What always made me curious was, what started the "boom town" craze? why did i leave Seminole to go to Texas, and then up traveling all across the states to get the same product: oil. Well little by little I started to find out some reasons why. Things I heard from the boss, from other drillers, and just folks around the towns.
"What more than anything else determined the character of the boom town was a legal principle known as rule of capture... It meant that if an owner of a leaseholder drilled an oil well, his neighbor had to drill too, to prevent the oil from being drained from under his land (Boatright, 61)." Once I got to the first few towns I started picking up on this. All the land owners were begging us to get out as much oil as we could. It was a race, I thought. I've never been much for competitions, but I have to admit it sure felt like one at times.
The towns that were originally at the oil sites we couldn't even recognize. New stores (mostly for us workers), bad roads and trails would be made just to get from here to there, and there weren't enough houses to put up all the workers who were only here for a short stay. "Workers generally lived in tents or shacks, or crowded flophouses that rented cots in eight-hour shifts, the "hot bed" system. Sewer and water systems could not be created where they did not exist, and where they did exist, they could not be extended to meet the need of the expanded population. Health laws could not be enforced in the eating places. Epidemics broke out from time to time (Boatright, 62)."
I don't think all the wives and children liked us much. I thought about getting a wife here and there, it sure does get lonely starring up in the tents or boardinghouses, with nothing but a clan of muscles all around me, snoring through the night. Just none of the women around the saloons seemed fitting. Maybe after a few years of doing this, and after I make it up to a driller and have more money to save, i'll go looking for a wife. The women I did see around, some already with their kids, well they weren't too fond of the saloons and drinking and fights us roughnecks brought with us wherever we'd go.
"There was lots of fights there, yes, fist fights. In the beginning I don't remember of anybody killing anyone there. But they'd fall out over different things and have fist fights. And after the pipe liners come in there, 'course the saloons come in there. They sold beer and liquors of all kinds there. And there was lots of it drank (Boatright, 64)."
One night some of us got curious with all the town chatter, and some of the guys knew of a town meeting that night. Well we went, and it sure was an experience. I don't remember all the talk of it, the man who was running the show wasn't too friendly on us workers, I could tell by the looks he's give our way. During one of his rants, he muttered something that had always stuck with me. He said his land was "sacrificing" for us, the whole town was. Sacrificing? Of course not, right? It's just land and we're doing what we should with it. The oil is down there whether we bring it up or not.
The man running the meeting got me a little heated. Sacrificing? what is he trying to say? We're here helping this town out ya know. We're digging up the oil, working hard all day, and they're getting money for it! On the walk back to the boarding house, what the man was trying to say started making sense. I looked around me and the place was a mess. "The soil is black, being saturated with waste petroleum. The engine-houses, pumps, and tanks are black, with the smoke and soot of the coal-fires which raise the steam to drive the wells... The men that work among the barrels, machinery, tanks, and teams are white men blackened... Even the trees, which timidly clung to the sides of the bluffs, wore the universal sooty covering. Their very leaves were black (Petrolia, 67)."
Man, oh man. What have we done?
No comments:
Post a Comment