Southwestern Stories & Tales of the Oil Field PDF Download

Author: alan w greenwood
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1365305937
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 200

View

Book Description
"This book is an anthology of previously unpublished short stories collected over the years and--up until now--resting in computer files. His wife Barbara and his first editor, Sue Gottwald have encouraged him for years to release them to the public for perusal--so here they are, collected for the first time.".

Author: Bobby D. Weaver
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603442057
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

View

Book Description
"Oilfield Trash is written in a charming, flowing style that any reader will enjoy....In Weaver's capable hands, the gypsy lives of a generation of young men unfold on the rigorous stage of drilling fields...."---Paul Spellman, author of Spindletop Boom Days --

Author: Paul F. Lambert
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780806164809
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 276

View

Book Description
During the oil-boom days of the early twentieth century, a few lucky or shrewd individuals made millions of dollars virtually overnight. It is a familiar theme in the romantic mythology that sprang up about the era. But the people who produced those millions are the real story, told in these word-for-word recollections of early-day workers in the "oil patch." In vivid, often poignant detail these men and women recall the grueling toil, primitive living and working conditions, and ever-present danger in a time when life was cheap and oil was gold. In the late 1930s employees of the Federal Writers Project, a branch of the New Deal Workers Progress Administration, recorded the voices of these pioneers as they offered their memories, sometimes wryly humorous and sometimes bitter, of the turmoil that was the daily lot of the oilfielders. We meet colorful, tough-talking "Manila Kate," who took over her husband's drilling outfit after he died in an explosion. A welder vividly recalls the death of his closest pal, a skilled hand who loved to take chances. In an oil-field shantytown the support of good-hearted neighbors assuages the pain of a bereaved and impoverished family. A "shooter" recalls the deadly danger of the "soup wagon" the buckboard that delivered the nitroglycerin to the well--or blew up on the way. While many of the individuals witnessed bizarre accidents that became almost routine in the early oil fields, their personal stories also show how uncertain job security and wages could be, even before the Depression, when dry holes and plummeting oil prices left thousands of workers broke and homeless. Many of the interviewers provide valuable technical details about early oilfield operations. Yet it is the stories of the people, the workers themselves, that endure. The early oil industry was built upon their toil, their pain, and their courage, all of which are evident in every word recorded here.

Author: Darren Dochuk
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541673948
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492

View

Book Description
A groundbreaking new history of the United States, showing how Christian faith and the pursuit of petroleum fueled America's rise to global power and shaped today's political clashes Anointed with Oil places religion and oil at the center of American history. As prize-winning historian Darren Dochuk reveals, from the earliest discovery of oil in America during the Civil War, citizens saw oil as the nation's special blessing and its peculiar burden, the source of its prophetic mission in the world. Over the century that followed and down to the present day, the oil industry's leaders and its ordinary workers together fundamentally transformed American religion, business, and politics -- boosting America's ascent as the preeminent global power, giving shape to modern evangelical Christianity, fueling the rise of the Republican Right, and setting the terms for today's political and environmental debates. Ranging from the Civil War to the present, from West Texas to Saudi Arabia to the Alberta Tar Sands, and from oil-patch boomtowns to the White House, this is a sweeping, magisterial book that transforms how we understand our nation's history.

Author: Myra Hargrave McIlvain
Publisher: Sunstone Press
ISBN: 163293163X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 234

View

Book Description
These tales trace the Texas story, from Cabeza de Vaca who trekked barefoot across the country recording the first accounts of Indian life, to impresarios like Stephen F. Austin and Don Martín DeLeón who brought settlers into Mexican Texas. There are visionaries like Padre José Nicolás Ballí, the Singer family, and Sam Robertson, who tried and failed to develop Padre Island into the wonderland that it is today. There are legendary characters like Sally Skull who had five husbands and may have killed some of them, and Josiah Wilbarger who was scalped and lived another ten years to tell about it. Also included are the stories of Shanghai Pierce, cattleman extraordinaire, who had no qualms about rounding up other folks’ calves, and Tol Barret who drilled Texas’ first oil well over thirty years before Spindletop changed the world. The Sanctified Sisters got rich running a commune for women, and millionaire oilman Edgar B. Davis gave away his money as fast as he made it. Sam Houston, Jean Lafitte, Antonio López de Santa Anna, Lucy Kidd-Key, Minnie Fisher Cunningham, all these characters and many more—early-day adventurers, Civil War heroes, and latter-day artists and musicians—created the patchwork called Texas.

Author: David J. Wishart
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803247871
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 962

View

Book Description
"Wishart and the staff of the Center for Great Plains Studies have compiled a wide-ranging (pun intended) encyclopedia of this important region. Their objective was to 'give definition to a region that has traditionally been poorly defined,' and they have

Author: Jane Spraggins Wilson
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1439639973
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 132

View

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: Estha Briscoe Stowe
Publisher: TCU Press
ISBN: 9780875650333
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 204

View

Book Description
Tells of the lives of early-day oil field families in Texas boomtowns.

Author: Sheena B. Stief
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806169982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221

View

Book Description
A vast number of studies have documented the economic and geological effects of oil production, but the impact of boom-and-bust cycles on individuals and communities has received less attention. Boom or Bust remedies this gap by highlighting the personal experiences of those directly affected in an economy dominated by oil and natural gas production. The Permian Basin is one of the largest oil-producing regions in the United States. People who live there have benefited from explosive growth, only to see opportunities vanish with sudden industry downturns. In 2016, the National Endowment for the Humanities funded a grant for the study and collection of energy narratives in this economically volatile region. Boom or Bust derives from that community initiative and offers a unique contribution to the developing field of energy humanities. The oil-field industry may seem to be all about numbers, but as Boom or Bust demonstrates, residents of oil-and-gas country, whether they work in the oil field or not, are at the mercy of an ever-shifting economy. When the price of oil rises, companies move in and newcomers flood the area, expanding the employment force. And as the population booms, so does the infrastructure of cities. When prices drop, though, families must make difficult choices: whether to stay put or follow the oil to another location. With the ensuing declines in population, small businesses close their doors and unemployment levels rise. Despite the inevitable declines and despite the increase in alternative energy resources, many West Texans feel a sense of pride that borders on patriotism. Boom or Bust reveals the full complexity of boomtown culture.

Author: Jim Gramon
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
ISBN: 1461720877
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

View

Book Description
Jim Gramon, a native Texas storyteller, introduces you to some of his friends: John Henry Faulk, Cactus Pryor, Allen Damron, Mason Brewer, Mody Boatright, and Ben King Green. And he shares funny Texas stories from all over the state, from the Oil Patch to the Panhandle, from the Big Bend to the Piney Woods; big towns and small (Dallas, Houston, Austin, El Paso, Terlingua, Manchaca, Cumby, Sulfur Springs, Commerce).