Growing Up in the Oil Patch. John Schmidt J.
climbed the pole had to climb up to the top to keep from getting shot, too. He would have been killed without a qualm had he not taken this evasive action.
“The wretch on the end of the rope met a horrible death — and I remembered the savagery for a long time.”
Tiny was out of school and working in the Findlay field as a tool dresser and driller at 14. But Frosty had to put in time with the books until age 16. Since both were in the same trade, they met somewhere in the field about this time.
Like all drillers, it was their ambition to buy a string of tools and go to work for themselves.
Frosty achieved this goal first — by the time he was 20 — and undertook contracts in various Ohio fields. He managed to do this by limiting his whisky drinking. The scribbler explained:
A tour of duty, (they pronounced it “tower”), was 12 hours. In the other 12 hours there was usually no place to go. Most of the men spent their pay as soon as they made it. There was always the next day’s wages.
The bulk of the pay packet went for booze. After the first shot, the original idea of saving to buy a rig or lease and become a millionaire usually evaporated. But Frosty transcended the temptations to which his fellows succumbed. He was determined to become independent.
It was this burning ambition that overcame the gruelling physical demands, of working on a cable tool rig. Also, he had recently become a married man.
Few outsiders could understand the psychology of oilfield crews and their capacity for whisky, which was bottomless. They could always depend on working hard the next tour to sweat it out of them. A wag posted his schedule in the bunkshack:
11 p.m. — Get up
11 - 11:30 p.m. — Sober up
11:30 - midnight — Eat
Midnight - noon — Work like hell
Noon - 3 p.m. — Get drunk
3 - 3:30 p.m. — Fight
3:30 p.m. — Go to bed
In this atmosphere, there was an air of recklessness, some shooting, fights, a few murders, (oil tanks hid bodies for years), and general hellery. And not a few suicides.
There were good and bad employers, but one Tiny always remembered was Honest Jim Kirkbride of Rollersville, Ohio. On the third well Tiny drilled in that field for Kirkbride, the crew lost control of a gusher spewing out 20,000 barrels a day 150 feet into the air. It took two days and the efforts of two other crews to close it off.
As the crews walked into the wellhead to install a casing nipple and two eight-inch flow lines, choking, stinking crude oil covered them from head to foot ruining all their clothes. Kirkbride gave the three crews an unforgetable Christmas present when he had his brother, Ed, come down from Toledo and measure every man for a new suit.
As in every other industry, the oil industry goes in boom-and-bust cycles, despite what Keynesian economists would have the public believe. It was during a bust cycle that Tiny Phillips and Frosty Martin found themselves on a Chicago-bound passenger train in 1897. In the suburb of Harvey, Ill., their curiosity was aroused by a large sign, “Well Tools,” above the yard of the F.C. Austin Manufacturing Company.
When they left Chicago both had new jobs: Frosty was hired as a salesman and designer of water well tools and Tiny was hired in the warehouse. The idea was, Frosty would sell a string of tools and Tiny would go into the field to erect a drill rig, with the help of experienced drillers he would hire in Findlay. They would string up the tools and start drilling for the buyer.
Tiny figure the Austin company had given him his first big start in life, with some security. It was therefore on May 1, 1902, Tiny married Zulah May Hagerman, a telephone operator in Findlay. She was also a friend of Maud Martin. The honeymoon was partly business and partly sight-seeing.
The business was to superintend the drilling of a wildcat gas well, in the semi-desert mountainous area near Woodside, Utah, for a syndicate which bought the rig from the Austin company. The newlyweds had never heard of the place, but Zulah said she was willing to go and live in a shack in the field, after a trip to Salt Lake City.
It was with a sense of adventure and thrill and possibly a little trepidation that the young couple boarded the train. They were a handsome pair, she dressed in the long floor-length dress of the period with white blouse and huge flowered hat, and he in the plug hat and typical high white collar of men’s fashions at the turn of the century.
At Denver, they boarded the narrow-gauge Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad for the trip to Woodside. This was one of the last narrow-gauge railways in the U.S. It was built that way to enable the engineers to round the sharp curves and make the steep climbs through mountain ranges and river canyons. From the windows of the toy coach, they observed some of the most spectacular mountain scenery and also some of the most desolate stretches of terrain in the West.
Tiny Phillips helped bring in the J.W. Kirkbride well in 1895, at Rollersville, Ohio.
The train crew were friendly, as are all railway men with newlyweds and joshed them a great deal about that new job Tiny was going to at Woodside. The scribbler noted:
“They asked us if we knew anyone at Woodside. We said no, but we weren’t worrying because the syndicate would look after us. We didn’t catch the knowing winks the two men exchanged.
“After lunch, the brakeman asked if we wanted our trunks put off. I assured him we wanted to have all our belongings with us. I couldn’t understand why he laughed.
“The train left the small town of Green River and the country became more wilder and desolate. In a while, they stopped at a small station. We got off — and could only see one house. The conductor assured us that this was the whole town of Woodside. He laughed uproariously at our discomfiture.
This camp at Green River, Utah, was built out of railway ties in 1902. Tiny and Zulah Phillips arrived here as honeymooners.
“We at last tumbled to the fact the crew had been kidding us all along. We got back on the train with sheepish looks and a little frightened and crestfallen. We continued on to Desert Siding, which was a mileboard with the name on it, nothing else. The crew was helpful and suggested we go on to Helper, a small railroad town near the famous Moffatt Tunnel.”
It did have a hotel and they took a room there to await events. A company man came in from Salt Lake City and told Tiny to make his plans to set up camp, back there in the desert. Tiny ordered the materials, then while they were being shipped in, he and Zulah boarded the train to Salt Lake City, to enjoy the sights and listen to the organ in the big Mormon Tabernacle.
Tiny’s boss came out from Chicago and told them he was glad they had enjoyed their honeymoon, but that the drilling location out in the desert with temperatures that went as high as 110 degrees, was no place for a woman and suggested Mrs. Phillips return to Findlay, “for the time being.”
The “time being,” turned out to be a year before the newlyweds saw each other again. But they accepted this as a way of life in the drilling game. There were no complaints. The wife of a driller never knew when he went away on a job, when he would return.
The reason for his enforced stay at Woodside, was the poor and irregular supply situation. Often the crew had to shut down for days awaiting delivery of casing, pipe, tools or parts.
So while Zulah sat it out in Findlay alone, Tiny and his crew spent some of their spare time exploring the Green River Canyon, whose scenery is almost as spectacular as the Colorado River’s famous Grand Canyon. They saw many rare and awesome sights.
After all the effort and time spent on the well, it turned out to be a water well. It was half a century before drillers came along with more powerful equipment that could make more than pinprick