you talk about the Santa Fe, is that the name of an oil company?

H.- What?

H., Jr.- You spoke of the Santa Fe, not in, not tonight, but you have spoken of the Santa Fe. Is that an oil company or railroad?

H.- Oh, no. That's the Santa Fe Railroad. Used to load racks on the Santa Fe Railroad. That's in here too.

H., Jr.- Yes

H.- Loaded racks on the Santa Fe Railroad

H., Jr.- Well, of course, you know that ---

H.- That's seven miles away from our pump station. Then on in there tell about them punching holes in that tank and about us seeing them shoot the tank up, a sheet iron tank down across the railroad tracks, way out in the prairie. And day or two afterwards see that they pump the pumpers so that the pressure wouldn't come up on the pump. When we was loading on the Santa Fe tracks and I looked down the line and I seen oil squirting up in two or three sections down there, and the fellows down around the pump, and went down and found they had punched holes In this pipe, across where a water ditch run by it. This fellow set up his tank, way on across over the railroad track on this same thing with the same ditch, with the idea of picking up pured oil down, there.

H., Jr.- He was just a prying individual, wasn't he?

H.- Yes, that's all.

H., Jr.- Crook huh?

H.- Nobody knew who he was, and Tom and Jess went out and laid all night, after midnight, and he didn't show up. And they took vengence on his tank, they shot his tank full of holes with buck shot. And the next few days he moved his tank. Have you got to --pg.8--run all that off again ---While I was on this gauging job, Iwas up on top of a tank once, and the manager was in the buck-board on the ---

H., Jr.- That's Tom Lane.

H.- Tom Lane.

H., Jr.- Just call him Tom.

H.- Tom Lane, on the boardwalk, waiting for me to get through taking the gauge. And I saw him in a discussion with somebody that had a bar of steel in his hand about two feet long. And all at once I seen this man strike at him with a steel, hit him over the head with this steel, and Tom fell and jumped out of the buckboard on top of him, and they got caught between the wheels. And old Pete, the horse, he got a little bit excited, and started up walking down the road. The farther he went, the faster he got, until finally the buggy knocked them both down, and by that time I was off the tank and down there, and Tom was, had blood all over his face, y6u could see his eyes, when he opened them, but that's about all you could see, and he had this steel bar with two hands, and the other fellow on the bottom, he had it with two hands. And I got hold of the steel bar at one end, and Tom cocked his eye up at me and saw who it was, and I put my foot against the other fellow's hand, and pulled it down. But he wouldn't turn it loose, he said, "No, no." And I pulled his hands off that way, well they both got on their feet, and Tom apparently was in a very good humor. This old fellow was tolerable old, maybe fifty-five or sixty years. Tom says, "Well, old Dan, he says, you did a pretty bad trick didn't you?" Says, well you know, he says, some people when they're old they think they can go ahead, but they haven't got any business going ahead against a young man cause a young man won't jump on to them. And he was swinging his arm all the time, just getting ready to hit the old man, as he said he wasn't too young for him, too old for him. Well, we went on home, or started on home, and one of Tom's big bucked teeth was about half inch longer than it was before he got hit on top of the head. Well, I told him I'd push that back in where it belonged. He pushed it back in, and went on home. Called in the doctor, sewed up his head. That's all there was to it, that was all over.

H., Jr.- Well, what was the cause of the argument?

H.- Question of some account that had, had been paid, and the other fellow had a bad memory or, and probably a mistake or the other man thought he hadn't been paid.

H., Jr.- Well, you knocked loose one of your front teeth in Mexico when you was riding in an automobile, didn't you?

H.- Yes, two of them.

H., Jr.- You just pushed them back in, didn't you?

H.- I pushed them back in, and some of them stayed there twenty years or more.

H., Jr.- How'd you knock them loose?

H.- What?

H., Jr.- How'd you get them knocked loose?

H.- I was driving down in that Vera Cruz country, way down south, where no roads, except ordinary country roads, and in the rainy season. I saw a, a marshy place with water crossing the road. And I looked to the dry part, the high side, and I saw everything clean except one little bunch of grass. Probably two feet high, and while I was watching to see a place to cross this marshy place, I didn't pay much attention to this little bunch of grass, and I hit it, and it happened to be a mesquite stump.

H., Jr.- Oh.

H.- Stopped me right there, and my teeth hit the steering wheel, and I stepped out of the car, and the man that was with me stepped out on the other side and went around to the front, and he said, "It's a stump." I said, "Yes, I knew it, ever since it broke my teeth out." But I put my teeth back in place, one at a time, and I couldn't put the two back together, one at a time, and I pushed them up there and they stayed twenty years longer.

H., Jr.- Were they, were they in the same position they were in before?

H.- I don't know.

H., Jr.- Your teeth came together kinda like a roof.

H.- Yes. That was on account of that. And one of the teeth when it was, when it was pulled out to make a plate, had the root broken off, pulled out this tooth and it was alright. And the next one to it was broken off, half the root and they had to dig it out with a ---

H., Jr.- Well, that was the left one, that was overlapped, that was lapped over ---

H.- Yes, yes.

H., Jr.- Turned on it, got to turn.

H.- Had to dig it out, had to dig out the broken piece. It had been broken ever since --- but when I wind up one phase of it,why then I've got to know what to start the next one.

H., Jr.- That's why we need some topical notes. Just some topics.

H.- Have to get something like that. Get some little topical note to bring to my mind what I want to tell and ---

H., Jr.- Yes, that's right. I wouldn't write out sentences, wouldn't do that.

H.- Then, then for instance, I told in there about the time that how we had our tank, no I didn't get, I didn't put that in, about our tank busting and about us pumping it over into the Higgins tank.

H., Jr.- Yes, that's a good story, but you want to remember to tell, tell that story. Go ahead and tell it now.

H.- Where you at ---you want---

H., Jr.- Well, it's, it's running, it's recording now, go ahead and tell it.

H.- Well, one day while I was on the hill gauging some tanks, the man at the pump station sent up hunting for me and told me the tank had busted. We had thirty seven thousand barrels, five hundred barrels of oil in this tank. It had probably a foot and a half of water and sediment in the bottom. And I rushed down to the tank for him and found that there was only a little stream of water, probably an inch in diameter, coming out from under the tank, that had been flowed, oil had been flowed into the tank and had quite a lot of basic sediment and water. And they called me on the office in Beaumont, said they were making arrangements with the Texas Company to move all this oil, pump it over to the Texas Company, and that they would pump it back to our loading stations on the Santa Fe railroad for two cents and a half a barrel. Well, every few minutes they was calling me on that while I was trying to find out what was wrong, what to do about the tanks. So I got tired of them calling from the office, and I took the hook off the telephone and left it hanging. And then the next time I used the telephone, I called up to Higgins Oil Company and asked them if they wouldn't loan me one of their empty tanks that they had right across the fence.

H., Jr.- What was Mr. Higgins first name?

H.- Patillo.

H., Jr.- Yes.

H.- And they said yes, with all pleasure, go right ahead, that they'd send a man up to take their gauge on the tank and put a lock on it, and we went ahead and made our connections over there and told the pumpers to pump it, to keep a pumping in that tank and not to go to sleep, that he'd better not go to sleep, till he got it all pumped out. Well, I went home easy that night, and the next morning every early I was up to see naturally a little bit uneasy I found the pumper sound asleep in his chair, he'd been up all night. Right by the pump. Well now, Preston, what's the matter. He said, "It's all over there. It's all over there."

H., Jr.- Didn't Mr. Higgins charge you anything?

H.- Huh?

H., Jr.- Did Mr. Higgins charge you anything? --pg.13--

H., Jr.- Well, where was this?

H.- This was at the London Oil Pipeline Company tanks ---

H., Jr.- Where

H.- In Beaumont.

H., Jr.- In Beaumont.

H.- Yes.

H., Jr.- Well, now were you in the Spindletop field or on the edge of it, or where were you?

H.- Well, that's all called Spindletop, the Hogg-Swayne district, and I don't know that I remember the names of the other district, but in the Hogg-Swayne district, or on the hill as they call it, was supposed to have been a thousand wells, and they was so close that some of them, that there wasn't room to put the regulation size derrick and they crossed up their feet, one with the other. It was a mess getting in to here, and getting it out. Now the pumping of all these wells before that started, our pipeline was laid probably two feet underground. And when the windup was, when they commenced to tear down, and move out, we found some of this oil and more than seven feet under ground that had been --

H., Jr.- Your pipe.

H.- This pipe, seven feet under ground, had been filled up with pumping cuttings and sand from these wells that had been drilled. Just building up ground and building up ground all the time on top until it got so it wasn't feasible or practical to take out this pipeline, we left it there, underground.

H., Jr.- Well, now you had, spoke of the pipeline company. Didn't you have any producing wells, did you just have lay pipe and pump for other people, what'd you do?

H.- Oh, that's all, that's all they had there. That's all they had at Beaumont; they had no wells.

H., Jr.- Well, you went from Beaumont where?

H.- Went from Beaumont, I was at Beaumont, we went where the Sour Lake field was discovered, and Tom Lane, our manager went over one day, and came back and he said, "Well, we're going in the oil business, oil producing business, too. We're now on the strips of the shoestring." And he says, "Lee Trammell, and myself, and Will my brother, and Jess, your brother and you, are partners in the oil business." Alright, and about two months after that the London Oil and Pipe Company wound up, would up their business in Beaumont, and we moved over and went to work. At least they moved over before I did. They started to work before. When I really got over there, they had one well that was producing six hundred barrels of oil a day, and were drilling another one. Well it, it produced also about six hundred barrels and then they went way back on the north end of that string, that shoestring, and drilled another well and it was pure emulsion, thick gummy stuff that wouldn't hardly run on the level floor. Finally there was another well drilled opposite these two wells, and It made practically nothing. Meantime, the Batson Prairie field come in, well we had an air compressing plant to blow some of these wells when they began to go down, pressure began to go down on them there at Beaumont, until it didn't pay us to operate our plant, we had a battery of five boilers, one eighty horsepower boiler in it, and a thousand foot air machine, and ---

H., Jr.- Thousand foot air machine, did you say, thousand pounds--

H.- Thousand foot, thousand foot air machine.

H., Jr.- What do you mean by a thousand foot ---

H.- That's what it is, thousand foot pressure, thousand foot, cubic foot machine. Well, at about that time, why Mike Mitchell and Charley Little, or Charley Little and Mike Mitchell, I couldn't hardly remember which one it was. Mike Mitchell and Charley Little, they had drilled some wells for us at Sour Lake. They went over and drilled a wildcat well over at Batson's Prairie, and one day they called up our manager in Beaumont, Mr. Lane, and told him that if he had any oil, to see it. If he wanted any land around there to get it, that they had drilled sixteen feet in the prettiest oil sand that they had ever drilled in and were pumping the mud to it to try to hold it down. Well, I immediately got an contact with Mr. Lee Trammell, our other partner, we went down to the Texas Company's Office in Sour Lake and asked the price of oil. They said 52 cents. Incidentally, we had 58,000 barrels of oil in storage. Well, our man, Trammell, says, "No," he says, "we'll wait till tomorrow." Next day he went back again, I didn't go, I had some other, something to attend to, he went back again, he said they're nothing but a bunch of thieves. He come back and they wouldn't give him but and I told them I'd take 52, and they wouldn't give me but 51. Well, that's what they were authorized to pay, so as a consequence, he didn't sell the oil. I was keeping track of the books and the money when there was any, and we had about, at that time about $3500 in the bank. Well, now let's hoop up old Nellie up to the buckboard and drive over there and take a option on some land. No, no, what do we want with any land? Well, to get something cheap around that well. No, no, well, long shot is what it was. They sold that 58,000 barrels of oil for 28 cents in place of and finally went over and bought three-quarters of an acre of land, way out in the edge of the piney woods to set up this air compressor plant on. Bought another air compressor, another thousand foot machine, blowed, put in a well there when their pressure would go down on them.

H., Jr.- How much did they have to pay for that land, three-quarter of an acre?

H.- They paid $2,500 for that land. That was just for room to set up this air plant.

H., Jr.- That left you a thousand dollars in your treasury, not counting your 28 cents a barrel for your 58,000 thousand ---

H.- No, but in less than thirty days from the time that well come in, we could have, well we could have taken an option on land around there at ten dollars an acre. Putting up ten dollars an acre with thirty days time to pay it out. But in thirty days time, all that land around in that immediate section sold for ten thousand dollars an acre. After we fooled around and furnished air for some of these small, smaller wells, one day I heard Mr, Trammell tell Mr. Lane, "I don't see why we didn't get in on the ground floor." And I stepped out between them and told them, I said, "The reason why is the: the idea was mine to buy this land, but I'm a kid and you're an old man but it didn't, it originated with me, it didn't set right with you and you didn't take it." Well, he said, "I guess that must be it, I don't know any other reason." "Well now give me $35 and I'm quitting the company." Well, I went to Mata, Matogorda, and went to work on a well in which Mr. Lane had an interest with Dr. Griffith.

H., Jr.- Now you was supposed to have a fourth interest in this pipeline company, weren't you?

H.- Yes, yes. They blowed everything in, and went off and left most of the stuff. Got no idea what waste there is around a place of that sort.

H., Jr.- Now what was this thousand cubic foot compressor, what do you mean thousand cubic feet. You mean you can pump a thousand cubic feet in a certain length of time, or what?

H.- That's pressure, that's the way it's measured. A thousand cubic feet a minute.

H., Jr.- Why don't you tell me some more about this air compression business. You say you furnished air, what was that air used for?

H.- For, put a one inch pipe down into the well, with a turn-back down at the bottom of the well, under the oil level, turn the air in and the air, compressed air in through that pipe and it throwed the oil out the top of the well like a natural gusher. But we'd have to keep the gauge at a certain pressure in the well so as not to blow it too dry or suck in water. And every day in one of these wells we was working, after salt water come in, they had to lower the pipe and raise it and lower it according to the moon.

H., Jr.- The moon.

H.- According to the moon. Wherever the moon was they had to lower the pipe as much as three feet.

H., Jr.- The water, the salt water, under the ground was affected by the ---

H.- ---the levels, the levels, the liquid level in the well wasaffected by the action of the moon, and everyday it had to be changed at that hour.

H,, Jr.- Well, it was, it was kinda underground tide then ---

H.- Well, can't say what that is -

H., Jr.- Well, the tides are caused by the moon, position of the moon.

H.,- Affected by the moon, the tides are, I know, but the -

H., Jr.- Well, it'd be the same thing wouldn't it for underground as for the ocean. Well, that's interesting, we want to bring that out. Well, this pressure that you applied was simply creating a drive in the reservoir, that's the language they use now. Drive in the reservoir. They talk a lot about secondary recovery now, there's, there's a water drive recovery when water is pumped into ---

H.- Yes.

H., Jr.- ---and old abandoned well, and that creates pressure,and they use also a gas drive, so all you were doing was using air for your drive. I thought those wells had enough gas pressure to go on flowing.

H.- When there's all so many wells together, the pressure comes down, and it don't throw them out when it don't flow, when the water gets up there, and it's a little thin capping of oil, and don't produce enough gas to force the oil out.

H., Jr.- Yes. Well, you can't pump it out either under those circumstances, can you?

H.- Well, that's why the compressed air come in handy. By lowering this pipe and keeping it above water level, with the turn-back it didn't agitate it below, it kept the turnback, and that made a suction, and sucked out the oil, and pushed it out the top. We got a hundred dollars a day for turning gas into wells.

H., Jr.- You let, you kept your pipe from going down into the water. You put it down to the base of the oil, is that it?

H.- Yes, put the oil, on the oil level, but not into the water.

H., Jr.- And you could tell whether or not you had it too low by whether or not you were forcing any water up to the surface.

H.- Oh, yes. If any water come out it would show.

H., Jr.- You didn't use compressed air in the drilling operation did you?

H.- No. Well, this well at Beaumont, at Matagorda, while I wasat Batson's Prairie, my brother Jess, and Lane's brother Will,were drilling a well down there for Dr. Griffith and Mr. Lane. And I kept the logs of the well. Well, I know that we had as much as 90 feet of crystallized sulfur according to the reports,drilling reports.

H., Jr.- What year was this?

H.- Well, that's hard to say.

H., Jr.- It was about 1916, wasn't it?

H.- No, no, that was about 1904.

H., Jr.- Oh, before you went to Mexico.

H.- I believe about 1903 ---

H., Jr.- Well, you came --- H.- Batson's Prairie to Matagorda.

H., Jr.- Well, you came back up and drilled a well down there later.

H.- 1916, yes. But that's another thing. And they furnished me that report. They drilled a well with gas, from an old well that had been drilled there many years before. I said not many years before but several years before. Was an abandoned well.

H., Jr.- Was it as capped well?

H.- No, it wasn't, just running wild, we put a cap on it, and used the gas for ---

H., Jr.- You mean the gas was just escaping all over the country all that time?

H.- There wasn't much gas, there wasn't much gas to it, it was plenty to fire the boiler with, we fired the boiler with it. And we finally got on that well; I was working as a roughneck on that, Will Lane, my brother Jess, a Pennsylvania driller, and his pet fireman, old Jake. Boiler was about three hundred years away from the rig, and Jake wouldn't take, wouldn't go to the trouble to clean out his burner, and getting things so they could furnish the water supply - that the boiler needed; as a consequence we just run half the time, and shut down the other half while he got up steam to run another half hour. --end of tape.