by Lois Lenski
“I’m too light-headed,” Bert said. “I don’t like bein’ up so high in the air.”
“You haven’t got enough in your head to hold you down,” teased Orvie. “Could you see clear over into Kansas and Arkansas?”
“G’wan!” cried Bert impatiently. “I saw one guy fall and that cooked me. I’m going to be a farmer. Don’t know why Grandpa had to let that old oil company come in and tear our farm up.”
Papa was hired with his team and scraper to scoop out a big slush-pond back of the barn. Then he did other digging for the oil company, to make a little extra money. Bert agreed to take over the milk-route. They could all see that farming was becoming more difficult, but they could still keep on pasturing cows and selling milk. Mama bought more young chickens, so she would have plenty to sell.
The wooden rig rose up only a stone’s-throw from the house on the north. The boilers were installed and the drilling machinery set up. The rig-builders went away.
Grandpa had kept his word and ordered a new bicycle for Orvie and a new doll for Addie from the mail-order catalogue. It took them a long time to come and when they did, Orvie and Addie paid little attention to them. For the same day the drillers began the actual drilling.
Orvie and Addie went out with Grandpa to watch. “‘Spudding-in’ they call it,” Orvie explained.
The steam engine began to thud and the tools were pounding in the black hole in the middle of the derrick floor.
“Addie,” shouted Slim above the noise, “we need you up here. Just for luck, won’t you wish the well in? If we get oil, you shall have a brand-new silk dress.”
Addie’s eyes sparkled. “How do I do it?”
“Lean over the hole and make your wish, but don’t tell us what it is.” Slim held her as she repeated the old rhyme:
“I wish I may, I wish I might
Have the wish I wish tonight.”
Then she closed her eyes and lips and made a solemn wish. Although she did not tell what it was, they all knew that little Addie was wise enough to wish for oil.
“When do I get my silk dress, Slim?” she cried, dancing up and down.
“Not for a while, young lady,” laughed Slim.
That first day, the drill hammered its way two hundred feet into the earth. Two hundred feet of twenty-inch pipe was lowered inside the well, to line it.
“My land! Do we have to listen to all that noise?” Mama complained at dinner time. “Not only the noise but the vibration—it’s going to shake the house to pieces. It will break all the windows.”
“Now, now Jennie,” said Grandpa soothingly; “How can they drill without a little noise and shaking of the machinery? You’ll get used to it.”
“It’s giving me the headache already,” said Mama. “Oh, it used to be nice and peaceful around here before all this ruckus started.”
“Jennie,” said Grandpa sternly. “You been wantin’ improvements, haven’t you?”
“Yes Pa,” said Mama. “Al will never manage to get them. He never has time to fix things around the house. He’s always fixin’ machinery or mendin’ harness.”
“This farm has never been worth a row of pins when it comes to crops,” Grandpa went on. “Al’s Ma and I worked our fingers to the bone and now you and Al are doin’ the same thing. But if we can get oil, maybe it will make things easier for us all. But you can’t get oil without sufferin’ the inconveniences of gettin’ it. Understand?”
“Yes, Pa,” said Mama meekly.
Della came in. “With all that noise, how’s a person to hear herself think?”
“Now you—just like your Mama,” said Grandpa. With a twinkle in his eye, he added, “Have you seen that handsome young feller out there at the well?”
“Course not,” said Della. “I’ve got no use for those greasy, grimy fellows. Why any man goes in for oil field work I cannot understand. Gets covered with mud and oil from head to foot. It’s the dirtiest work in the world.”
“Here he comes now, Della,” said Grandpa. “Better not let him hear what you’re sayin’.”
The man came up on the back porch following Orvie.
“Here’s Slim, Mama, Della! Grandpa, here’s Slim!” cried Orvie excitedly.
Della blushed pink when Slim came into the kitchen. Shep dashed up and jumped all over the young man.
“Hey, you old oil field pup!” laughed Slim. “Be a good dog now. Get down, get down.”
“He’s not much good, Slim,” said Orvie. “But we like him anyhow. Are you the driller on our well?”
“No,” said Slim. “That big stout fellow—we call him Heavy—he’s head driller. I’m his right-hand man, the tool-dresser. But I’ll be a driller myself some fine day.”
Slim stayed for dinner and told how he had worked in a dozen oil fields all over the United States. He said he liked working for the Sooner Oil Company. He explained all about cable-tool drilling, while Grandpa and Papa and Orvie nodded their heads wisely, but Mama, Della and Bert said they didn’t know what he was talking about.
“You’ll all learn before you know it,” laughed Slim.
That was the beginning of many meals taken in the Robinson home by drillers, tool-dressers and roustabouts. They were good men in spite of their rough ways, eager for friendship and conversation, and they enjoyed Mama’s wholesome cooking.
There were two tours (pronounced “towers” in the oil field) or shifts of five men each on the drilling crew. Each tour worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week. The boss of the tour was the driller, who handled the actual operation of the drill. The tool-dresser assisted him in sharpening bits, pulling casing and other jobs. The boilermen operated the boiler, and the roustabouts were laborers for odd chores.
One day when Orvie and the boys came home from school, Slim was helping Heavy heat and dress the drill bit by hammering it with a sixteen-pound sledge.
“Can we climb to the top of the derrick, Slim?” shouted Orvie.
“You boys get out!” yelled Heavy crossly. “We’re not gonna have a lot of mean little rowdy boys hangin around this oil well.”
“I was askin’ you, Slim,” shouted Orvie.
“NO!” yelled Slim. “YOU BOYS LISTEN TO HEAVY—HE’S BOSS HERE! It’s too dangerous. Nobody’s allowed up on the derrick except for business. Company rules. Now get out!”
“Want some pop?” yelled Orvie. “I’ll go up to Peg-Leg’s store and get you some.”
“Sure, go ahead!” answered Slim, tossing out some coins.
Orvie rode off on his new bicycle. He rode it back and forth to school every day now to save time. Whenever he was at home, he left it near the well so the men could use it if they wanted to. Slim had told him that when they were taking time out, they liked to ride it up and down the road just for the fun of it.
When Orvie came back with the bottles of pop, the work on the drill bit was finished and Heavy was thirsty. He was more friendly now. He let Orvie and Harry Big Bear and Ralph Wilkins come into the doghouse and sit on the “lazy bench” and they all drank pop. Slim explained the danger of accidents from the heavy machinery, and the boys knew they must heed or be ordered off.
“Don’t bump your head on the headache post!” laughed Slim, pointing to the post under the walking beam, as they came out on the derrick floor.
“Hi there, Slim! Hi there! Don’t you hear me? Slim! Slim!”
They heard somebody calling Slim. Orvie looked over to the house and saw Della on the back porch. She called again, “Hi there, Slim! Do you like rabbit?”
“Yes, sure!” Slim called back.
“Ain’t the gravy good?” shouted Della.
That was all. She switched around and went back into the house.
“Haw, haw, haw!” roared the tool-dresser. “If that girl don’t take the cake!” Heavy and the boys laughed too.
“I’m not going to be a teamster or a rig-builder,” Orvie announced to Grandpa that night. “I’m going to be a tool-dresser like Slim Rogers.”
“Don’t surprise me non
e!” said Grandpa with a smile.
CHAPTER V
Stringtown
“Della, do wash Addie’s face and comb her hair,” said Mama one morning. “Her hair looks like a straw stack.”
“Ain’t been combed since Monday,” mumbled Addie.
“Land sakes, and here it’s Saturday,” said Mama. “The days go by so fast I can’t keep up with them. How long since you washed your face?”
“’Bout two weeks, Mama,” said Addie, laughing.
The house was full of strangers. Orvie and Addie felt like strangers themselves. Mama was so busy she had no time for them. The change began one day when two oil workers came to the door and asked for a bed to sleep in. Papa and Mama talked it over.
“I don’t want to take in roomers,” said Mama, “but it seems like I have to. There’s no other place for the poor men to go. There’s no place for ’em to eat, either, so they want me to let them eat with us.”
“They make good wages, and they’ll pay well,” said Papa. “It’s up to you.”
Mama put the first two men into the spare room, and when the next two came, she moved Orvie and Bert into the attic and gave the men the boys’ room. The rest of the family gave up their beds one by one. Mama slept on the leather couch and Papa on the floor of the front room. Della and Addie slept on beds made up on the dining room floor each night. When Mama put two men into the attic, Bert went out to the barn and Orvie moved to the porch swing. Only Grandpa remained comfortable and undisturbed out in his hen-house under the cottonwood tree.
One day a knock came at the door and Grandpa answered it.
“It’s the ‘farm boss’ of the Sooner Oil Company, Jennie,” he said. “He wants to arrange for a strip of land along the road, where people can build houses.”
“They’ll build houses?” asked Mama.
“Yes, a whole string of ’em,” said Grandpa.
“Who’ll live in them?” asked Mama.
“Oil workers and their families,” said Grandpa. “They’re nice folks. With oil wells springin’ up like mushrooms, all the workers have to have places to live. It’s too far for them to drive back and forth to Perry or Tonkawa every day. Do you want to be bothered about takin’ in the rents, Jennie? You can add it to your chicken and egg money.”
“All right, if they won’t bother us,” said Mama.
And so Stringtown—one of many Stringtowns—was built in a week on the half-mile frontage of Robinsons’ quarter-section. Lumber was hauled in over night and building began. Houses were moved in too, whole and readymade, blocked up in place and occupied immediately. People came in wagons, buggies and automobiles, bringing furniture. Before the end of the week, the Robinsons had many new neighbors.
At first Mama tried to see that she rented only to nice people, good people. But they came so fast she could not keep track of them all, and soon she was too tired to ask questions. If they said they would pay the rent, she told them to move in. She tried to remember their names—Armstrong, Cassady, Decker, Soaper …
“Can these people get water here, Mama?” asked Orvie.
“I suppose so,” said Mama. “There’s no other place. You help them pump, Orvie.”
A procession of strangers—men, women and children—lined up at the well in the Robinsons’ back yard with milk cans, pails, pitchers and bottles. Orvie pumped a while at first, and then gave up. The pump was always going. The people kept coming to the house, always wanting something. Mama began to sell them eggs, milk and cream, vegetables and chickens.
Mama was so busy she never noticed that Orvie had stopped school. He brought his books home one day and put them in the closet in his old room. He had decided not to go back, but he did not announce this to the family. He told them the latest oil news instead.
“They’re spuddin’-in No. 2 back of the barn,” said Orvie, “right in the puddle where the doodlebug wiggled!”
No. 2 Robinson had been staked off some time before, cellar dug and rig erected. Wells had been started by half-a-dozen companies on neighboring farms. A few had proved to be dry holes, but there were more and more producers, so the field was considered proved territory.
“Oh, my land, I’ll go crazy with two wells drillin’ as close as that,” said Mama. “No sleep at night and headache all day with all the racket goin’ on.”
“Slim’s down to the Bartlesville sand in No. 1,” Orvie went on, “and he’s goin’ on down to the Mississippi,” Orvie explained. “They say there’s seven sands and oil in every one of them—three of ’em for sure, and there’s gonna be three derricks on every location.”
“Seven sands!” Mama picked up the broom and began sweeping briskly. “Looks like I got seven sands right here in my house, what with all you menfolks keep trackin’ in. Orvie, take hold of that wash-machine handle and get it goin’.”
“Beds, beds, beds! I’m sick of makin’ beds,” complained Della.
“Hurry and bring the dirty sheets down, so I can put them in the machine,” said Mama. “I got to get these pies and cakes in the oven, and the meat on to stew. The men ain’t particular, but they like to eat hearty. I want ’em to have all they can hold.”
“You feed ’em too good, Jennie,” said Grandpa. “You won’t make any profit on this deal.”
“It does me good to see ’em eat,” said Mama. “I never thought they’d be so nice. That Jenks feller—he’s just a roustabout—brought me a present, a pretty silk handkerchief, yesterday. Of course I laid down the law to ’em when they first come. I told ’em they could play cards but no gambling or drinking in my house.”
“They’re good boys all right,” said Grandpa. “That bunch on the Wilkins well got hijacked last night, robbed of every cent they had in their pockets—they’d just been paid off. There are always bad characters roamin’ around, livin’ off the gains of others.”
“Orvie, what are you standing there gawkin’ for?” cried Mama. “Take hold of the handle of that wash-machine. I must get those sheets out on the line before noon.”
“Mama! Mama!” called Della from upstairs. “Somebody’s knocking.”
“Don’t call so loud,” answered Mama. “The night tour (tower) men must get their sleep.” She put the cake into the oven and went to the door.
“Could I rent a room, Mrs. Robinson?” asked the well-dressed man who stood there.
“I’m full up as I can be,” said Mama. “I could board you, but my beds are all full.”
“My name’s Jim Waterman,” the man said, “I’m ‘tool-pusher’ for the Sooner Oil Company, in charge of all our wells around here. I have to see that they have supplies and equipment and keep going.”
“That’s our oil company, Mama,” whispered Orvie.
“Could you give me a pillow and a quilt and let me sleep on the floor?” begged the man. “That would be better than the lazy-bench in the doghouse. Last night I had only my raincoat for a pillow, and the bench got mighty hard. All the boarding houses are full, with men sleeping in cots in the halls. They’re sleeping in chairs in restaurants and barber shops, in parked cars—anywhere. So you see …”
“Why, that’s terrible, and you a tool-pusher,” said Mama. “But I haven’t a place on earth to put you. There’s somebody in every room but the kitchen, and I have to start the wood fire so early …”
“Mrs. Robinson, how would you like to have gas piped in to cook with? And for lights too?” asked Mr. Waterman. “You could cook quicker, and you wouldn’t have to fill all those kerosene lamps. How would you like to have free gas?”
“Me? Free gas?” cried Mama. “I can’t believe it.”
“We’ll pipe it in just as soon as we can,” said Mr. Waterman. “Could you give me a pillow and quilt whenever I come and let me sleep here on the porch? I want to be as close to your oil well as possible. I won’t be regular, I come and go, but when I come, I’ll need a bed.”
Mama laughed. “Why, of course, Mr. Waterman, if you don’t mind Orvie in the porch swing. We’ll buy you a
cot and fix you up comfortable.”
The next day was Sunday, but not the quiet peaceful Sunday of the past. The two Robinson wells were drilling away, shattering the Sunday peace with their loud commotion. The oil workers went about their work as usual, dressed in dirty everyday clothes. Mama and Della were so busy cooking all morning, nobody thought about going to church.
Della put all the extra leaves in the dining table, so it stretched from window to door. There were two sittings because Cousin Mattie and Cousin George, with their three grown-up children, came from Blackwell to spend the day, and Aunt Lottie and Uncle Mart dropped in on their way home from church. Orvie and Addie never got to sit down at all. They ran back and forth to the kitchen and helped themselves to dishes of food sitting there. They peeked through the crack of the door and listened to the conversation.
“They say they’re going to drill in the cemetery, right by the Prairie View Church!” announced Aunt Lottie briskly.
“Goodness gracious!” exclaimed Cousin Mattie. “Can’t they let the dead alone?”
“Jennie, do you hear?” called Lottie. “They won’t even let the dead lay in peace.”
But Mama was out in the kitchen cutting pie.
“Likely the oil field runs in that direction,” said Uncle Mart. “They say it runs from southwest to northeast and then swings over west again. Likely it runs right in under the cemetery.”
“There’s always oil under a graveyard, they say,” put in Cousin Mattie.
“Sandy Watkins won’t let them drill there,” said Papa. “He gave that land for the church and cemetery. His folks are buried there.”
After the meal was over, Orvie walked out of the house with Shep at his heels. The novelty of the oil wells had worn off. The drilling seemed endless, and as long as it continued, there was no excitement. Orvie felt like his father. They were drilling clear down to China and not finding oil.
He went slowly down the road past the row of little Stringtown houses which lined the ditch. They were the smallest houses he had seen in his life. They sat close together, with just enough space between to park a car. Some of the cars looked larger than the houses.
