H. A. Rathke Interview - H. A. Rathke Interview [part 3 of 3]

PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL TOPIC: Spindletop, Batson, Electra, Saratoga, Burkburnett Areas NAME: Rathke, H. A. INTERVIEWERS: Boatright, Mody C.; Kelly, Louise; Williams, J, W PLACE: Wichita Falls, Texas TAPE NO. 131 DATE: 9-13-53 RESTRICTIONS: None

B.- I don't know whether that ever happened or not. I just....

R.- That happened down there at Batson.

B.- Uh-huh.

R.- And boys went to dinner and just shut her down for dinner, you know, and went to dinner, you know. Just shut down and by the hole, I reckon(?). And while they was gone to dinner he went in there and moved that boiler and let the steam off of it. And had the wagon out there and loaded it on, and moved it and was gone. When they got back they had no boiler. He had to work pretty fast, you know, to get that, those connections off there.

B.- Well, how far did he take it?

R.- I don't know how far he taken it. All I know that the boys went to the rig there and their boiler was gone.

B.- Did they recover it?

R.- No.

K.- But they knew who took it?

R.- They all said they knew who took it. I don't know. I guess because he was taking some things once in a while, they knew it, I guess. I know down there at Spindletop there once was a gang down there took up a line one night, pipeline. Hauled it off.

B.- Mr. Rathke, I'd like for you to tell me what you said earlier about drinking among oil field personnel.

R.- Well, as far as I know they don't drink anymore than they do in anything else.

B.- They never have?

R.- Nope, never have. For the simple reason because they couldn't, wouldn't get to go back out on the job if they kept to drinking, and it would eliminate them. Drinking was eliminated.

B.- Well, how do they get the reputation of being hard drinkers, do you think?

R.- I didn't know they had it.

B.- Well....

R.- I didn't know they...

B.- That's what several people have told me.

R.- I didn't know they had that.

K.- They couldn't hold a job very long if they did...

R.- No.

K.- ...as a driller.

R.- Nor as any other kind of job. You just, like any other, it's no different from any other occupation. A drinking man don't hold a job at anything, long. It's just the same thing.

B.- Well, down at Batson, the people who patronized the saloons then were not usually oil field workers?

R.- Yes, they were.

B.- They were?

R.- They couldn't live without it, and that's the only place they had to get their money. The saloon didn't make the money, you know. They had to get it from the workers. They're the ones that had the money. That's where they got their money.

B.- Well, did they spend their money for whiskey?

R.- I don't know what they spent it for. I never hung around those saloons. I don't know what they did.

K.- The people that worked with you, though, did not do any drinking to amount to...

R.- If they did, they didn't go back out. Because they knew that I didn't take them out anymore.

B.- By 'taking out' you mean what?

R.- Well, a long time ago they had buckboards, you know. And [when] you took a man out, you really took him out, and we just still say take him out.

K.- When you hired him?

R.- In place of just saying you 'hired him', why, just say 'took him out'.

B.- And you heard stories about Paul Bunyan...

R.- Oh, yes. B.- ....down on the coast.

R.- Yes, yes.

B.- Was that as early as Spindletop, do you think?

R.- Mighty close after that, I guess it was. I don't know just when I began to hear it. Run somewhere pretty close to that though.

B.- Uh-huh. Well, that would be then before 1910?

R.- I have no idea it would. I wouldn't say as to the date.

B.- I'm trying to find out when he got to Texas.

R.- I don't know, I don't know just what year he did get to Texas. He was the biggest driller ever got in Texas, though, when he did get here.

B.- And you heard about him from those Texans down on the coast?

R.- Oh yes. Oil field people, you know.

B.- Had they come from Pennsylvania or West Virginia, do you think?

R.- Well, most or many people down in this country did come from, followed the fields down here from there, you know. In fact, our first experienced people came from the East, you know. We had none here. We didn't know anything about the oil business in this country, you know.

B.- Well, they didn't know anything about rotary drilling.

R.- No, they didn't know that but they did know cable tool drilling. They knew how to drill a well. When a man knows how to drill a well, he knows something about, no matter what you drill it with; he'll know more than a man that never drilled a well. Lots

more. And they were really cable tool men lot of those. It didn't matter what you drilled it with why to them it was all the same. Others were prejudiced against them, but the majority of them wasn't. It didn't make any difference what you, just so you get the hole drilled, that's all. After all, that's all that'd amount to anything anyway, you know.

B.- Now did you hear about, did you continue to hear about Bunyan up in this country?

R.- Oh yes. Yes, every once in a while yet. Still hear every once in a while of Paul Bunyan.

K.- What sort of things did he do in the fields according to the stories?

R.- How's that?

K.- What sort of thing did he do in the fields?

R.- Oh, he drilled wells deeper than anybone else bigger holes. He set 5500 barrel tanks for casing. You can imagine how much bigger he was than we were. We was just a midget. Of course, he had so many tongs, you know, and he'd just catch them with one hand and throw them around that big pipe, screw them up. He was a powerful man.

B.- I guess he had a high derrick to handle all that?

R.- Yes. All that kind of stuff.

B.- Did you ever know a man by the name of Grant Emory?

R.- No.

B.- He was an old West Virginian that operated, I think, mostly around Ranger.

R.- I didn't know him. Never heard of him, I don't believe.

B.- Well, he's been dead several years. He'd be a much older man than you. Did you ever hear of one called Pete Hoffman?

R.- Yes.

B.- Did you know him?

R.- He's still got my elevators.

B.- Oh, he has? Where did he get them?

R.- Down at Bryson. I didn't see him get it, didn't nobody else. But I know he's the man that got them. He was out there the day before out at the rig, and left that night.

K.- Circumstantial evidence?

R.- Yes. I heard one story about old Pete. Stole an eight inch cable tool bit. And there, there's not a man can carry one of those, you know. And evidence showed that he never did drive in to the rig. And he stopped his wagon out in the road, you know, and walked out to the rig and carried that bit out there and put it in that wagon, you know. That's what the evidence showed, you know, that he did. Never did show that he ever went to the rig with a wagon to haul it, you know.

And they had this bit in the court house laying there. And the jury was there, you know, and this bit. Man stole this bit and carried it from that rig out to the wagon over there? And they knew there ain't no one man could carry that bit. And he just couldn't carry it, it was just too big. So when they free him, you know, cleared him, he wasn't guilty of stealing that bit at all. And when they got through, to the Judge he said, "This my bit, now?" "Yes sir." He just got it in his arms and went on out. Picked it right up.

B.- Where was that?

R.- I don't know where it was. That was a story I heard, you know.

B.- There were lots of stories about him.

R.- And he got some of my big elevators casing that way up at Bryson. Wife named Annabelle.

B.- Oh, Hoffman's wife?

R.- Uh-huh. In fact he called his oil company Annabelle Oil company.

K.- He operated a good deal up in this field?

R.- All through the country. Not up here. I don't think he ever drilled a well up in here that I ever knew of. But he was a cable tool man down in the Ranger district in there, Breckenridge, Young County. And I had a cable tool rig there in Jack County running it then. And I had a bunch of rotaries then too, you know, cable tool, both. But he got that.

K.- You ran both kinds of rigs then?

R.- Both kinds.

K.- Whichever one would do the job?

R.- That's right.

K.- Was one any better than the other?

R.- No. Oil was just as good, proves oat of one as it was the other.

K.- Well, was one better in different kinds of....

R.- Oh, yes, absolutely.

K.- That's why you used both kinds.

R.- Back in the earlier time, why there was a lot of difference. Now there's not so much difference now. Rotary's improved now where they can drill them faster even if it's hard, where there's hard drilling with the cable tools before. They almost, couldn't,

almost impossible to drill them with a rotary. They drill them economically now. More so than they can cable tools.

K.- Because of the improvement...

R.- That's right.

K- ...that's been made. So today it wouldn't make much difference?

R.- No.

K. - But then you had to fit your rig for the particular kind of...

R.- I still, I'm still using cable tools. I sold all my rotaries in '37. Haven't owned a rotary since then. The reason I use cable tools, I drill quite a lot of Marble Falls formation wells. And I don't want water on that sand. I drill them in with cable tools, set my pipe on top of it and then drill them in with cable tools, set. Course I could do the same thing with a rotary, but when I get through, if it, if I get any showing anywhere above, I've tested them as I went, you know.

K. - So it's really an advantage to use a cable tool now?

R.- I'm still producing wells. And I don't, I've been producing 15 years, and Marble Falls wells still producing wells. I don't know of any other Marble Falls wells that are producing that's that old that were drilled with rotaries. Because they got the mud on the sand, you know. I didn't get any mud on sand and haven't yet today either. Producing without any mud or water on the sand. But that's the reason I still use the cable tools.

K.- Have many other operators gone over that way?

R.- No, they've all gone away from, very few cable tools left. I'm the only jughead left anymore. The rest of them have the rotary.

K.- The rest of them use rotary? More?

R.- Yes.