W. M. Hudson Interview - W. M. Hudson Interview [part 3 of 6]

PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL TOPIC: Beaumont; Sour Lake NAME: W. M. Hudson INTERVIEWER: Wilson M. Hudson, Jr. PLACE: Austin, TexasTAPE NO. 80 DATE 9/18/52 RESTRICTIONS: None

Wi|son.- What is your name, Mr. Hudson?

Hudson.- Wilson Mathis Hudson. Born at Waldron, LaVaca County, Texas, on December 7, 1877. My father was a immigrant from the state of Tennessee to Mexico till Texas, after it was liberated from Mexico in 1852, from Winchester County, Tennessee, Franklin County, Winchester, Tennessee. My mother was born at Ruttersville near La Grange, Texas, Fayette County. I was moved without my consent before I remembered anything about it, up to Post Oak, north of Flatonia, Texas, where I resided. From there I went to high school in Flatonia, finished the high school, and earned the 11th grade. Later I went to the Lebanon, Ohio, to a normal school, from there to Valparaiso, Indiana, and returned to Texas when I finished my studies there.

W.- What did you study?

H.- Well, I studied for engineering, civil engineering. First opportunity, or job I had presented, was digging holes, put in telephone poles, through the center of my town, at $25 a month. While digging some holes in front of the principal stores in town, some of my school girls, mates, schoolmates passed by and one remarked, "Why look there, there's Wilson Hudson. What are you doing?" Well, I said, "If you can't see you should get some --pg. 2--glasses." "Well, but you're just out of the university and here doing a nigger's work." "Well, I think that's more honorable than sitting around doing nothing." Well I worked a month for this company. At the end of the month I was called Into town. I'd gone down below Engel Switch. I was notified by my father that they wanted to see me in the bank. So I went over to. the bank, and the president of the bank said, "Wilson, says we've decided we need a boy here in this bank and we've decided to give you the job." Well I said, "Mr. McCommren, I'm working, I've got a job." "Yes, but you know you're outdoors in the weather, and cold and rain and everything like that, and here in the bank you have a chance to learn something that would be useful to you. Well, what are they paying you?" I said, "Paid me $25 this month, say they're going to raise my wage to $35 next month." "Well, we'll give you that to start with. Come over here Monday morning and go to work." That was Sunday. I worked in the bank till 1898, when the Spanish-American War broke out, so I was being very patriotic, I joined the state militia, moved over to La Grange, and then from there to Camp Mabry, Austin, where I was mustered into the service. But after I had special permission by writing to my father and mother to join the army. I was not of age.

W.- Did Mr. Kerr organize that troop?

H.- No, I don't know. Well, after the Spanish-American War, I was discharged from the army in San Antonio, Texas, on December 20, '98. Returned to Flatonia, and the banker told me, "If you will remember, I promised you your job when you returned from the army. It's ready for you." Well I said, "I'd like to rest up a little bit." "Well," he said, "Go up to the mountains in Llano County, come back whenever you feel like it, your job is waiting for you." But I left with the intentions of not going back to work in the bank, because the year and a half I did work there I didn't like the housework, inside. Well, I went to, then went to Oklahoma, in Paul's Valley.

W.- It wasn't called Oklahoma then, was it?

H.- No, It was the Indian Territory, and called Paul's Valley in the Chickasaw Country, and went in with a bunch of two thousand, two hundred and fifty head of calves off the Blocker Ranch down on the border. After the grass came In the spring, the cattle was shipped up to the Osage Indian Reservation, and I shipped up after the cattle and started farming in the spring. And that fall, on November 29, '99, I was married to Ann Byrd Hudson of Flatonia.

W.- Ann Byrd Brown.

H.- Ann Byrd Brown, was Ann Byrd Hudson.

W.- How did you get your land in Oklahoma?

H.- Well, while I was in Oklahoma, they had a land drawing in, in the Chickasaw, Kiwaw, and Comanche country where they had a land drawing by, sponsored by the government, and I was lucky enough to draw a 160 acres of land, homesteaded it. And after it was proved up, I sold that, and went back to the Osage Country for a short time. I was called on in 1901 to Beaumont by Mr. T. W. Lane, manager of the London Oil and Pipeline Company.

W.- Where did you know Mr. Lane before?

H.- Why Mr. Lane was raised in Flatonia. He was a few years older than I was, and after his mother died, he and his brother Will lived at my father's house, so we're like, almost like brothers.

W.- Who else had formed the London Pipe Line Company?

H.- Mr. E. A. Arnett of Flatonia, Mr. T. P. McCommren of Flatonia.

W.- He was the president of the bank, wasn't he?

H.- He was president of the First National Bank of Flatonia.Well, the first day I went down Mr. Lane put me to work as a gauger to replace Mr. Percy Fason from La Grange. He was a happy go-lucky, well-met fellow, and didn't pay any too much attention to the company's business. As a consequence he was losing from 800 to 3,000 barrels of oil a month from not being exact in his gauging. Well, Mr. Lane showed me all the tanks where they were receiving oil, and showed me how to measure and receive and suck out the oil and close up the valves and put on a chain with a lock so that there wouldn't be any back oil that did come out of the wells.

W.- A half inch in the difference in the gauge reading would mean hundreds of gallons difference in your total, wouldn't it?

H.- Oh, yes. That depends on the size of the tank, but in a big tank, a big steel tank I don't think, I think an inch is about 2,500 barrels. Well, I was very particular about the gauging operations, and at the end of the first month on a check-up, I had gained about three hundred barrels. And from that time on, as long as I worked with the pipeline company, I was never short, with the exception of one time. In the spring of the year, couldn't resist the temptation to go fishing. So I was receiving oil from the Texas Company tanks, and I went and took the firs gauge, and asked my brother to take the back gauge.

W.- Jessie Hudson.

H.- J. L. Hudson.

W.- Jessie Lane Hudson.

H.- So I then took the train for Port Arthur and during the, the next morning early, went down on Mr. Gates' private pier, took a bath, got my fishing line in the creek, and right into the middle of a bunch of nice trout, and it wasn't long till I had the basket full. Well, I was feeling very nice about then. I went on back to Beaumont, when I got to Beaumont I met the manager of the company, Mr. Lane. He says, "What do you mean by going away without asking anybody's permission." "Well, what's wrong about it?" "Well," he says, "what's wrong about it is it's cost the company two thousand five hundred barrels of oil." He said, "We've lost that." Well, my face began to get pretty long about then, and I racked my brain for more than a month trying to figure out where it was, so I decided that it was the, only thing could have been a, been a misgauge in the Texas tank where my brother had taken it, was the only one I hadn't taken. Then I asked him to see the Texas Company and see if they had taken any oil out, or put any oil in this tank, where we had taken out our oil last in the meantime. And was told that they hadn't moved anything in or out. Then I requested them to send their gauger, and we went over and took the back gauge, and we find that there was the difference, because there was sediment in the bottom of the tank, and when I took the first gauge, I worked at the plumb bottom through the sediment to the bottom of the tank, and my brother probably took the gauge from the top of the sediment which made the difference.

W.- And inch of sediment, or two inches of sediment would makea lot of difference, wouldn't it?

H.- Oh, yes. Well---

W.- How did the London Pipeline Company operate?

H.- They purchased oil from the producers, and shipped it, sold it, shipped out on the Santa Fe Railroad and on the -- what'd Icall the other one? Had a loading rack on the Kansas City Southern, and one on the Santa Fe.

W.- How far away was the Santa Fe?

H.- The Santa Fe was seven kilometers from our pump station.

W.- Seven miles?

H.- Seven miles, yes.

W.- And the other station was closer?

Ho- The other station was probably less than a half a mile from our pump station and in sight. Our pump station was, and tanks was just across the fence of the Higgins Tank Farm.

W.- What Higgins was that?

H.- Patillo Higgins. Then, one day as I was gauging on the hill a man came up from the pump station telling me that the tank had busted, me to go in a hurry, to go to the tank and looked over the fire wall I see a stream of salt water coming out from under the tank, probably an inch in diameter, which looked pretty scary. Went to the telephone, they called me on the phone, had all, word in the office, the manager was in Austin. And the office told me that they were making arrangements with the Texas Company, to pump the oil over to the Texas Company. Well, we had a direct connection with the Texas Company's tanks, and they had a connection with our line that they could load in our Santa Fe loading rack. But it would cost two cents and a half a barrel to pump this oil over, over to the Santa Fe.

W.- That's what the Texas Company would charge you for its services?

H.- They'd charge two cents and a half a barrel for the services. Well, the tank was full, had 37,500 barrels which is some little money.

W.- How much was oil worth at that time?

H.- I, around twenty, twenty, twenty-five cents. Then they called me so often on the telephone and telling me so many things, that I finally took the receiver off the hook and left it hang. Went out on the Shell road and picked up a couple of wagons going by empty, and asked them to bring me each one a wagon load of four inch pipe from the hill. They finally brought me down two wagons loads of four inch pipe that had been through some fire but had been re-threaded, good enough for short connection. And anyway, in the meantime, I had made arrangements with the office of the Higgins Oil Company, that they'd loan me one of their nearest tanks, it had very little oil in it. And they sent their gauger over and took the gauge and put a lock on their gauge panel. And by night, that was about four o'clock in the afternoon, by dark we had the line in and oil going into the tank. Left the gauger, Preston, left the pumper Preston, and told him not to stop the pump until he got out the last drop of oil. Well, there was some water and sediment in the bottom of this tank; it helped out some. But anyway, there was no oil came out of the tank on, no waste of it out of the tank. It was all by daylight pumped over into the other tank. Meantime the office force had got connections with the manager, and he drove out in a buggy from Beaumont.

W.- That was Mr. Lane.

H.- Mr. Lane.

W.- Tom Lane.

H.- --drove up beside the firewall and jumped out of the buggy and jumped up on the wall and looked down to see the, how much oil there was out, there wasn't anything but a little salt water, and he says, "All the oil pumped over to the Texas Company?" I said, "No, there's none of it." "Well, where is it?" I said, "Right over there, where that pipeline goes over there. It cost us two cents to have, a barrel to get it back if we pumped it over there." Said, "It looks like I don't need that office force."

W.- Well, it would have cost you two and a half cents to pump it to the Texaco Company, but what did Mr. Higgins charge you?

H.- Nothing.

W.- Didn't charge you anything at all?

H.- No. Well, we finally got our connections cleared up, and started in to patch the tanks, and Mr. Lane put in two tank men. After cleaning out we find that from the vibrations from the oil being flowed into the tank and pumped into it, and pumped out of it, that the timber that supported the roof had worked the bottom sheets so much, that the strings of rivets as many as, as much as ten feet long, that all the rivets were worked out. Mr. Lane put two mechanics in, and at the end of the week, they had put in 1700 rivets. I was keeping track of their time, so I paid them off.

W.- How much did you pay them?

H.- I paid them five dollars a day each, and Mr. Lane paid them off, before Mr. Lane, and before them, I told Mr. Lane, I said tell these boys not to come back. He said, "Why, they haven't near finished." I said no, they never will. I said leave it alone and let me fix it. So the next Monday morning I went to town and got me a ratchet and a drill and a set of dies and a set of cap screws with washers and with the asbestos cards, and at the end of the week, I'd put in nearly three thousand rivets by myself in odd times, when I had time to spare from gauging tanks on the hill, --

W.- And those two men together had put in only 1500.

H.- 1700.

W.- 1700, in a whole weeks' time.

H.- Yes. Well, I had several boiler explosions while I was there. One boiler, the center boiler of a battery of five, exploded once and the fireman was standing on the boiler for some reason. It must have been a dry boiler and he must have turned some water in through some stop-cock he opened, and the boiler exploded, and they find one of his legs about forty-feet up in the derrick, hanging in the derrick, just scattered him all over the countryside. And another boiler explosion, it, across the road from a friend of mine's house, an old man. I don't even knew what he did, but I know that I visited him every time I went by his shack. This boiler exploded and took a jump of about a hundred feet in the direction of his house, and as it come over, one of the flues came out of the boiler and went diagonally through the door of his house and didn't splinter the wood, a two inch flue, just a hole went through diagonally through his house and the old man was sitting at his table and it went over one eye. When the flue was sticked up his eye, and his brains dropped out the end of the flue.

W.- My goodness, awful.

H.- Well, they had a fire at Hogg-Swayne once when I was up at Flatonia, visiting my family. When I returned I hardly knew the place.

W.- The Hogg-Swayne field? H.- Hogg-Swayne district, I --

W.- Named after the Hogg family and Swayne department.

H.- Yes, Jim Hogg and Swayne. It burnt off all the derricks, and there's been so much, reported to have been a thousand wells on that hill, and there's so much cuttings come out of that well and sand pumped out till the ground had built up and built up so that when we finally started to break up and take out our pipelines which had been buried at a depth of about two feet we find as much as eight feet on top of the pipeline in places, but we decided to leave, be cheaper to leave it in the ground than it was to take it out.

W.- The ground had just built up from the cuttings and the sand that had been washed out.

H.- Built up from the sand and the cuttings out of the drilling wells there was so many of them. Sometimes the feet of the derricks were crossed and not room to put a twenty-four foot derrick in without encroaching on the other fellow's property. Well ---

W.- That must have made a problem for the slush pits.

H.- Along in 1902, Mr. Lane came over one day from Sour Lake, and told me that he had bought a strip of the shoestring district.

W.- Well, what is the shoestring district?

H.- The shoestring is a piece of land adjoining the Texas Company property, the Texas Company had a shell road along that property, with a toll gate to allow anybody to go in with their material, had to have a permit. And these strips are about forty feet wide, wide enough to build a derrick and maybe stack a few joints of pipe, set up our boiler, between derricks, and run back something like a mile, back in the piney woods. Well, during the operations, before I left Beaumont, two wells were drilled. One on the back end of this strip, about a thousand yards from the Texas Company road which made a thick emulsion. It was never completed as a profitable well.

W.- It was just gummy stuff.

H.- Gummy mush, emulsion. The well on the road next to the Texas Company's property made about a six hundred barrel well.

Later on we drilled another one adjoining it, just a derrick's space between.

W.- The London Pipeline Company was drilling that?

H.- No, that's, the London Pipeline Company expired at Beaumont. This was our partnership which was T. W. Lane, J. L. Hudson, W. G .Lane, Mr. Lane's brother, and Lee Trammell, and myself.

W.- Are you at Batson's Prairie now?

H.- No, Sour Lake.

W.- Still at, at Sour Lake.

H.- Yes. Well, the second well was drilled about six hundred barrels. In the meantime, our partners, before I went to, went to Sour Lake from Beaumont, I had put up a air compressor plant and were furnishing air for some of these wells that the pressure was going down on and didn't flow. And in one of these wells, when the, began the pressure to go down in most of the region there, we had to lower the pipe with a turnback on it, every change of the moon. The, the, the level of the oil was, was changed with the change of the moon, and we had to work that pipe up and down as much as two or three feet, so as to hold it in pure oil.

W.- Well, the oil was resting on salt water and salt water rose up and down just like the tides of the ocean, didn't it?

H.- Apparently something like that.

W.- You put your bottom of your turnback pipe just at the base of the oil, and blew up the oil so that you wouldn't get any salt water.

H.- Not close enough that it would agitate and bring up salt water.

W.- You just create an artificial pressure there.

H.- Well, one day Mr. Lane called up from Beaumont and said that Mike Mitchell and Charley Little had been drilling a wildcat well over at Batson Prairie which is 14 miles from Sour Lake, had called him on the phone and told him that if he had any oil to sell it. That if he wanted any land to get it, that they had drilled sixteen feet in the prettiest oil sand that they had ever drilled in, and that they were pouring the water and mud to it to try to hold it down. Well, I immediately took Mr. Lee Trammell into my confidence, we went to the Texas Company office in Sour Lake, to offer our oil which was 58,000 barrels in storage with them. They that day offered 52 cents a barrel for it. Mr. Trammell wanted 53, but they could only pay what they was authorized to pay; there was no deal. Next day I prevailed on Mr. Trammell to go back the second time. After his trip he come back and he said that they're a bunch of bandits. Said I offered to take 52 and they only offered me 51 and said I told them to go to hell. As a consequence we finally sold our oil for 28 cents in place of 51 which they would have give us that day. And I tried to get Mr. Trammell to take Nellie and the buggy and what money we had on hand, which was about $3,500 and go to Batson Prairie and take an option on land, which could have been taken at $10 an acre, for thirty days. "No, no, what we want with any land, we don't want any land." Well, two days after the well came in, reported to be making a twenty thousand barrel well, twenty thousand barrels and finally settled down to a ten thousand barrel producer. Within thirty days after this well came in, land was selling all around the field for $10,000 an acre. Mr. Trammell and Mr. Lane finally bought out in the edge of the piney woods, considered to be outside of the field, three-quarters of an acre of land to set up our compressor plant on, and bought another compressor plant. Well, it cost us the most of, the compressor plant and moving over from Sour Lake to Batson Prairie, and when the roads were muddy, cost a big percentage of the money that we got out of the sale of our oil. We had a wagon and team of our own, but only four horses. And moving over in that stuff, had a man by the name of Mayfield with the team, was a good teamster. Sent him back once after two boiler pumps, small boiler pumps. He was gone two days. When he drove in at night, he had eleven boiler pumps on the wagon. Pretty good rustler. He said as soon, soon as he'd catch a fireman walk away from his place, if he didn't have his pump running, he'd take his wrench, and take, loosen it up, and move it out in the dark, and come around the back way and get it and put it on his wagon.

W.- He just did that on his own, didn't he?

H.- Did that on his own, no we didn't have any use but for two boiler pumps. Well, after we set up our air-compressor plant, Ed Trammell, a brother of Lee Trammell had a drilling contract and drilled a well and was in oil but couldn't make it flow. Making quite a lot of gas and we laid our line, our first work. We laid our line from our plant over to this well and turned the oil, turned water, turned air in it, and instructed the fireman, when they got up to four hundred pounds pressure, to cut off the, to cut off the engine. Well, we finally turned the air in after we got things rigged up, rigged up an eight inch pipe and I went with a P coming straight out on a horizontal, and turned the air in. It run up to four hundred pounds and when it got up to four hundred pounds, it seemed like the pipe just extended on out, looked like a solid piece of clay that come out of that pipe, it come out under so much pressure, just extended right on out, looked like this same pipe extended. Well, the pressure kept working up on the well, there was no shut down on that, so I had to run back to the plant about four hundred yards, got there, and closed down the air-compressor. When I came back, after the oil came out, a driller went in to close the valve on this well. My brother went on the edge of the derrick to watch him, but the gas was very poisonous. Well, this boy, just as he got the well closed, the gas over, he was overcome by gas and he fell over on the derrick floor and my brother dragged him off. And Ed Trammell the driller, was off to one side and he had a little pony tied down off to apiece, and he thought more of that pony than he did anything else, and the pony began to cough and snort and fall down and get up and be affected by the gas also, and he tried to go to his pony and the same thing happened to him. So we had to drag him out to fresh air. But the pony eventually got over it. Well now, that gas was so inflammable, that in the flow tanks, they had two flow tanks, to flow well into, so they could flow into one, while they was taking out of the other one. They, in these cypress tanks they'd put in about, about a yard from the top, a false bottom, and fill in with dirt on top. Below this false bottom they'd put in, a vent pipe for the gas to escape while it was flowing in this tank, and they had had some experience with that bad gas, so they ordered everybody to put in a jet, a steam jet in the mouth of this pipe, so that if the, when you changed a well to the other tank, if there wasn't sufficient gas to carry the flames far away, this steam jet would put it out to where you would, the fire would follow back to the pipe and explode the tank.

W.- Who made that order?

H.- Well, it was a common agreement amongst everybody.

W.- Oh.

H.- But seemed like Mr. Trammell was in too big a hurry to get out his oil and he didn't put in this steam jet, so something happened to the well one day, and Mr. Trammell apparently was in such a hurry to get out his oil he didn't follow the regulations of putting in this steam jet, but had to set his gas there, it was such a venement gas it would have poisoned everybody in the fields.

W.- Had to light his gas flare?

H.- Yes, lit the gas flare alright. Something went wrong with the well one day, probably clogged up through some more of this gum ball that we had blowed out of the well with the compressed air, and it stopped flowing. When it did, the gas followed back, and exploded the tank and burned up everything in that edge of the field.

W.- Flame went right back into the flow tank.

H.- Yes. And at the same, or about that same time, there was another well, about, I'd say two hundred yards from there, I heard an explosion one day, and the rattling of tubing and looked in time to see the tubing moving in the top of the derrick, three triple joints. Well, that explosion was in a flow tank also, of a cypress, green cypress lumber, the gauger had been on this tank, and what caused the explosion nobody ever knew. But from the explosion, it set this waste afire, which it was finally put out by chemical extinguishers. The gauger was killed. The tank was, from the explosion all these two inch stays of this cypress tank were cut off at the level, at the oil level. The rest of the tank held the oil, there was no leak in that well, but it shot off the, entirely everything on top. At Sour Lake we had a two story frame building. When we moved over to Batson Prairie, we tore down the building, and rebuilt it in Batson Prairie, out in the piney woods. Well, one day I was picking up puring oil in the creek, that passed right close to the house. And it got, so much fuel oil had run on me that it wouldn't make much difference if I had it everywhere, so I waded into the creek. Later took a bath, rolled in sand --end of tape--