Boom Town Boy Page 4
“Bet we lost our wheat again,” said Papa. “You watch your wheat grow all winter, then a hailstorm can take it in a single day.”
“It don’t seem to be hurt none,” said Bert coming in from the field. “Good thing the wheat wasn’t any higher.”
“Guess we’re lucky this time, Al,” said Mama. “Wonder what that crash was we heard.”
They went to look at the house. The hail had made holes in window and door screens, and the paint on the back of the house had been taken off in a million spots, where the hail had peppered it. All the window panes on the west side were broken. The floors inside were covered with broken glass and water. The back kitchen door had been left open and the fire in the stove was out.
Orvie forgot about the dead coyotes as he and Addie ran around the yard gathering up hailstones.
“Just see what a mess we got to clean up,” grumbled Della, “and all of us soaked to the skin.”
“There’s always something …” began Papa.
“Where’s Grandpa?” Addie suddenly asked. “Grandpa! Grandpa!”
“He wasn’t in the barn with us,” said Papa.
The door of the hen-coop under the cottonwood tree opened and Grandpa stepped out. “Did somebody call me? Is it supper time?” He noticed the cool air and saw the hailstones on the ground. “What’s happened?”
“Didn’t you know we had a bad hailstorm?” asked Orvie, holding up hailstones for him to see. “And we all went down in the cave?”
“Gosh, no,” said Grandpa. “I musta dozed off for a little nap. I was tired out from my trip to Tonkawa this morning.”
“Always sleepin’ in the daytime,” said Mama. “You’d sleep through an earthquake. Just see all the damage …”
She stopped abruptly, for there on the back porch stood Mrs. Pickering. They had all been too busy thinking of their own troubles to give thought to anybody else. There was Liza Pickering, shawl over her head, crying. Grandpa went back into his hen-coop and shut the door.
“What’s the matter, Liza?” Mama ran to her at once. “Can I help you?”
Liza Pickering was the wife of Walt Pickering, who held Grandpa’s mortgage. She was much older than Mama, but they were good friends in spite of the men’s differences.
“Come in the kitchen and have a chair,” said Mama. “I’ll find some dry wood and build up the fire. It’s turned cold—fire’ll feel good.”
“Did the hailstorm hurt you folks?” asked Papa.
Liza sat down and sniffled a bit. “It blew our roof full of holes,” she said. “Walt coulda reroofed it long ago, but he wouldn’t. He’s gonna sell the place, he says, soon as the oil boom starts. He’s got a buyer all set to buy it. It’s been my home since we first built our sod-house there in ’93 and I don’t want to leave …”
“But the hailstorm, Liza,” inquired Mama. “Is that all it did—blew holes in your roof?”
“The oil derrick blew over …” began Liza.
“That must have been the crash we heard.” said Papa.
“It fell on my chicken coop and smashed it flat and killed all my chickens and Walt had left our Ford out and it fell smack on it and mashed it flat too.” Liza began crying again.
“What do you care about that old Ford, Liza?” said Mama. “You got all that lease money to buy you a new one. And when you strike oil, you can buy all the cars you want. You’ll be sittin’ pretty!”
The No. 1 Pickering well had been started by a second oil company a short time after the No. 1 Murray had begun drilling. But it had had many setbacks, and this was one more.
Liza kept on crying.
“They’ll set the rig right up again,” Papa encouraged her. “They’ll be drilling again in no time.”
“I know they will,” said Liza between sobs. “That’s what gets me. They’ll set it up and they’ll strike oil and Walt’ll get an awful lot of money, and you know what he’s gonna do with it?”
“No, what?” asked Mama.
“He’s gonna sell our house to a roadhouse man for a dance hall!” said Liza. “You folks won’t like that, but I thought I better tell you.”
“Oh no—surely he wouldn’t do that!” gasped Mama and Papa together.
“And instead of buyin’ me a fine house to live in, in town, he’s going to start a filling station down by Cloverleaf Corners, and we have to live upstairs.”
“Well, of all things!” exclaimed Mama.
Mrs. Pickering left, and Mama watched her bent figure go trudging down the road.
“Nobody was glad when Old Pickering got three thousand for his lease,” said Papa. “He’s been such an old money-grabber all along.”
“You never could tell they had all that money to look at them,” said Mama. “Walt hasn’t had a new suit or Liza a new dress for ten years—they’re that tight.”
“The more Pickering gets, the more he wants,” said Papa. “He’ll take Pa’s farm right out from under us and then what’ll we do?”
“I hate him,” said Orvie. “Never has a pleasant word for nobody. After what he done to Grandpa, gettin’ Grandpa’s south eighty, and tryin’ to get the whole farm …”
“Your Grandpa wasn’t obliged to borrow money off him, son,” said Papa.
“Oh, your Pa and his fool schemes,” mourned Mama. “Always figurin’ on gettin’ rich buyin’ oil stock …” Mama lowered her voice. “Has he told you, Al, what he got for our lease? Mart says two thousand. Why don’t he pay Old Pickering off, and keep our home for us? If he was like other men, he’d give his son half the royalty right now, so you wouldn’t have to wait till he dies …”
In walked Grandpa. Mama’s voice faded and she set to work energetically sweeping out the broken glass and water.
“She gone? The old lady gone?” asked Grandpa.
“Old Pickering’s not gonna get our farm, is he, Grandpa?” asked Orvie.
“Not on your life!” said Grandpa in a loud voice.
Papa and Mama and Della and even little Addie looked up. There was a firm ring in Grandpa’s voice that had not been there before.
“I’ve paid him off in cold cash!” announced Grandpa. “And I’ve bought back my south eighty. Now I’ve got my whole quarter-section, my orginal claim from the Cherokee Strip.”
“Golly, Grandpa!” cried Orvie: “I knew you would!”
“Grandpa! Why, Grandpa!” exclaimed the family.
“I been intendin’ to tell you,” said Grandpa. “I’ve leased the mineral rights on my farm to the Sooner Oil Company, and I’ve sold a few royalties here and there. I gave a hundred dollars to the Prairie View Church for a thank-offering. Then I made up my mind the next thing I’d do with my oil money was to pay out my home, so it’ll come to you and Al clear and free.”
“My land, Pa. This sure is a surprise!” said Mama.
Grandpa leaned over and gave his daughter-in-law a hearty kiss. Then Papa told about the Pickerings’ dance hall and filling station.
Grandpa spat out the back door to express his disgust. “Don’t surprise me none,” he said. “Just like the old weasel.”
They talked it all over happily. A great burden had been lifted for everybody. It was wonderful not to be under Pickering’s thumb any longer. Grandpa basked in a new kind of glory—everybody respected him now that he had money. That night at supper he sat at the head of the table.
“We’ll have to have new window lights and screens, and paint for the house,” began Mama.
“I need summer dresses and a new straw hat,” said Della.
“The corn crib blew over and the old wagon’s broke down,” said Papa.
“Windmill’s smashed,” said Bert. “I tried to anchor it before the storm hit, but the wind was too strong.”
Grandpa waved his hand. “Order what you need right away and I’ll pay for it.”
Orvie brought the mail-order catalogue and leaned against Grandpa’s knee. Addie came to look.
“Anything you kids want?” asked Grandpa, smiling.
“And a pretty doll,” said Addie.
Grandpa looked around at the family and grinned. “Too bad Aunt Lottie’s not here today!”
“Good thing she’s not,” said Mama. “She’d make you move back in the house right away.”
They all laughed.
CHAPTER IV
Spudding-In
On the day when the first oil well was started on Grandpa Robinson’s farm, Orvie was so excited he forgot about going to school. He followed the men all around. First the location had to be decided.
“My land! Not there!” cried Mama. “Can’t you see that’s my rose bed. They’ll be a sight next May.”
The men with their instruments moved across the lawn to a spot nearer the fence.
Grandpa hurried out. “Now Harvey E. Witherspoon insisted the exact spot was in the barn lot to the east of the hog pen …”
But the men did not listen. They moved farther down by the fence.
“Those are my peonies,” said Mama firmly.
“Lady, we can’t bother about no flower beds,” said the man. “We’re here to stake a location for this oil well, we’ve got orders from the company. We got to put it where the geologists tell us we can expect to get oil. You can transplant them flowers, can’t you?”
“Peonies won’t bloom for two-three years once you move ’em,” said Mama tearfully.
“Oh Mama, what do you care about a few old flowers?” said Orvie.
“They’re not gonna uproot my peonies,” said Mama. “I brought ’em from my mother’s garden in Kansas.”
“Over the fence then, boys,” said the boss.
“In the peach orchard?” cried Mama.
It hardly deserved the name of orchard, for most of the trees had died in the drouth the spring before. But there were three trees left, with a sprinkling of pink blossoms.
“First it’s roses you want to keep, then peonies, then peaches!” snorted the man. “Go ahead—lay it off!” he shouted to the men. “Sorry, lady, it can’t be helped. Just wait till you see the oil shootin’ up, then you’ll feel happy again.”
Mama covered her face with her apron and cried. Then she went back into the house and watched from a side window. The men hired Papa and other farmers with teams and scrapers to dig the cellar. But first they pulled the peach trees out by the roots.
As the teams dug the hole out, Orvie and Addie ran up and down the slope. Harry Big Bear and Ralph Wilkins, who lived on the next quarter-section north, came to see and join in the excitement.
Grandpa felt better now that he saw the work under way. He sat in a rocking chair on the front porch and watched. Ever since drilling had begun at the No. 1 Pickering well across the road, Grandpa had been fuming about an “offset well” and sputtering about the slowness of the Sooner Oil Company. Sometimes he wondered if he had made a mistake in following Slim Rogers’ advice. Maybe some of the other oil companies that had been after him would have acted more quickly. After waiting thirty years for these events to take place, Grandpa was impatient. He wanted the drilling to get under way to compete with No. 1 Pickering.
The cellar was barely dug, and concrete piers set for the derrick, when the material began to roll in.
One day Orvie came home from school by way of Cloverleaf Corners and saw three teams hitched to a single load of oil pipe coming along the road.
The teamster called to him: “Know anybody by the name of Orville J. Robinson Sr. around here? Where does he live?”
“That’s my Grandpa,” replied Orvie. “My name’s Orville J. Robinson Jr., but they call me Orvie.”
“My name’s Shorty,” said the teamster. “Hop up, Orvie, and I’ll give you a ride.”
The heavy wagon rumbled on, and they were friends at once.
“We’re called ‘skinners,’—or ‘mule skinners’ when we drive mules,” the man told Orvie.
“‘Skinners?’ Why?” asked the boy.
“Now you just watch me,” said Shorty. “We gotta whip our horses to make ’em lay down on the pull.” He reached for the whip and snapped it viciously over the horses’ heads. “When we whip ’em, we take off some hide—we skin ’em, you see. Why, a good skinner can tear a horse to pieces! That’s why we’re called ‘skinners.’”
“Your horses still got plenty of hide on,” laughed Orvie. “They ain’t been skinned yet.”
“No, but you just wait …”
“Looks to me like you take extry good care of ’em,” Orvie went on. “I know enough about horses to tell that. I’ve lived on a farm all my life, and I don’t often see horses so big and strong and sleek-lookin’.”
“That so? I can flip a fly from the lead horse’s left ear without touchin’ the critter,” bragged Shorty. “Not one whipcrack in twenty ever touches one of my horses.”
“What’s that fancy thing around their necks?” asked Orvie.
“That big piece of leather?” asked Shorty. “That’s called a ‘housing’—it goes over the hames, so rain water won’t get under the horses’ collars. It protects ’em from heat and cold, too. Us skinners have our names in gold on the housings. Notice that?”
When the teamster stopped in Grandpa’s wheat field, Orvie looked. Sure enough, there was the word SCOTT in raised gold letters on the big piece of leather.
“Your name Scott?” asked Orvie.
“Shorty Scott,” said the man. “There’s five brothers of us, all teamsters. Scott Brothers, you see. We like team work. All the oil companies know us. We haul machinery and casings from Bliss or Tonkawa or Ponca City out to wherever they send us.”
Orvie was lost in admiration. He decided it would be wonderful to be a teamster, who was nicknamed a ‘skinner,’ but who liked his horses too well to ever take the skin off of them.
“Each set of harness on them horses cost me $125,” bragged Shorty.
“Whew!” whistled Orvie.
“See all them pretty red and blue celluloid rings for ornament? Each horse has got $40 worth, and each housing cost $22.” Shorty pointed out the extra heavy horse shoes, with sharp toes and caulks. “A caulk is a pointed piece on a horseshoe to prevent slipping. They git a new set of shoes once a month.”
That evening Shorty let Orvie lead the teams down to the tank at the windmill in the pasture, to water them. Grandpa and Addie went along. The wind was blowing hard from the south and keeping the pump going, so the tank was overflowing. But Orvie was so proud of the handsome horses, he would have pumped a thousand strokes willingly, to water them.
One day, later on, Shorty asked Orvie to ride with him to Bliss to bring the steam boilers. There were four of them and it took ten teams on two wagons to bring them the long distance. Shorty hauled two with five teams.
It began to rain before noon, and the red clay roads soon became wet and muddy. The teams and wagons crawled along, mile after mile, making deeper and deeper ruts in the narrow road. Shorty told Orvie wonderful tales as they rode along, so it did not seem long at all. They were within sight of Moore’s Store at Cloverleaf Corners, when the heavy load bogged down in the mud. It was raining hard now and Shorty got out to look.
“That chug hole’s deep enough to bury a house in,” he said. “You go up to the store and wait, Orvie. You can’t help.”
Peg-Leg had a fire going in the stove, and there were quite a few people sitting around! Orvie told them all about the latest progress on No. 1 Robinson, and they were all sure that the Sooner Oil Company would strike oil.
Shorty and the other teamster stopped in at the store when they got the wagon out of the hole, and dried their clothes. Soon Orvie was home again, the boilers were unloaded in the wheat field and Shorty’s horses were in the corral for the night.
In the days that followed, Orvie could not keep track of all the wagons that came. Heavy loads of pipe, tools and drilling machinery were hauled in and dumped everywhere—over the lawn around the house, in the barn lot, through the peach orchard and in the a
djoining wheat fields. Fences that Papa had put up so carefully were knocked roughly down, as the teams and wagons went where they pleased. Nobody remembered where Mama’s rose and peony beds were. They disappeared, trampled under by wheel and hoof.
The steam boilers lay on the ground while the rig was being built, and Orvie and Harry and Ralph had fun crawling through them. Orvie was sorry when the hauling stopped and Shorty Scott and his beautiful teams of horses went away. But he soon forgot them when Gus and the rig-builders came. It was even more exciting to see a derrick go up.
“Will you build it as high as the windmill in the pasture?” asked Orvie.
“Ten times higher!” laughed Gus, but Orvie did not believe that.
The pounding and hammering began early each day and Orvie got up early to watch. Mama insisted he must not go on missing so much school, so he had started in again. It was no fun to walk a mile and a half on the back road, where there was no oil excitement at all, and to stay in the lonely school-house with Miss Plumley and a bunch of little children all day long. Orvie told Miss Plumley that he had decided not to be a teamster like Shorty, but a rig-builder like Gus. Miss Plumley didn’t even listen. She poked an Arithmetic under the boy’s nose, and told him he had to make up all the pages he had missed.
Each night Orvie hurried home to see how high the rig had grown during the day. It seemed to shoot up by leaps and bounds. He felt as if some day it might hit the sky!
The Robinson well was not the only one being started. Others were being located on nearby farms. A lumber company from Tonkawa set up a branch near Cloverleaf Corners. Gus, the rig-builder, told Bert he could get a job at high wages building rigs.
“Would they hire a kid like me?” asked Bert.
“Any man with a weak mind and a strong back can git a job in the oil field,” laughed Gus.
Bert decided to try it, but after a week he gave up.
“What’s the matter?” asked Mama. “What about all that money you was going to make?”