A. R. Dillard Interview - A. R. Dillard Interview [part 1 of 3]

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  • PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL Topic: Electra, Wichita Falls, Spindletop
  • Name: A. R. Dillard Interviewers: M. C. Boatright, Louise Kelley,
  • J. W. Williams Place: Wichita Palls Tape No. 137 Date: September 5, 1953 Restrictions:
  • ? Boatright- Your name is A. R. Dillard? Dillard-
  • A. R. Dillard and born March, 1888. Williams- Where?
  • D. - About seven miles a little bit north of east of Mexia, Texas, on a farm where my
  • grandfather Dillard settled and my own father was born. My father moved into Mexia, Texas,
  • when I was hardly eight years of age, and we lived there until I was nine years of age
  • and we moved into Corsicana and began working in the oil fields at Corsicana and he went
  • up there to go to work in the oilfields. B. - That would be about 1896 or seven.
  • D. - 1897. B. - 1897.
  • D. - Yes sir. I were nine years of age then. B. - And what was your father's name?
  • D. - John D. Dillard, and better known as "Dee" Dillard, D double e [spelling]. Of course
  • he had all the experiences that a man would have in there as an oil field worker, driller,
  • rig-building, builder, cable tool driller, and tool-dressing driller, and rotary driller,
  • and a rig-building contractor. W. - Do you have some of the names and specific
  • places that he worked, people that he worked for?
  • D. - Yes, he worked for Johnston, Akins, and Rittersbacher who were contractors with cable
  • tools in the early days of the Corsicana oil field development, and may have operated as
  • the American Well and Prospecting Company, that title. And they
  • later got into the manufacturing business making cable tools. That came along after
  • the discovery of oil around Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
  • See, Corsicana was ahead of anything in Oklahoma. In fact, Corsicana was the first oil field
  • in the Southwest west of the Mississippi other than oil that had been discovered previous
  • to that in California. K. - Well, didn't they have to make their
  • own tools there in Corsi-cana to maintain a--
  • D. - Yes ma'm, they made their own tools and they manufactured cable tools there and they
  • also had a shop at Bartlesville later and manufactured tools up there because that was,
  • everything was drilled with cable tools everywhere in those days. No rotary within anywhere in
  • the oil fields. And I remember the original rotaries were built in Aurora (illegible),
  • Illinois and the old --- K. - For water wells.
  • D. - Yes ma'm, they were built for water-well drilling and the original rotary was built
  • by American Well Works which had no connection whatever with this Corsicana company. There
  • was a law suit that went on for several years between American Well and Prospecting and
  • American Well Works for infringing upon their gripping device to grip the pipe and turn
  • it so could drill with it, see. W. - Yes.
  • D. - Well, when I was a boy I remember that very well. It was a very crude thing, I say
  • it was crude, for pile driven like steam; of course steam was ever all the power they
  • had in those days. W. - Did the American Well and Prospecting
  • Company at any time manufacture rotary rigs? D. - Well, I was getting back to that. I don't
  • remember who brought the first rotary into Corsicana, but I can remember some of the
  • first drillers and they're all dead except one and there's one man still living in West
  • Columbia named Joe Lee. No doubt he's the oldest rotary driller living today and would
  • be, that's one of the oldest drillers, that was taken twenty-five years back. He and a
  • man named Leight Grove (?) came in there. They had been drilling water wells with these
  • rotaries for somebody, don't know who it was now. I did, I've heard the name but it's out
  • of mind now. Your Devarius(?) shales existed there at Corsicana was awful nice soft drilling,
  • so those rotaries drilled those wells so fast they began to drop the cable tools and drill
  • the wells with those rotaries, you see. W. - About when do you-
  • D. - About, well now, I can't recall the year but I would say about '98, somewhere around
  • there, and about '98 or early '99. My father, he quit the tools himself and went to the
  • rotary and then of course he [did] rig-building and built derricks and so forth. But after
  • the rotary was introduced In Corsicana, why, It just gradually put the rotary, cable tools
  • out of business for the simple reason they couldn't compete with the fast rotary drilling
  • in those days. B. - That's except where the formation was
  • so hard they still had to keep their tools. D. - No sir. No, it's so soft that the tools
  • - B. - I mean other places.
  • D. - Oh yes, with the exception of south Texas, you cannot drill wells in south Texas cable
  • tool. That's impossible. That's the reason they had such a heck of a time at Beaumont
  • trying to get the first well down. They tried to but couldn't get the casing through those
  • water sands. They would run where the water just slack water itself, you see, and they
  • finally moved. The first well drilled successfully was the, the rig was moved out of Corsicana
  • by three brothers; Jim Hamill, Curt Hamill, and Al Hamill. Jim was the older of the Hamill
  • boys and he was, of course he was the manager and leader of the three brothers. I believe
  • Curt is still living. I don't know whether he lives at Bay City or not.
  • W. - He lives at Kerrville. D. - Does he?
  • W. - I believe. D. - Well, that was, yes, I knew his two sons.
  • W. - And Al is still living. D. - Al is still living. Jim died about -
  • W. - Al lives in Oklahoma. D. - --about two or three years ago in Port
  • Worth. When my father worked with the cable tools, of course that was all, oh, very crude
  • tools. They were nothing but rag lines, manila lines for every ser-vice and long before the
  • wire line was introduced in the oil field. B. - Had a temper screw on the -
  • D. - Yes sir, had a temper screw - B. - --walking beam.
  • D. - --and a walking beam, headache post and samson post and blow-away post and bullshaddus(?)
  • and long-nose sand reels and- B. - Calf wheel.
  • D. - I've built them. I've gone right in the woods with my daddy and I learned to rig them;
  • he taught me to rig them. I'd go in there, take the timber out of the woods and frame
  • them with a broad axe and foot adze and cut my gains and square them up and straighten
  • them out and so forth. In fact, to build a derrick over there in north Louisiana we go
  • out to the location and we'd pick out the trees around the location and cut them down
  • for the derrick's foundation and frame them with a broad axe. That's an easy job. [Laughter
  • from everyone] B.- Do you remember whether the rotary drillers
  • at Corsicana used mud? D. - No, they didn't use mud. They didn't
  • have to. They probably make a little mud from the formation as they drilled it, but far
  • as having to need mud they would not, they didn't need mud. In fact, every-thing, Dr.
  • Boatright, was, they shut down through Saturday, a twenty-four hour period, in other words,
  • over the weekend, Sunday. Nothing ran on Sunday unless it was very much
  • of an emergency, and they would not pull their drill stem from the hole and it was all open
  • hole with the exception of a, you might say a, not surface part but merely a conductor
  • for the surface to keep the, and set, that would just set in. That was a way before they
  • even thought of cementing a string of pipe or anything else in the oil field.
  • B. - I've heard it said-- D. - And they'd pull it up on the, pull the
  • drill stem up and set it on a pair of slide tongs and an elevator. I have some slide tongs
  • today. I'm going to, I'm keeping them. I'd like for you to see them. There's not hardly
  • a driller, that is, in the last fifteen years knows what a pair of slide tongs is. We have
  • all sizes of slide tongs for the different sizes of pipe. Pit close around just like
  • a pair of scissors, you know, in a way that come around the pipe and slip a ring over
  • the handle part of them so they wouldn't spread and pull your elevators on that thing and
  • set it down, you see. And I also have an old-time, oh, a big swivel out there that I used in
  • my first contracting. All open exposed, no oil bath or anything like that and very crude.
  • All the old original swivels had two bails to it. They were both stiff; they didn't swing
  • at all. Just came right over a flat trunion block and bolted in with heavy bolts and the
  • inner bail would go on top of your hose connections to hold that stem in to keep It from jumping
  • out when you put the pump racer to it. That little bail held it in there, you see. You
  • would have, I don't know whether you'd have, I can show you on this sketch, but I never
  • will forget the first time I worked it with an old boy.
  • I was seventeen years old on a rig and, no, it was later, those what we call a sling bail
  • swivel that came out then and I got bumped on the head with one and knocked out. Came
  • out of the hook, you know, and swung over and hit me on the head and down I went, [laughter]
  • B. - Equipment wasn't very safe, was it? D. - Yes, well it was, it was safe alright
  • but they would, the drillers in those days insisted on running with a hook, which they
  • didn't have any safety latches on them whatever, and it was just open, see, and if it got down
  • a little too much slack and the drill pipe hit the bottom, why hook come out and it'd
  • swing over, you see. Unidentified Voice. - Yes. D. - The bail came out of the hook, rather..
  • B. - I heard it said that the Hamill brothers were the first to use mud. Do you know whether
  • that's true or not? D. - Well, yes, they, they probably were the
  • first ones to use mud but not in Corsicana. They don't have to--
  • B. - No, no. D. - Of course, yes, in Spindletop that's
  • right. They had to get through that sand, and they still had difficulty in getting through
  • the sand where there's, to case it off. We had a device what they call a shoe blade to
  • put in the bottom of the surface part and rotate it and circulate at the bottom and
  • use mud. They mixed mud by hand. I've mixed mud by
  • hand and we had a very crude mud mixer. The frame of it and the body of it was made of
  • wood in a V-shape like this where the shaft runs through it and some blades on it and
  • a sprocket out on the end. We'd hook It up to our, back of our engine to the draw works
  • and turn it, see, and just paddle that mud and throw mud in there, or clay, rather, and
  • add water until we got it, when we looked at it in our hands it looked like good mud,
  • why, that's all we knew about it, see. [laughter] And drop it into the slush pit and circulate
  • with that and it did a lot of good and, but they soon learned to drill that surface sands
  • where it wasn't too heavy. In a lot of places down there they have seven, eight, or nine
  • hundred feet of dirt before you get a break into any kind of a shale and the first change
  • in, out of that sand in that coastal country in there, well they, in those early fields,
  • I worked in a few of them at a later date, would have what they call an old pale blue
  • gumbo. It would get through that sand in a hurry and get in that gumbo and you'd make
  • the natural formation mud and then that would, that was viscous enough. Of course we didn't
  • know what viscosity was or water loss or anything else in those days, but we'd plaster up the
  • wall with sand and give you time enough to get your pipe in there and set it up and then
  • you'd set it down in that old blue gumbo, and that was a seat and it would shut off
  • tight. But we used a, of course then those grip rings have kelley joints.
  • It'd just grip the pipe with those grip rings, you see, and we used two swivels, two stand
  • pipes, and we'd pull a joint into the V and put it up there by hand, lay it up in there
  • and break off a, drill a joint down, you see, and we'd have the other swivel already screwed
  • into another joint laying in the V and when we got a joint down we'd swing over and hook,
  • and pick up this joint and have it swinging and on each stand pipe we had a quick open-and-shut
  • valve, just pull it like that and it was open, or close it and it was shut, you see. And
  • we were drilling that surface sand to keep from losing our circulation.
  • Why, you'd let the pump run slowly and the rotary turning, back that swivel off with
  • everything moving and, slammed the swivel over on the floor and kick the other joint
  • in there and switch the circulation and make our connection and just keep going, you see,
  • so we wouldn't break circulation. That was a funny way to do but you, of course everybody
  • would get wet and muddy and everything else, you know, but we quit that. We didn't lose
  • circulation, though, and just at that the sand would pile out in the ditch.
  • It'd take sometime as many as three men to keep it shoveled out of the ditch so it wouldn't
  • run over and then the water run off over the country, you see, and not get in the pit.
  • Then be drilling along and with that pump running and, you'd lose your returns and you
  • better look out when you lose a return while you're drilling that sand. You'd be stuck
  • just like that. And I've seen a rotary just come to a z-z-z-z-z-z,
  • just come to a stop and be stuck. We learned a trick in that thing, to shut everything
  • down, shut the rotary down, shut the pump down, just let it sit there fifteen or twenty
  • minutes and that water, you know, would run back into the sands and it'd begin to, the
  • sand would get away from the drill pipe and you'd just pick it up; but as long as you
  • were circulating it you know, your water circulation going back into your sand down around your
  • bit, that gave the sand above there a chance to come in and just freeze tight around your
  • pipe, all tight. W. - The sand would freeze it.
  • D. - If you understand what I'm trying to tell you, I don't know.
  • K. - Yes. B. - Yes, I think-
  • K. - Yes, I do. D. - When I would go make trips out to the
  • field when I was a little boy with my daddy, on Saturdays, didn't have to go to school,
  • and play around the rig and so forth. Of course I remember a lot of those things that, he'd
  • ask me to do this or that, go out and turn on the, had a cross-head water feed pump on
  • the engine. I don't know, did you ever see one of those?
  • B. - No, I don't know what that's like. D. -Well, that's on the, on the, those old-time
  • engines had a, on the cross-head they had an extension out there, an arm with a hole
  • in it for piston to go in and they had a, of course the cross-head was, traveled back
  • and forth at a level, you see, and had a pump on the side attached to the side of the steam
  • cylinder of the engine and always a place to stud it on, you know, and that pump ran
  • continually. B. - Yes.
  • D. - And you could go out there and switch your water and let it just circulate back
  • into your water tank or close your valve and hook into your, feed your boiler. An old cross-head
  • water pump to feed the boiler. These old cable-tool drillers will tell you about it. [laughter]
  • But there's not any left and there are very few old-time cable-tool drillers left, very
  • few, if any. And of course I'd help him blast his fire with that old bellows. Do as much
  • as I could, I think, I tried to anyway. Now, I'll tell you another experience.
  • K. - That's when you said you weren't heavy enough to manage it?
  • D. - That's right. I'll tell you some other, another experience I had with my dad on a
  • rotary. We used all manila lines for hoisting line on your drum and little old light draw
  • works with a small engine and one boiler and used an inch and a quarter, inch and a half,
  • inch and a quarter manila line for a hoisting line, you know, on the draw works, and I never
  • will forget one time. I rode up behind my daddy going anywhere. It was in early spring
  • of the year and of course the days wasn't too long and I'd crawl up behind that horse
  • just about before it'd get daylight and rode out several miles to the rigs, some six, five
  • or six miles, in order to be there at seven o'clock. It began to rain on us a little bit
  • before we got out there. My father always carried a slicker and his, that old slicker
  • hat they used to wear in those days, narrow brim in front and long brim behind that was
  • to keep, so the water would run down the back, you see.
  • K. - They call that a sou'wester. Is that the same thing?
  • D. - Well, that's an old, yes, it's an old seafaring outfit they used to wear. Sailors
  • would, I mean the sea men used to wear them. But we got there and It was raining so hard,
  • of course, we all shut the rig down and all got in the tool house and waited for the rain
  • to stop. But he pulled his pipe up and closed those slide tongs back in, threw the elevator
  • on there and they was standing out there with two twenty-foot joints; that's as long a pipe
  • as they had In those days, this twenty-foot pipe. Some of them wasn't quite so long. And
  • it rained just like, poured down the whole day long and finally it broke off about, was
  • into the late afternoon, so my dad went up, in to start up the rig. It happened that this
  • joint had been drilled all the way down to the rotary and he wanted to start his pump
  • up and circulate and wash down the bottom before he pulled up to make connections, see,
  • then just [get] it out of the way. And that old manila line had began, had become so soaked
  • with water it had contracted or drew up to where he couldn't get his pipe in three and
  • a half or four feet of the rotary. It was just hanging in air and that's as low as he
  • could get his pipe down, you see. [laughter] Well, there's no way to wring that water out
  • of that line. W. - No, It'd take a dry spell to do that.
  • D. - That's right, that's right. Well, it's -
  • W. - You were talking a while ago about the discovery well in Corsi-cana, but you didn't
  • tell that on the tape about the-- D. - No, I didn't--
  • W. - --people that drilled it and how they- D. - No. This American Well and Prospecting
  • trio, I guess you would call it, Akins, Johnston, Akins, Rittersbacher, drilled the first well
  • that discovered oil in the, what turned out to be the Corsicana field. They were drilling
  • a water well for the city and encountered this oil somewhere around twelve hundred feet
  • and of course, that ruined them with cable tools. They couldn't, they wanted to save
  • the oil anyway, I Imagine, but I don't know their side of that story. I could have got,
  • I never did talk to Mr. Johnston about that well, and he was one of my very, very best
  • friends. In fact, he practically put me in business by being a good friend. I asked him
  • for a favor and he granted it and I, of course, have known Mr. Johnston from a barefooted,
  • snotty-nosed kid, you know. Played around with, in the shade of his shop when I was
  • a little old boy, but they moved over and drilled a water well on down, of course, and
  • got a well in the Woodbine sand, what's supposed to be the Woodbine sand, and the water had,
  • it was, had pretty high salt content and had some other mineral, iron and so forth there.
  • They didn't, couldn't use it for city water but they did use it for, they put it in their
  • mains for fire purposes and handled what little sewage service they had in those days. Very
  • little on the sewage, you might say that was used in those days around your hotels. No,
  • nope of your homes had any sewage and they didn't have any of this water, either, because
  • it was only in the water mains for fire purposes. But I been to that old well. I can go walk
  • to it blind right now and I haven't been in Corsicana I say now in thirty years. Really,
  • I haven't been in Corsicana in thirty years or more. Been through there a jillion times
  • but I have, never ever stop. W. - Did they produce oil from that first
  • well? D. - No sir, they didn't, did not. They pumped
  • the oil out of there with an old water pump, pitcher pump, though. And what they did with
  • it I don't remember, but the oil was all around on the ground there, and they didn't fence
  • it in or box it in or house it in or anything like that. But that was, turned out to be
  • the extreme west edge of the field. All the oil, the field that made entirely back to
  • the east and southeast and northeast. No oil-- K. - Of Corsicana?
  • D. - Yes ma'm, that was an extreme west well. They just barely got on it.
  • W. - Did they start pretty quick? You weren't there, I believe, at that time.
  • D. - Well, I don't, I don't know. Yes, I think they did, oh, this oil man came out of Pennsylvania,
  • came from the Bast. J. S. Cullinan was the first man that came into Corsicana, first
  • man to build a pipeline, first man to start a refinery in the old Corsicana field.
  • W. - Did a lot of that early drilling too? D. - Yes, sir. No, he didn't do any of the
  • drilling but he built this pipeline to buy this oil and gather this oil and also that
  • refinery, which they've, Magnolia, turned out to be the Magnolia in later days. But
  • I think he was, came in there for the interests of the Standard Oil Company that is, what
  • is now New Jersey. The Standard Oil Company, In other words, John D. Rockerfeller. I don't
  • think that, I know they never did, well, the Magnolia, yes, they did operate later, after
  • they got leases. But-- W. - Well, when you went there--
  • D. - --the reason that they didn't-- W. - --that field was drilled up pretty well.
  • D. - No, no. W. - There's lots of, I mean when you first,
  • when you moved from Mexia over there. D. - No, it wasn't very, no, it wasn't, probably
  • about a year and a half old or something like that. I think that oil was---
  • W. - That's what I mean. There were lots of wells drilled in there. It was--
  • D. - Quite a few, yes sir. K. - Well, did these three men do more drilling
  • there? D. - Those, Mr., the--
  • K. - Akins, Johnston-- D. - --the Hamill brothers?
  • K. - yes. D. - Yes, they did quite a bit of drilling
  • there with, but when they moved to Beaumont, Spindletop, and drilled that well out of there,
  • they didn't, activities, they quit-- W. - That's the Hamill brothers he's telling
  • about. K. - Yes, that's the Hamill--
  • D. - At Corsicana. My father worked there. My father worked for the, I don't recall the
  • first people or company that he worked for, but he did work, was with this American Well
  • and Prospecting Company, and then later when he went to, changed to the rotary, why he
  • worked for a known, for a man named Tom J. Wood; And Tom J. Wood, this Joe Lee, and,
  • I can't remember those drillers' last, John Champion and Rhode Parks, Rhode Parks they
  • called him, and the names are out of my mind now, were all with this Mr. Wood, and he moved
  • everything he had immediately to Spindletop when that, after that discovery well down
  • there. W. - So your father went to Spindletop.
  • D. - So my father went down with him and he operated two companies and I remember one
  • company was the Crescent Oil Company of Beaumont and the summer that we were down there in
  • 1901, why, I have a brother that's not quite two years younger than myself, we would go
  • out there, out to Spindletop, catch a ride out there of some kind and go to my dad's
  • rig if he'd let us come to it. He wouldn't want us around. He was afraid we might get
  • hurt and he was right too, because those derricks were just as thick as they could be, and I
  • remember very well that they had a row of boilers where they'd have a, every rig would
  • have a boiler set up right along in just the edge of the field then for steam for the drilling
  • rigs that's operating within the field there, you see, and along that doggone front of those
  • boilers, they called it boiler avenue, and all the steam lines ran across that boiler
  • avenue, you know, into the field. We were barefooted kids and I know that we had to
  • dance around there to keep from getting our feet on those steam lines, blisters you see.
  • [laughter] So they would bury most of them but the hot sand and dirt, you know, would
  • be as hot from those steam lines even though they'd be buried six or eight inches.
  • W. - The derricks were just so thick they couldn't put the boilers right next to the
  • derrick. D. - You could jump right from one derrick
  • floor to another. W. - Yes.
  • D. - And I remember a story; I think this might be a true story. I've seen some funny
  • things happen but there were two rigs, you know, and they decided, well, they were just
  • floor to floor, like that, you see, just right together. That's how thick those wells were.
  • That's silly, but there's two wells finishing up about right at the same time and they were
  • bailing these wells, you see. They, after they got, those wells quit coming in so big
  • after drilling so thick, you see. They were bailing these wells and these fellows, they
  • would bail them from the, string up a sand line on the draw works, see, and bail with
  • the draw works in those days. And it happened that they both, these rigs ran their bail
  • down at the same time and when they started to come off bottom neither one would come.
  • In other words, just locked horns down there. Their holes ran together. [laughter]
  • W. - What depth were they, do you know? D. - I've seen that happen.
  • W. - What depth was that in that Beaumont discovery?
  • D. - Oh, those wells, about a thousand feet, something like that.
  • W. - About a thousand feet? D. - Yes. It's in the cap rock. That could
  • happen. I've seen this happen at Humble, myself, when I, my first work In the oil field. Were
  • two wells finishing up. They were probably about seventy-five feet apart, and one man
  • got his well in a little ahead of the, both trying to finish at the same time. One man,
  • one man got his well in just a few, a little ahead of the other one, you see, and it was
  • flowing wonderful. And this other man, he got his well all bailed out and the wood out
  • of it and the darn thing wouldn't, had oil in it but it wouldn't flow. This fellow's
  • well over there just flowing like the mischief. I mean it was putting it out, and so he had
  • to close his well in to change his connections or something like that, or shut It in to switch
  • tanks or anyway, shut it in for just a fraction of, I guess a few minutes, and when he did
  • this man's well over here just pffft, then out it came, you know, and he didn't have
  • any controls on it. He had it wide open and this fellow opened up his well over there
  • and It wouldn't flow. So, hell, the old, this operator over here that had to wait on his
  • well and it kicked off, he ran over and said, "Hell, don't close that well. Don't close
  • it, let her go, let her go. " You know, he knew this one was dead over here, you see.
  • That actually happened. [laughter] W. - Seventy-five apart there.
  • D. - Yes sir, that's right. W. - They were dipping out of the same pool
  • down there. D. - That's right. That's right. Well, we
  • know that wells have been drilled into each other into the pipe in some places where they
  • drill close, even in east Texas. That happened in east Texas along that Texas and Pacific
  • right-of-way there where they drilled so close on the right-of-way and the wells would be
  • up there in fifty or seventy-five feet of each other. Their hole would go crooked and
  • they'd just happen to drill right into the pipe or the casing of a well on the right-of-way,
  • fill it full of mud. I was drilling a well, I'm getting way ahead of my story now. The
  • contractor had some rigs up in the panhandle in the early days, the first rotaries up there,
  • and we would, this particular rig was for the Pure Oil Company and it was sitting up
  • on a pretty high hill in those breaks right off the plains and we started this well. You
  • could look right down in a deep canyon on the side of our derrick floor there, but right
  • west of us Magnolia had a string of cable tools running and we could see the top of
  • the derrick. Those cable-tool derricks are not as high as a rotary rig was. " Could see
  • the top of the derrick down in the canyon, oh, some thousand feet away, and we were drilling
  • along there below the surface pipe and I happened to be out there on my rig that afternoon.
  • I stayed around those rigs pretty close in those days and I saw two fellows coming up
  • that hill, puffing up the hill, and they came up to the derrick floor there and I knew that
  • they were, could tell that they came from that rig down there. They were the driller
  • and his toolie. The driller says, "Say, are ya'll losing any mud down here, up here?"
  • I said, "No, not enough to be noticeable. " I said, "Why?" He said, "By God, I got a
  • hole full of mud down there at my rig, and I was just wondering where, just wondered
  • whether you was losing any mud up here. " We'd, see, that mud traveled through that, the porous
  • cavity condition, you know, and got off there and trickled in his hole and filled his hole
  • full of mud. We were drilling away down there but he wound up with a hole full of our mud
  • down there, [laughter] W. - You were drilling with a rotary making
  • the mud and he had a cable tool-- D. - Rotary, yes, and he had a dry hole.
  • W. - --and shouldn't have any. D. - Yes. [laughter]
  • W. - I wanted to bring you back to Corsicana for one more question.
  • D. - Yes sir. W. - Before you went to Spindletop, that was,
  • was there any gas? Had they, were they using gas around there? I wanted to find out.
  • D. - Around Corsicana? B. - Yes.
  • D. - No sir, there, well, they began to use gas years later after I came In there and
  • was a boy. I remember they laid gas lines around the city there, and sold gas.
  • W. - Do you know, do you have any idea about the date?
  • D. - Oh, that must have been about, well, about 1902, '03, along there. This was the
  • western gas, Mr. Williams, well, out to the northeast of the Corsicana field.
  • W. - Chatfield? D. - Chatfield, that's right, and after I
  • was a big boy and worked with my dad, I went out and built, helped him, I mean, I went
  • out and built derricks. I helped him build derricks for, to drill some of those gas wells.
  • W. - Don't suppose the Chamber of Commerce here would get after us for it but they've
  • often times talked like Wichita Palls was the first place that it was used commercially.
  • I'm afraid that's wrong, aren't you? D. - Yes sir. I know it is. No, that's before
  • they ever found a drop of oil in north Texas. The first real gas was out here at Petrolia.
  • W. - Well, I had it written down here and I was afraid we'd get away from it, and pardon
  • me for breaking in. D. - No sir. That's right. No, we, they would
  • gas, I imagine, from some of those oil wells that had a pretty high gas-oil ratio. Of course,
  • they didn't consider or even thought about gas-oil ratios In those days. It was just,
  • and no tubing, in other words, the well would flow through open pipe up till 192-I think
  • the first began to use tubing in wells to produce them on flowing wells along about
  • '27 or '28. I know somewhere about that date. W. -Well, did that gas -
  • D. - Now, they didn't flow that through the open pipe. Do what?
  • W. - Was gas generally used there? D. - Yes--
  • W. - About 1902 or '03? The folks in general? Everybody use it in their homes?
  • D. - --for domestic use alone, just for the domestic use.
  • W. - That's what I mean. D. - In the homes.
  • W. - Yes. And then some of it came from Chatfield and you think some of it came from the casing
  • heads that would - D. - Some of it originally, later came from
  • Chatfield. That's much later though. I was a boy about eighteen, nineteen years old then.
  • W. - You were - D. - But they used gas from those oil wells
  • for this, around through, not many people would, they weren't connected to gas, though,
  • They used it more for heating, I think. I don't remember that part of it, but I remember
  • the, let me see if I can't call some of those old boys names that laid those lines in there.
  • Ott Holleran(?) was one, and he was later, become a well-known pipeline man, and an old
  • fellow named Willis (?) was another one. I remember they called him "Greasy" Willis.
  • I think he probably took a bath about once a year, [laughter
  • W. - These pipelines came from right there in the field?
  • D. - Yes, W. - The casing heads themselves?
  • D. - Yes, that's right. W. - Well, now, you were telling us about
  • things down in south Texas, and I didn't mean to keep you away from it, but I--
  • D. - That's all right. When you, I want you to ask questions. I wish you would because
  • if things, you know, while you're talking, though, you'll think back and some, something
  • that's way behind your story. K. - Well, that's all right. Just put it in
  • any time you think of it. W. - What about this, now, you started actually
  • the working in south, somewhere there, you told -
  • D. - At Humble. At Humble, Humble, Texas, in 1905. My first rough-necking job was for
  • Wood and Fondren. Old man G. Clint Wood, who died here this year owned them wells, and
  • his son lives here, Prank Wood, and Walter Fondren, who was later, later become a very
  • prominent oil man and vice-president of one of the original offices of the old, the Humble
  • Oil and Refining Company. Tell you a story about him. See, all those men in those days
  • came out of Corsicana. Walter Fondren was in Corsicana at its first oil field and he
  • married a, his wife Was a Cochran. There was quite a family of those people and she's a
  • wonderful lady. She lives in San Antonio now, I think. She was up here one, a year or so
  • ago for some special gathering and I can tell you this story when I was a very small boy.
  • The Cochrans lived out southeast of Corsicana on what is known as the waterworks; there's
  • a big, an awful big tank to me, call it a tank instead of a lake that was built on a
  • good drainage there for the purpose of using that water for the city, and they did use
  • it for the city some. But the Cochrans lived there at this waterworks and operated the
  • waterworks and had charge of it. And it was a wonderful fishing place and I used to go
  • out there with my dad when I was a little old boy and I think they charged us twenty-five
  • cents to go in there and fish for the day. We'd go in and wade out and fish and fishing
  • was wonderful, channel cat especially. Then in the winter time, why in the fall of the
  • year when the ducks began to come in, no hunting season and no limit or nothing like that,
  • why, boy, you just go out hunting whenever you get good and ready and kill everything
  • you can find and bring it home. They didn't bother you, you know. But the main road that
  • went around to the entrance of this waterworks was the old dirt country road. They always
  • called them country roads, you know, passed by the headquarters on the, to Powell. That
  • was one road out to Powell, Texas. And there's another road that, it ran to the west that,
  • along the west line of this property, waterworks property, that went to Eureka and Mildred
  • and on down there. Mildred is right in the middle of that old fault line field, you know.
  • I used to hunt ducks with an old freckled-face Irish boy that lived right across in front
  • of my home named Pat Brennan. Why, he'd steal out his half-brother's shot-gun, double barrel
  • shotgun, and we'd scratch around through the week or maybe it'd take us a couple of weeks
  • to get forty cents to buy a box of shells so we could go hunting on Saturday after school,
  • and, old black powder shells. I know we could go down there on that west road, see, lay
  • there behind that barbed wire fence there on that road and watch until we could spot
  • some ducks down there on that side of the tank and we were on the far side from the
  • dam and the head-quarters, see. And we'd crawl in there and slip in there and get up to these
  • ducks and we'd blast them you know and run in there and pick them up and beat it for
  • that fence because one of the Cochran boys would run out and grab his horse, you know,
  • and get on that thing and run around there to catch us. But he couldn't move fast enough
  • to get that horse and get around there and catch us. We'd be under the fence and across
  • the road and under the fence on the other side, see. But Mrs. Fondren, that was her
  • home and that's where, I'm sure, Walter Fondren first knew her. She's a wonderful lady and
  • [Transcription covered over by strong buzzing in tape which continues through major portion
  • of reel. Conversation resumes toward end of reel. ]
  • D. - "Mr. Kinney, we got some gas in this well, " and he said, "Oh, do we really?" I
  • said, "Yes. Come over and I'll show it to you. " And he said, he'd smell, you know,
  • and one eye and he, I know he didn't he couldn't smell the gas very well. He decided to, he
  • said, "Will it burn?" I said, "Yes sir, it'll burn. " So he struck a match, you know, right
  • over that gas well and it pfffft right in his face. Man, he ran off into an old cotton
  • patch there, and he ran off down through that cotton patch, liked to scared the life out
  • of the old fellow. But he couldn't believe there was gas in there till he struck that
  • match. W. - He probably learned not to get so close
  • to it the next time, to ignite it. [laughter] Did you go to Louisiana next?
  • D. - I went over there for my first time over there was about 19-, later part of 1907 or
  • '08 with my dad rig-building. Then I, after I came to this country in 1913, I came here
  • in 1912, March the 25th, 1912; on the way, I just accidentally, I'm here by accident.
  • I had been in California nearly two years working for the Associated Oil Company and
  • they shut down their drilling activities. I went out there when they were introducing
  • the rotary and was a very young driller and they shut down the drilling activity.
  • [End of Tape]