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Distance never limited A. R. (Red) Elam, my Dad. He conquered distance with a telephone. Alexander Graham Bell founded AT&T in 1885, but Dad made them profitable with long-distance telephone calls.
In the 1930s, he managed three lumber stores, Rotan and Avoca from his Hamlin telephone. In the 1940s he moved to Abilene, but took calls from 30 of his truck drivers spread across the oil patch. Dad also used the telephone to manage his drilling mud warehouses in Sweetwater, Cisco, Jayton, and Aspermont.
When Ma Bell put mobile telephones in automobiles, Red Elam was an early user. In the 1950s, Red ran up his telephone bill calling the Pueblo, Colorado steel mill. He sold, trucked oil field pipe. Enclosed a pipe yard to store deliveries.
But his longest drilling mud sale came in 1946 when the hydrogen bomb was tested on Bikini Atoll. Dad sold the drilling mud to the Abilene driller who was drilling a hole to hold test instruments. Dad called National Lead Company in Pittsburgh. Ordered a trainload of drilling mud delivered to the Navy in California. Navy delivered mud and chemicals to the Bikini Atoll.
Dad’s longest, long-distance telephone sale was 9,763 kilometers, over six thousand sixty-six miles away from his truck yard office in Abilene.
Photo credit: Pixabay
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