Author: Johnnye Montgomery Publisher: Rj Communications ISBN: 9780615253749 Category : Humor Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
A light-hearted romp through the oilfields of West Texas as told by men who endured the grime and heat and bone-shaking cold, and sometimes found pay when the gas roared out of the ground to find them. Funny,informative and truer at the core than factual history.
Author: Jerry Key Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc. ISBN: 1098003470 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 300
Book Description
Born August 1944, shortly before the end of WWII, Jerry was always fascinated by rumors of peace and prosperity. Unfortunately, he had siblings and cousins that constantly cracked him on the head and stole his allowance. He entered elementary school (called grade school in the old days) and soon found many friends that also cracked him on the head and stole his money. He led a life of poverty so severe he couldn't even afford a camera to take pictures of his measly existence. He survived by eating beans and potatoes and cornbread nearly every meal. Finally, he entered Valley High School and soon rose to the top of his class (well, pretty close as vice president) and prospered by using all the techniques used on him to crack heads and steal the money of his classmates. College during the 60's was a learning experience. Mostly he learned he didn't want to work all his life, so upon graduation, he joined the USAF and became the (self-proclaimed) world's greatest fighter pilot. After a year's vacation in Vietnam and three years in England, he settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he continued to fly fighter planes for the New Mexico Air National Guard and owned a couple businesses. He became a real estate tycoon (i.e., slum lord) and finally went to work for Continental Airlines as a pilot, retiring in 2004 with over fifteen thousand hours flying time. He now is a land baron (thirty acres) and lives on his estate near Savannah, Tennessee, with his wife and dog. Unfortunately, his current wife cracks him on the head and takes his money. Some things in life never change. In this surprisingly funny memoir, writer Jerry Key looks back at his life and offers a comical and uncanny view from childhood mishaps to retirement some sixty years later, but he reveals valuable life lessons that apply to us all. Most of all, this book provides a journey of living life and enduring life experiences with the insight of wisdom and a positive outlook.
Author: Jane Spraggins Wilson Publisher: Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 1439639973 Category : Photography Languages : en Pages : 132
Book Description
From 1924 to 1962, Texon was a model company oil town in Reagan County, Texas. Pittsburgh-based Big Lake Oil Company developed the town site next to the Big Lake Oil Field and Santa Rita No. 1, the discovery well on University of Texas lands in the Permian Basin. Pres. Levi Smith ensured that company employees and their families enjoyed comfortable housing and community amenities, including a grade school, hospital, nondenominational church, theater, swimming pool, and baseball park, as well as a caf and dry goods, grocery, and drugstores. By the end of World War II, the Big Lake Fields declining production meant a smaller workforce and a declining Texon population. Plymouth Oil assumed ownership in 1956 and six years later sold out to Marathon Oil, which ended company support for the town. At annual reunions, however, former residentswho remember Oiler baseball, scouting, Sunday school, and Labor Day celebrationshave kept the Texon experience alive.
Author: Brian Lies Publisher: Greenwillow Books ISBN: 9780062671271 Category : Juvenile Fiction Languages : en Pages : 40
Book Description
A Caldecott Honor Book An ALA Notable Book A breathtakingly beautiful and luminescent book that is pitch-perfect for anyone of any age who has experienced any type of loss or disappointment, from New York Times–bestselling picture book creator Brian Lies. New York Times–bestselling author-illustrator Brian Lies has created a beautiful, accessible, and deeply personal story about friendship, loss, and renewal. The Rough Patch was awarded a Caldecott Honor and features stunning paintings from the award-winning creator of Bats at the Beach. Evan and his dog do everything together, from eating ice cream to caring for their prize-winning garden, which grows big and beautiful. One day the unthinkable happens: Evan’s dog dies. Heartbroken, Evan destroys the garden and everything in it. The ground becomes overgrown with prickly weeds and thorns, and Evan embraces the chaos. But beauty grows in the darkest of places, and when a twisting vine turns into an immense pumpkin, Evan is drawn out of his isolation and back to the county fair, where friendships—old and new—await. A deeply hopeful and positive book, The Rough Patch was awarded a Caldecott Honor and is a story about love, loss, and hope, and the healing power of friendship and nature. “Weepy and wonderful.”—Wall Street Journal
Author: Adrian Vega Publisher: Mascot Books ISBN: 9781645434221 Category : Languages : en Pages : 38
Book Description
The "oil patch" of West Texas, also known as the Permian Basin, is rich in history and tradition. In Odessa, Texas, the West Texas sky is big, the people are friendly, and their "can-do" spirit runs as deep as the oil wells that dot the land. In O is for Oil: The ABCs of Odessa, the author and illustrator capture the heart and spirit of this great community through well-known images, places, and activities. From art, nature, culture, education, and energy, see what makes Odessa and West Texas a great place to live!
Author: Patrick Ritchie Robinson Publisher: ISBN: 9781715272883 Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Oilfield Laughs, Lies, and Lore follows the careers of two independent oilmen and their adventures in the American oilfield from the 1970's to present time. The book consists of 48 short stories detailing their humorous exploits in a format that is at the same time both entertaining and very informative.Throughout the book, the author introduces the reader to many of the unique characters that make up the American oil patch from hippie roughnecks to independent oil operators as he details their many adventures ranging from encounters with unfriendly skunks to doodlebugging donkeys to atomic gophers. To some degree, this book is a chronicling of an American era that is fast disappearing as it becomes more and more difficult to find new oil and gas frontiers to explore out where the wildcats still roam and the hoot owls mate with the chickens. Still, the author believes that the American oilfield will always maintain a certain measure of frontier thinking and continue to attract the type of characters and adventurers that gravitate to frontiers. As described by the author, these people are, to a man and woman, rugged individualists who don't accept limits. And the proof of this is that every time someone declares that America has reached the limit of its oil and gas reserves, the independent American oilman says "Hah!" and moves the limits by discovering new sources of petroleum. In reading these stories, the author gradually introduces new oil and gas terminology in such a way that upon finishing the book the reader has a working knowledge of many of the terms and concepts utilized in oil and gas exploration. And if additional data is desired, the author provides it in the form of appendixes that explain petroleum exploration in more depth along with a glossary of oilfield terms.
Author: Kenneth S. Deffeyes Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400829070 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 232
Book Description
In 2001, Kenneth Deffeyes made a grim prediction: world oil production would reach a peak within the next decade--and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Deffeyes's claim echoed the work of geophysicist M. King Hubbert, who in 1956 predicted that U.S. oil production would reach its highest level in the early 1970s. Though roundly criticized by oil experts and economists, Hubbert's prediction came true in 1970. In this updated edition of Hubbert's Peak, Deffeyes explains the crisis that few now deny we are headed toward. Using geology and economics, he shows how everything from the rising price of groceries to the subprime mortgage crisis has been exacerbated by the shrinking supply--and growing price--of oil. Although there is no easy solution to these problems, Deffeyes argues that the first step is understanding the trouble that we are in.
Author: John Schmidt Publisher: Dundurn ISBN: 0920474578 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 190
Book Description
This book chronicles the adventures of a cast of colourful, ambitious people: statesmen, scoundrels, visionaries, and developers, all participants in the growing oil patch!
Author: Michael Patrick F. Smith Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1984881523 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 464
Book Description
“A book that should be read . . . Smith brings an alchemic talent to describing physical labor.” —The New York Times Book Review “Beautiful, funny, and harrowing.” – Sarah Smarsh, The Atlantic “Remarkable . . . this is the book that Hillbilly Elegy should have been.” —Kirkus Reviews A vivid window into the world of working class men set during the Bakken fracking boom in North Dakota Like thousands of restless men left unmoored in the wake of the 2008 economic crash, Michael Patrick Smith arrived in the fracking boomtown of Williston, North Dakota five years later homeless, unemployed, and desperate for a job. Renting a mattress on a dirty flophouse floor, he slept boot to beard with migrant men who came from all across America and as far away as Jamaica, Africa and the Philippines. They ate together, drank together, argued like crows and searched for jobs they couldn't get back home. Smith's goal was to find the hardest work he could do--to find out if he could do it. He hired on in the oil patch where he toiled fourteen hour shifts from summer's 100 degree dog days to deep into winter's bracing whiteouts, all the while wrestling with the demons of a turbulent past, his broken relationships with women, and the haunted memories of a family riven by violence. The Good Hand is a saga of fear, danger, exhaustion, suffering, loneliness, and grit that explores the struggles of America's marginalized boomtown workers—the rough-hewn, castoff, seemingly disposable men who do an indispensable job that few would exalt: oil field hands who, in the age of climate change, put the gas in our tanks and the food in our homes. Smith, who had pursued theater and played guitar in New York, observes this world with a critical eye; yet he comes to love his coworkers, forming close bonds with Huck, a goofy giant of a young man whose lead foot and quick fists get him into trouble with the law, and The Wildebeest, a foul-mouthed, dip-spitting truck driver who torments him but also trains him up, and helps Smith "make a hand." The Good Hand is ultimately a book about transformation--a classic American story of one man's attempt to burn himself clean through hard work, to reconcile himself to himself, to find community, and to become whole.
Author: Johnnye Montgomery
Author: Jerry Key
Author: Jane Spraggins Wilson
Author: Roger M. Schlosser
Author: Brian Lies
Author: Adrian Vega
Author: Patrick Ritchie Robinson
Author: Kenneth S. Deffeyes
Author: John Schmidt
Author: Michael Patrick F. Smith