William Philp Interview - William Philp Interview [part 2 of 2]

Owens: Mr. Philp, I would like to ask you about health conditions at Spindletop In those early days.

Philp: My health was fairly good. Old Dr. Reagan was our doctor. I called him a horse doctor. When they got sick, he'd just come out and roll them around a few times and give them some good strong medicine and they would get up and be going again. He was my family doctor. I had very little expense with medical and doctor's care on Spindletop. I just have been well all my life, practically.

All but one time that -- in 1904 I started to Spindletop and I had a little mishap on the road and then had to go back home and I was un-conscious for a day, fact of the matter. It was kind of a brain trouble, and that was all. And when I went down to get some life insurance and Dr. Reagan says, "Say, Philp, you ever been sick in your life?" and I says, "Well, I had a little something the doctors didn't know what was the matter with me," and I says, "I just called it brain trouble." "Well," he says, "forget it. Don't say nothing about it."

So that's about all of the sickness I've had until this last summer here, I was milking a cow out there, and I had something like the flu, and my knees just got so weak that I just couldn't get up when I got down. And my foot slipped one day and I fell over against the door and I just couldn't get up. My little grand-daughter was sitting there and I said, "Mary, give me a pull-in." Well, I got a hold of her hand and she pulled and pulled and she turned loose and I was trying to help.

If I'd have flopped over on my hands and knees I would have got up but I was just leaning in such a careen and the cow was standing there and I was holding up a gallon of milk; and here come my wife, and she was scared, and then she run over and gets a neighbor. He comes in there and he gets me on my feet and just brings me in here on his cot and I lay here until old Dr. Mills comes out and he said, "I'll give you a shot of penicillin and medicine and you'll be all right in a few days. And I began to get strength in my knees. It was just the flu I think, that's all. And I just been going ever since.

O. Well, wasn't there a lot of sickness out at Spindletop, though?

P. There was quite a few families that had sicknesses. There was one family that had a little girl that died and I thought of her name a while ago. And she died out there, and well, they was poor people. And I went and got the coffin for them and then we had a minister to take them down and bury them, bury the little girl. But as a rule, most everybody that was sick was pretty well cared for by the hotel keepers. They would get them to the hospital right away or into some home and I don't remember of any long sickness, more than like that old fellow, MacChesney, that would get drunk and he would come out there and be sick for maybe a day or two and then get up and go to work again.

O. There was no special burying ground for Spindletop, was there?

P. No, none nearer than the Magnolia, My brother had a little girl to die out there when they first came down to Spindletop. He came

down first, my "brother Pierce, he's dead now, Martha Dee was her name, and she was ailing and quite sick and she never did get well and she died out there. That was about all the deaths. Besides -- oh, there would be some sickness. Now there used to be what was known as being gassed. You'd get a gas, that sulphuric acid would get into your eyes and you'd be blind. You just couldn't see nothing. Well, it got in my eyes there for nearly a week. Well, I just -- the only thing you can do is to go to bed and get some beef and just put beef or any drawing poultice over your eyes and draw that gas out of it. Well, that bothered me for about a week. And most everybody would get gassed, they would just be laid up -- blind, they couldn't see.

O. Did anybody get killed by gas that know of out there?

P. Yes, but I can't call their names. I got knocked out twice with gas. I was pouring water down into a gas well where the boys had been bailing and the gas was so strong they had to run off and get away from it. And to pour water down in there, about a five gallon can, why you'd kill the gas. And I was standing up there pouring water in that hole and thought I'd kill the gas. I was fireman, and sitting around there waiting on new steam, so pretty soon my breath commenced to stop coming. And the boys saw what was the matter and they just run and grabbed me and throwed me out on the side there and rolled me around a little and I was all right. Just knocked out. But it will take your breath and you'll just die. And I understand there was one or two parties but I don't know who they were that got gassed out -- got killed.

O. Did you ever have a man killed on one of your rigs?

P. No, we never did. We had one of our drillers killed -- Bert Rambeau. He was a good driller and a good man but he was a little wild in pulling casing and tubing and he was stuck. And he was pulling a well for -- I forget the name of the company now that he was working for. He quit us boys and was drilling that well and he got stuck and says, "I'm going to pull it out." And the boys all got away from him. He had a good crew of men and they got back and says, "Now Bert, be careful there." He kept a-heaving and a-heaving and he says, "Well, if the crown starts in why I'll get out of the way." Well, the crown -- he just turned the engine wide open and just give it all the power and pretty soon, in come the crown block.

Well, he made a run and had got nearly out of the reach of that timber that fell towards him, and hit him on the head and killed him dead as an Indian and he never did know what hit him -- Bert Rambeau. That was one of the boys that was killed on Spindletop, and there were several others out there that got wounded or hurt pretty bad. Now, Claude Dirk fell back off of a cistern out there. He went up to look into it and his foot give away and he went over backwards and broke his leg there. Man, he had a bad time -- and getting it all straight. Maybe he told you about it.

And several others got a pretty hard bump. My brother at one time got knocked out for a little while. He was letting in the tubing, or casing, which ever it was, and the lever on the brake was a long bar of iron that stuck out about five or six feet. Well, that would come up as high as your head. If you happened to be in the way of it, it would knock you down, or split your head open. Well, he was standing a little too close and it hit my brother in the head and just knocked him out. It didn't hurt him bad, it just barely touched him. And

things like that would happen quite often to some of the boys that were learning how to handle brakes in dry weather and how sudden to put them on and various things in drilling. And my brother used to say, "Now, I'm watching the crew, and the crew watches the drilling outfit." Taking care of the well he never had a man hurt on his rigging. He says, "I'm watching the crew," and he sees a man in a bad place and he'd tell him to get out -- get away from there. There used to be blowouts and maybe a man in the derrick. Well, I've seen some men come down in a hurry when the gas would start right up in the center of the derrick. Get out of the derrick, first; that was the main thing they had to do, get out of the derrick.

And I seen a gas fire out there, down on the rails. When the deep wells come in, why they would come in with a roar and sometimes they would get afire. They would set themselves afire with a spark may be coming out of the ground on the casing head. Well, that would be a stream of fire going up to the top of the derrick, maybe eighty-five, maybe a hundred and twenty foot derrick. And the other thing is getting away from that. And sometimes they could smother it out and sometimes - well, the only bad fire they had out there, they had to send for experts to come put it out. And finally they got it out.

O. You didn't see any of the big fires in the early part of the field?

P. No. That was before my day. On that five acre lease, there was a big twenty-five thousand barrel tank of oil and it got afire, somehow - whether lightning struck it or whether it come from some other source. But It burnt down and the iron - it was built out of

good boiler iron -- just begin to crumble as the fire went down, why the iron would melt and would corrode up and shrink and go down. It went plumb down to the ground, but they had a bank of dirt around it and that was filled with oil and it finally all went down and just left the bottom covered up with dirt. That was the only -- well, I didn't see that fire -- but that was on the lease and it's out there to this day, the bank is, and some of the old iron Is under the ground, I guess. There Is a big water tank over it now on that old Philp Brothers lease. That's a five acre lease.

O. Did you know of any killings out there while you were there -- murders or shooting scrapes?

P. I don't call to memory anybody that was carrying guns for one another. While lots of the boys always had a gun around them or in their car -- but there was no scraps, I don't believe.

O. All that had passed too, had it?

P. In the early days, the first year I was down there, why I went over to the Woodmen of the World lodge meeting one night. Well, there was a lot of the good Woodsmen there and they wanted me to go. Well, I had just joined the Woodmen of the World In Caldwell, 199th number, and was interested and there was three or four saloons that we had to pass. Well, when the lodge was dismissed we started home and then, the friend was going with me, I forget his name, heard a terrible racket in the back of the saloon and It sounded like there was the biggest fight that you ever heard there and he said, "Come on let's get away from here. We don't want to see none of that." So I hurried on and got off of that saloon district. It was kinda called, "Hell's Half-Acre," I think, around there.

O. Is that right? How many saloons were there? I think you may have mentioned earlier.

P. I can't remember how many there was but there was just a row of them right around a circle there in the early days. But they began to drop off and drop off and they just kinda got into a drug store. Old Dr. Thomas would have a little toddy and then he would make it if they run out. And as for having fights and such as that, why it didn't get around where I was.

O. Did you work in any of the other fields like Sour Lake, Batson and Saratoga?

P. I never did. In the meantime there was agents over there selling land. My brother brought a tract of land in Sour Lake and his wife's still got it and the taxes haven't been paid and it's over there yet, I reckon. But I stayed right on Spindletop and there was a land agent come around a time or two to say, "I've got a tract, twenty thousand acres down here at Glasgow and it's throwed open to settlers and you got a year to buy it in -- twenty dollars a month, ten dollars for a tract of five acres -- they'll give you a city lot if you'll buy it." Well, I pitched in and bought two and paid it out in a year's time and got a deed to it and still holding it, one of the tracts. I sold the other tract not long ago. Got my money back pretty well. Kept the taxes up. That's one of the big things -- keeping the taxes up.

O. Well, you couldn't be called a boomer, then.

P. Well, I guess not. There was another fellow come along, fact of the business, he was a choir leader in the First Methodist Church, selling sulphur rights in Culberson County, West Texas.- 6 -

Well, nothing would do but I must buy ten tracts of land. And oh, they were just little bits of tracts, ten feet square, Well, I just pitched in, I said, "Here, I've got a thousand dollars here, I'll just take a leap in the dark." He says, "Well, there was a volcano there," he said. And one of my neighbors went out there and he says, "Well, that's one of the biggest things in the world for sulphur." And he went out there and he says, "I'm going to take stock In it."

And I pitched in and took a thousand dollars worth of stock in that, that little old-I still hold the deed but I haven't paid the taxes. I don't know, but I wrote out there, here a while back. Bill McNeil was my lawyer. He says, "Well, the county clerk says, 'Well, the taxes hasn't been paid and it's all been forgotten.'" I never did pry into it until the other day. One of the boys, the sulphur men out here have scouts that goes around all over Texas and the United States finding those sulphur tracts. And I give him the data and told him to go out to Culberson County and see if there wasn't any sulphur out there and if them tracts of land was any account we'd pay up the taxes and maybe get some money out of it. Well, I haven't heard from him. He said he was going out there this summer. That's all the booming I've ever done, and that's been away from home.

O. You didn't feel like following the fields as they opened?

P. No, I stayed right at Spindletop. Always had that lease there and when the boys -- my brother John wanted to, he went out wildcatting, and my brother Pierce went out in the grocery business. He was gone out several years and when the 1918 strike come on, he went back to work out there and then we took him in as a partner the second time. He stayed with us until he died.

O. I'd like to ask you about some of the people you knew. Did you know either one of the Sharp brothers?

P. Sharp - I've heard of that name quite often.

O. Walter Sharp and Jim Sharp.

P. Never had any particular business with them.

O. Patillo Higgins.

P. Well, I've heard of Higgins, quite a lot of Higgins, but I never did see him that I know of. He was gone when the gusher was all over, Higgins left his sign there and I saw where the oil was caught and where it was caught afire. The railroad had a bank up there and throwed in stuff and had the biggest pile of oil that you ever saw there. They finally got rid of it. And then lightning would strike. One of the biggest fires they ever had was in what was known as the Hogg-Swayne.

Fire got out there one night, I was batching down in the boiler house, heard them whistles and looked out and there was the Hogg-Swayne, About a thousand derricks was all got afire and some oil tanks and waste oil and was just going up. It wasn't long till that was swept just as clean as a broom. And that's where old Governor Hogg come in and made some money, I guess. Then the Keith-Ward -- old Keith went up there, Keith-Ward, it never did burn out, I don't believe. But Keith-Ward is known out there today and Hogg-Swayne, they call that. Sulphur people's got everything out there now, nearly.

O. You didn't know Governor Hogg when he was operating?

P. Never did see him, but I've known lots of him and he was a great old gentleman.

O. Do you remember some of the stories you heard about him?

P. Well, we had a little party up at Caldwell and old Governor Hogg was in the office at the time. And he come down to visit; the Jenkins Lumber Company and he was so fat and so tired they tell on him that he was talking there to the Lumber Company and he just went sound asleep. That's about the only story I ever heard on old Governor Hogg.

O. I wonder if he was embarrassed when he woke up? Do you remember any of the characters among the roughnecks that you had out at Spindle top?

P. Old man Mac McGowan was a good driller and he was a good whiskey drinker and he finally married one of the nicest little girls out there and sobered up and went down to Corpus Christi, I understand, and was drilling the last I heard of him, Fred Tufteller--they called him Razor - he was a great hustler and a driller and could just make a lunge at most anything in the oil business but he loved his wiskey and folks wouldn't depend on him. I don't know what become of old Fred. He'd come up to a well and he'd look at it, and we'd finish up a well and he'd say, "Well now, that's cap rock oil because it's black," There's two or three stratas of oil out there and there's a different color in every strata. The shallow oil is green and he'd look at the oil and he'd say, "I know where you're getting it from." He was that sort of a driller.

O. He was really right on it then.

P. Well, he was pretty correct in judging where oil come from.

O. I wonder if you listened to many of the stories that the rough necks told -- stories about Gib Morgan, for instance?

P. I never paid much attention to the stories that was being told around. When the radio come on -- why that come on several years

later -- we had a radio out at Spindletop, I'd sit and listen to that and hear all kinds of stories over the radio.

O. But you never listened to the roughnecks and their story-telling?

P. No. No, I never. The fellow says I just took David's advice in the First Psalm, "This is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly." I just stayed away from the ungodly bunch and then I've been able to stay here ever since, for some reason another, the good Lord's keeping me here.

O. If you had to do it over again would you go back over the same route?

P. Well Sir, I heard a bishop preach and he was Bishop Galloway from Mississippi. He says, "If I had my life to live over, I'd go right back to Mississippi and I'd start as a little boy, and I'd come out on down to where I am today." And I don't believe that I could do much better than to go back when my father started me out when I was in Wisconsin, a little five year old boy come to Texas and herding sheep and growing up with the sheep for ten or eleven years, and then coming back Into the business of life. That's a -I'd just do just about like I've been doing, I believe if I had to do it over again. And I'd make some little improvements perhaps on some things. I used to be very impatient and couldn't wait for anything to happen but I think I'd be a little more patient now and let things take their course in whatever business it was.

O. You think you'd go right through the oil business again?

P. In my youth, but I couldn't do nothing now, you know. I'm subject to heart ailments. The old doctor says, "Now, when you feel that pain coming up on your chest and in your arms, why you sit down, because your heart ain't getting blood just right." But

I kinda got over that. He gave me a little bottle of nitroglycerin He says, "Put one of these pills under your tongue whenever you feel it coming." And I never have used the little bottle. He said, "Just keep it in your pocket." But there have been several men died of that heart failure and I've just got to be careful. I'll take my lawnmower - that's my main job now-is to keep my yard cut. And I push that lawnmower and sometimes I feel that ache and my heart can't handle the blood that the muscles need to push the lawnmower. I've just got to sit down and wait till this blood can flow around over my body and I feel my strength again. That's about the way I am today but when I was a young man, I never had anything like that to bother me.

I could run. One time I remember-it brings to my mind that a calf got out of the lot and I says, "Little fellow, I'm going to head you or slow you up." I got him by the tail and I went plumb around the field and when I come back I was just nearly out and down for wind. Well, I don't know whether that throwed me or not, but I was out for a week, maybe, for that race that I made there. Doctor said he thought it was pneumonia, but It didn't last long. That's about all the youth sickness I ever had. And that spell that I had in 1900, and the doctors didn't know what was the matter with me-brain trouble, I guess.

O. Yes. Well, when you were at Spindletop you could work just as many hours as you needed to?

P. Yes, we all put In twelve hours to start with; and then later on it begin to cut down to eight hours and I think the eight hour system is all over the hill, now. And they've cut out two days a week out of lots of the Spindletop boys' working.

O. What all jobs did you do when you were drilling wells out there?

P. Well, I was -- being the oldest boy in the company -- told to take care of the records. Well, I kept the records of the oil that was produced, kept the time book, And they were short-handed. Well, I'd go up in the derrick, I'd handle the tubing and rods, pulling derrick, I'd work derrick-man. Well, the boiler might need a flue in it. Well, I'd just pitch in and take the old flue and put a new flue in -- fix up the boiler. I understood boilers pretty well, I took that course in stationary steam engineering and it included boilers and dynamos and various things that goes with steam engineering.

Well, then I'd take the shovel and I'd work in the ditch-dig a pit to make mud - we'd have to make mud there to wall up the well and drill -- and drill a new hole. The first thing we'd do was to dig a big pit to hold barrels of mud and mix the mud up and then start drilling and if you go through gumbo, you make more mud but if you strike a big sand you lose your mud, and it walls up the sand and keeps the sand from coming in and cutting your pumps out. Sand will go through them pumps and just cut out the plungers and you soon won't have any pump.

It will just be running back and forth and you won't get any pressure. Well, I've just done practically everything, nearly, all but much drilling. I've held the brake a little while we was drilling but as a rule I never was, never, as the fellow says, "hankered" to be a driller. I'd rather be an engineer on the boilers and on the engines and, Boy! some-times they'd have -- an engine would get stuck -- well, they didn't know what to do and how to get it to running. Well, they'd have to set the eccentrics and give it the right pitch and so forth. Well, that was all right in my line and I'd pitch in and get the

engine to running and everything would go along very well-that was on our lease, now. I never did work out for any other big company. I just always worked for ourselves, right there on Spindletop.

O. What kind of equipment did you use for first there?

P. We had, for a drilling rig, it was the American, I believe, drilling rig. I forget really, the name of the rig. It was a rotary outfit and we never did use cable tools. In the early days they would take cable tools after they had drilled and set the casing aid drill through the cap rock with a cable tool-that's a great big heavy iron with strong rope coming to It and around the bull wheels and they just put it on the walking beam and would go up and down and first thing you know they would drill through the rock and that would be rotating through it. But we never had one of them.

I think there's an old drill bit out there now on the lease that I noticed the other day, that had just been throwed-discarded. It just went out, after the rotary bit got in and they got to using this steel bit, where they could put adamantine in and just drill through the hardest rock that they could run up against and they just use the rotary bit now, nearly altogether. We did that on our lease and I think they are doing it now on these deep wells, and high pump pressures. We never did use such high steam pressure, about a hundred and a hundred and twenty-five pound pressure would be about a good dry steam, be about as high as we'd run. Our steam lines was not more than two or three hundred feet from the boiler. Sometimes we'd get the boiler close to the drilling rig, why the better steam they'd have. When the steam got down low, say eighty pounds pressure, why it wouldn't be good dry steam. It would be

mixed with water and that would make the pumps run slow. But get steam up above a hundred pounds and you got nearly a good dry steam if you've got good close lines to your boiler- -up to a hundred and fifty. Nowadays they get steam up to three hundred pounds pressure in some places. Man, that's dry steam and hot too, and it's dangerous. I never got steam up on our boiler more than a hundred and fifty pounds and that put everything to smoking around there, and I'd have to cut the pressure down.

O. You were using oil for fuel though, were you?

P. Well, gas and oil, together. It was oil mostly. But we'd get a little gas coming in with a new well, we'd just put an inch pipe or a suction on it and it would pull that gas away from the boys. The gas would gas the boys out and they'd have to get the gas away. And we'd put that gas puller on and put it in the boiler and burn it and by that means we were not bothered by it, and it would save the fuel oil.

O. Did you ever hear the expression, "dickey-bird" in an oil derrick?

P. I don't believe I have. I don't think we ever used it on our lease, a dickey-bird. It seems to me that I have heard of it somewhere. I don't know what the particulars are.

O. I just have been trying to find out. And no one has been able to tell me yet.

P. Well, that's dickey-bird.

O. Do you know who first used mud in drilling oil wells?

P. I believe it was that first fellow that come down there. There was somebody I think up in Corsicana that begin to drill with those rotaries and got to using mud rotary bits and that's where he got

the idea to come down here -- Lucas -- and make mud and go on down through that. There's four hundred feet on Spindletop of white sand. Three and four hundred feet, after you go down about two hundred feet through the gumbo, there is that body of water and sand -- coarse, white sand and you have to go right through it. If you don't have it walled up why that sand will come right in -- pump right on out and you just stand in one place and pump sand and water. So they have to have mud to go through it and wall it up.

O. So you think mud was used from the beginning?

P. Well, soon, yes. It was used in the beginning. Yes, I think that was the way the Lucas wells got started in-was through rotary mud.

O. In your opinion, who invented the rock bit - the first rock bit?

P. Now, I'm not sure, but old man Appletree, down there, an old Jew, he's got a patent on a bit with two holes through it. Now ordinarily, there's just one hole through a drill bit, but now he's got two, one on each wing - a fish tail bit you know, has got two things - and he put a hole for each one of them. And I think they called that the rock bit, I'm not sure. I don't know whether he's still got the patent or whether that's the first patent or not.

O. You don't know the date of his patent?

P. Oh, it was a good long while ago. I don't remember. I think Kinnear got a bit out, too. Old man Kinnear, he was a tax dealer out here. He's in Beaumont. He could might tell you something about a rock bit. Now, we had what we called a drag bit. We'd get on a hard rock and we'd take a bit and we'd flatten it like a man's hand and then we'd put a little sack of adamantine right down on that rock and we would start to rotating that flat bit and that

adamantine would get on the bit and on the rock and first thing you know you'd just go right on down. That was a kind of a rock bit in one sense of the word.

O. Was that widely used?

P. Well, we used it. Us boys used it a time or two, had an extra hard rock and Mr. Holiday -- he's an old oil man -- he could tell you a whole lot of things, I expect. Herb Holiday. You haven't struck him, have you?

O. No. I haven't. Where is he?

P. He's here in Beaumont. And he told us boys about it. And he encouraged us all he could and we just got the bit and put it down on the end of our drill stem and we went on down through the rock. That adamantine, that's fine, fine little gravel stuff that they -- that's not a gravel, but it's hardest kind of a steel -- iron. It's just case hardened and you can't hardly wear it out. It rolls around under there and it will go right down through the rock.

O. I thought of another question that I wanted to ask you about your early days out there. You worked and you went to Church -- what did you do for amusement? Did you have any amusement?

P. Well Sir, at nights when I wasn't on duty, the YMCA had several meetings during the season of the year. They'd put on pro-grams and they would sell tickets. Well, I'd generally get a girl friend, and maybe my wife would go with me. And we'd go down and we would sit and listen to the program of the YMCA.

O. Was that in Beaumont?

P. That was in Beaumont. It was in the YMCA Building. It was in the old building. Now they've got a new one. The old building's right there by the City Hall, now. They've condemned it and moved

away from it. Yes, that and oh, I'd once in a while -- we had a race track up here and the end of the car line was known as the South Park -- I guess that's where It got its name -- South Parker Grandstand. Well, I'd go down there. The meeting at the fall of the year -- we'd put on a little program -- maybe car races or horse races, maybe baseball -- and I'd go to those once in a while. I was down there at a horse race one time and I used to herd sheep and this old sheep herder that was with me, he said, "Now if you ever bet on a horse, I'll tell you what to do.

If it's a clear sunshiny day, you bet on a white horse, a horse that's got the most white on him. If it's a black, cloudy, rainy day, you bet on the black horse. Well, this fellow, Doniac, was a merchant at Spindletop and he says, "I want to bet on the horses. (I never did bet on a horse. I never bet a dollar in my life, that I remember of.) Well, he says, "What shall I bet on?" I says, "Now, you take that white horse, he's the lightest looking horse, and he looks like a good runner and if you want to try him out why, you watch him." Weil Sir, that horse went around and just ahead of most every horse that was in that race track, and there was a half a dozen, I think. Well, Doniac was watching it and he grabbed me and he just shook me like I was a kitten and he says, "My horse has beat these a head."

He says, "I've won the race." He said that when he was gambling. I don't think he put up more than three or four dollars, maybe. Yeah, but I never did gamble. I like to see horses run. Yes. I'd go out to the fairground out here, and they used to have horse races and I'd nearly always watch the horse races. I never bet on them. I think the last horse race I went to was in a little rainy spell

and it was nearly a mile track and the ground was a little wet and there was, I think, four horses lined up to make the run. Well, this jockey was pretty well in the lead and he was on a good brown horse and as he got around, there was a damp place and his feet commenced to go down. Well that horse fell and he almost turned a complete sommerset and his hind feet went straight up and that horse broke his neck right there. Well, that jockey just went plumb over his head and he just skedaddled out under the fence and that's the last horse race I've seen. I don't want to see any more horse races.

O. Well, were there any evening entertainments at Spindletop?

P. Oh, once in a while we'd put a play on out there. We wanted to raise money a time or two for some church purpose, maybe it was paying for one of the churches; and we put on one called "The Spindle-top." That was a play and they had a bunch of young people, you know. It took about an hour to put it on.

O. Yes, what was in that? Was it written by someone there?

P. Well, it was someone there, it was one of the school teachers got it it. Dick Swearingen had a sister; and his wife was good at getting up plays and they just got it up. Put on the boys and girls right there. And I enjoyed that real -- some of those plays. And most of my entertainment was going to Church, and Sunday School and Prayer Meeting and doing that kind of amusement.

O. You had nothing to do with the school on Spindletop, I take it? What kind of school did they have there?

P. Well Sir, there were so many children there that they put a big school into a big building right across from the post office. And a young lady was a teacher and her brother, Watkins, was the County

Superintendent here in Jefferson County for that period of time. Well, that school went on quite a while until South Park decided to put up a brick building. And my sister taught out there one or two years and finally the school all come up here to South Park in this brick building. And this Miss Watkins, she was a nice teacher. I met her and we would entertain ourselves by going to church frequently. And we finally got up a little engagement and then we broke off again.

O. Your sister taught at Spindletop also?

P. Yes, Lottie. She's living in Shreveport, now. She's still living. She's getting along in years, too.

O. Did she have any difficulty with the pupils there? Or do you remember?

P. No, not with those teachers at Spindletop, but sometimes up here. I was a trustee up here at South Park and the professor had some boys that they just couldn't do nothing with, seemed like. And he called a trustee to suspend the boy, that was about the only trouble they ever had -- sort of jacking the boy up. Well, it was one of the boys that we had to pass judgment on him; and he finally come around all right and is a good citizen now. I can find out about him.

O. Well, did the parents in general support the school out there?

P. Fairly well. Yes, when they -- they didn't have Mother's Day and school days like they have now-about once a week they will have what they call "Parent-Teacher's Day." But we never did have that Parent-Teacher's Day out at Spindletop, I don't believe. I don't remember it. I left all that to the teachers and professors and I was busy out on the oil field and if they ever needed anything from us oil men why they would let us know, and we would do what we-our duty was to do.

O. How did they select a School Board out there at Spindletop?

P. Well, the best I can remember the trustees down here was the trustees of Spindletop. There was a railroad - the Southern Pacific kept an agent out there-- and he was one of the trustees for Spindle top and South Park. Dewar was his name and he was a pretty good citizen. His wife was a good church worker.

O. How much interest was there in education among the families out there?

P. Well, most everybody liked their children to go to school to develop them. They had a great big skating rink out there one time and it caused a bit of a racket out there more than anything else and there wasn't anything else. They tried to teach them good manners on that skating rink and I never heard anything bad about it.

O. Do you know of any other conflicts between Negroes and whites?

P. Not any more. I never heard any more after that.

O. That was the only incident?

P. The only thing that - now I wasn't on Spindletop at the time but my brother was kinda tangled up in it and I heard about it through him.

O. What about your picnics that you had?

P. Well, the church folks would get together, Methodists and Baptists, and we put duck and chicken together and go down to Spindletop Springs and take a lot of cakes and bread with us -- take a barrel of ice-water and we'd just spend the day down there and we'd put up a big swing and the boys would swing the girls ana some of the boys would both get in there and swing. And there was a lot of trees down there and there was some strong high limbs and you could put in a -- we'd get a good rope from some of the oil men -- what they

call cat lines and put up a swing. Well, we'd get a hold of them swings and we'd send some of those who could stand to go high, we'd swing them high. Well, we had those picnics every few years while there were so many people on Spindletop. And they liked to go to church and Sunday School and by that means why, we would encourage the sociability of the people on Spindletop. The drillers and the roughnecks would come down there and help eat our chicken and be delighted and take a -- one of the old gaugers there that used to gauge on Spindletop, he'd come down there with his crew and we'd all have a time eating chicken and cake and swinging and drinking ice water and stay there until time to go home--oh, three or four o'clock, and load up and come back to Spindletop.

O. Well now, the Spindletop Springs are different from the wells that were at Spindletop?

P. I was down there a year or so ago and it seems like the back water has closed that spring up. I went to see where it was. It used to be a big tile, three-foot tile, dug out and put down into the ground a ways and the water -- you could just see it boiling up and running away as pretty! But I tried to find that the other day and it seems like it's washed over with silt and stuff -- backwash. I don't know why they haven't kept it up. The city owns the park down there -- Spindletop Park -- and they every once In a while, I think, they have developed it lots better than when it was when we went down there at those picnics. Why it was just undergrowth everywhere but a few big trees -- they were mostly post oak trees, live oak trees, and fine shade - and we just spread out under those trees on the grass and wouldn't have a table, we'd

just take our tablecloth and put it on the grass and have a good time right there just like we was in a fine hotel.

O. Was that picnic place used for other things as well, or do you know?

P. No. Only once in a while I think the private families would go down there and eat dinner, once in a while. And they finally got a big pump plant down there to pump fresh water up to the Hill. And that took up a lot of time. People would go down there just for curiosity to see how Spindletop Springs was.

O. Was that mineral water also?

P. Well, it was -- I couldn't tell if there was sulphur much about it. They claim it was a mineral in the water.

O. Well thank you, Mr. Philp, for this Interview.

P. You are welcome, and if it will help the world to get along any better, why you are welcome to it.

O. Thank you, Sir.

P. I see lots of the youngsters are going up there now from the war. They are getting a little money and they want to go to college, finishing off at Columbia.

O. Yes.

End of Interview