Good morning, class. Let me start the semester by assigning your term paper. Research, write, and Bring To Date the address delivered November 4, 1954 by Dr. Frank Conselman. PhD, World War II Colonel, consulting geologist. Conselman–a great wit, pilot, but mediocre sailboat racer. A friend I was fortunate to know during my years in Abilene. Dr. Conselman’s address, “Uranium—Oil’s Newest Competitor,” was delivered in Abilene, 1954. West Central Oil and Gas Association may have
Category: Oil
Rolling the Barrel
In the 1950s the American Petroleum Institute furnished the barrel, and Bob Tiffany and I rolled the aluminum prop out for luncheon club presentations. Rotarians, Kiwanians, other luncheon club members in the Abilene area listened to our message: “Crude oil makes plastics as well as gasoline.” We demonstrated from our opened upright barrel. Used the furnished chemicals and produced plastics from crude oil in a chemical beaker. Plastics were new in the 1950s. Remembered when
Red Would Tell Joe
Thanks to my red-headed Daddy–who forsook Kentucky hills in the 1920s, surveyed in the Florida Land Boom, and then worked in West Texas oilfields—I learned: No legislative body, dictator, or president ever repealed the Law of Supply and Demand. Dad’s wisdom reminded me of when I spent a 1930s week with Aunt Muriel and Uncle W.R. Lacy. They owned a grocery store and gasoline station in West Texas Peyote. In those days you pumped gasoline
Washers
Frisbees were flying all over the Chapel Hill campus. I remembered those days when I read the alumni association had invented a way for students to bring back an old recreation: Put a real plate on the floor and toss a paper plate…not your old frisbee…as close as you can. In those remembered frisbee days, students invented a golf game that called for you to land your frisbee on selected campus landmarks. Sometimes the pates
Learning More
During my 1953 to 1959 days of selling mud and chemicals to oilfield drillers, I remember drilling contractor Lloyd Rhea as one of the smartest people I met. Lloyd had moved from southern Illinois to Abilene, west central Texas, and brought most of his drilling crew with him. His hair was white, but his body was still supple. His voice was soft, but his commands made his crew move quickly. His handshake was better than
Keep Her Turning….
Everybody who ever worked, or ‘sweated,’ a 24-hour rotary drilling operation heard this admonition from the crew leaving after their eight-hour shift: “Keep her turning to the right.“ ‘Her’ was the rotary table that spun the pipe in the hole. For the record I was a ‘sweater,’ an observer watching the four men–sometimes five–send drill pipe down the hole to spin the drilling bit. Sometimes I visited the drilling rig to sell the drilling mud