My Dad was born in Trees City, Louisiana, just after the First World War. An honest-to-God boomtown little remains of the once bustling town. My brother Jack and I are moving my dad, a World War II vet, to the world-class veteran’s facility in Norman, Oklahoma, so I am reprising my story about my last trip to Trees City.
The last time I visited northwest Louisiana, I visited Trees City. The town was founded by the legendary oil finders Benedum and Trees. These two wildcatters had moved to north Louisiana after finding large oil fields in Oklahoma. They discovered the Trees City Field in far Northwest Louisiana.

Trees City quickly became a boomtown, complete with churches, honkytonks and a post office. During the height of the oil boom, 25,000 people lived there. Today, it is little more than a memory.

Thick trees, vines and creepers cover most of what was once a thriving city. Permanent steel towers, constructed on site for the drilling of a single oil well, still peek up through the tall trees. Even the post office is gone, located now at the Oil Museum in nearby Oil City, Louisiana.

Benedum and Trees sold their interest in the Field to Gulf Oil for a million dollars, an enormous sum of money at the time. The amount pales compared with the vast riches recovered by Gulf Oil. It doesn’t matter much now. Where roughnecks once toiled to recover Mother Nature’s dark liquid bounty, only ghosts wisping silently over Jeems Bayou still remain.

Eric'sWeb

When the Weather Turns Cold

As a young geologist working for Texas Oil & Gas, I generated many prospects and experienced the late seventies oil boom first hand. One prospect a week was the company mantra. We drilled mostly developmental wells – those close to existing production. Texas Oil & Gas was the king of corner shooters, drillers that edged as close as possible to the wells of other operators. Although much reviled, we found lots of oil and gas.

I can’t remember exactly how many geologists we had at the old Midland Center in downtown Oklahoma City, but it is safe to say we had a dozen or so. During this time, Texas Oil & Gas was drilling more wells than any company in the country was. The Oklahoma City office of TXO was drilling the most wells of any TXO office, and I was generating the most wells in the Oklahoma City office.

It worked this way: I would drag into work about nine-fifteen on Monday. After a few cups of coffee, I would stare at a color-coded production map until I focused on a potential prospect. I would then map the geology, or trash the idea and start on another. By Friday, I would have a viable drilling prospect that I would show at the weekly meeting.

About a dozen people sat in on every Friday meeting, chief engineers, geologists and landmen. If they liked my prospect, they would approve it and put it on the drilling agenda. When I left the meeting, I would go to lunch. I rarely returned.

There was a bar in Oklahoma City at the time called Clementine’s. It was located in the basement of the Penn Square Mall. You could walk down a flight of stairs, or slide down via a sliding board. Once there, you felt as if you were in another world. Bill, a salesperson for one of the electric logging companies, would always be at Clementine’s after work on Fridays.

Mixed drinks were three for one at the bar and Bill had a standing tab for TXO geologists. I was always there, as were my fellow geologists, and many of the land, engineering and geological secretaries. After one very hectic week, my good friend and fellow TXO geologist Dave and I parked outside, entered the darkened doorway of Clementine’s and slid down the slide to the loud nightclub. It was a cold winter night.

Dave had curly dark hippie hair with a beard and moustache to match. His lips were always smiling and his dark eyes had a twinkle that somehow masked an ache in his heart he never explained to me.

Clementine’s had a parquet dance floor with a revolving disco ball overhead and vents for mists of steam that arose during every song. The bodies, both male and female, quickly became hot and steamy, and the crowd resembled pagans dancing in a misty Scottish moor. During the days before AIDS, casual sex was rampant, first names often disregarded, last names never discussed. Considering only the moment, we never thought about tomorrow.

How I survived my two years at TXO I will never know. That night, Dave melded into the darkness with some luscious honey he had met on the dance floor. After more Wild Turkey’s than I could count, I was ready to fall on my face. In the days before the cell phone, I somehow managed to find a pay phone and call my geologic secretary Gayle, asking her to join me. Gayle had two young sons - ages five and seven. It was her weekend to keep them.

Gayle was as tall as I am, with black hair that draped to her shoulders. Her dark hair and eyes contrasted with her light complexion. She looked like a goddess but had the gentle touch of a trusted friend.

“Stay there,” she said. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

I wasn’t going anywhere. I couldn’t climb the stairs by myself without falling on my face. I was leaning against the wall when Gayle found me through the crowd. Putting her arms around me, she walked me up the stairs, and then to her car where her two sons awaited.

My ex-wife Gail and I still owned a house that we were trying to sell. Gayle dropped me off, bestowing a wonderful kiss before she and her two boys drove away, leaving me alone in the darkness. She and I soon became a number.

Gayle and I dated for the best part of the next two years. My mother loved her and she kept telling me to marry her. I also loved Gayle and I think she loved me, but it was not to be. Too insecure in my own sexuality, I was too busy pursuing yet another one-night-stand to hook up with just one woman, no matter how gorgeous and intelligent she might be.

Years later, I still remember the go-go years at Texas Oil & Gas. I can’t remember the countless obscure faces of my many drunken one-night-stands, but I do remember Disco Dave and my other fellow geologic toilers, and when the weather is cold, like it is tonight, I remember lovely Miss Gayle.

Eric'sWeb

Bullshot City

I am a big fan of Eric Felten’s weekly column in the Wall Street Journal. Felten highlights cocktails and rather than just providing his many readers with instructions on how to build the perfect Zombie or Mai Tai, he tells a story that is always interesting and informative. A recent column caused me to recall one of my own cocktail stories.

During the last oil boom, I began working as a geologist for Texas Oil & Gas, the most aggressive driller at the time and possibly since. My first day on the job, I had lunch at a downtown restaurant called Over the Counter with the district geologist and another company man.

Having just left Cities Service, a conservative, old-line exploration company, I was used to brown bagging a sandwich washed down with coffee or iced tea. Because of this, my lunch companion’s choice of beverages gave me a start.

Neither man actually had to order a drink. Gerlinda, our very German waitress brought Larry a Bacardi and Coke and Roger a Crown and Seven.

“You are a new one,” Gerlinda said. “What are you drinking?”

“Iced tea,” I answered.

Larry and Roger smiled when Gerlinda shook her head and said, “TXO geologists don’t drink tea.”

“A Coors then,” I said.

“There is no beer at Over the Counter. What kind of cocktail would you like?”

Larry’s grinning shrug clued me that he expected no argument from me.

“Bourbon and water, I guess.”

“What kind of bourbon?” It was my turn to shrug, and shake my head. “TXO geologists don’t drink house liquor and you look like a Wild Turkey man to me,” she said. “From now on I’ll bring you Wild Turkey and water.”

She did, three of them before we finished eating.

“Everyone drinks at lunch,” Larry informed me as I stumbled back to work. “Turkey and water suits you, Wildman.”

“Thanks,” I said as I returned to my office and tried not to fall asleep at my desk.

Lunch was the beginning of my indoctrination as a TXO geologist. I was instructed to put at least three-thousand dollars per month on my company expense account, even if I had to treat friends, cohorts and secretaries every meal. The Company expected me to create at least one drilling prospect every single week, no mean feat even when you are sober, much less when you can hardly hold your head up off the desk after lunch.

I - or I should say my liver - slowly grew accustomed to the daily consumption of alcoholic beverages that often continued into the wee hours of nearly every night. It did not seem to matter much as my seven-year marriage was already in shambles. An underground concourse wove a dark maze beneath downtown Oklahoma City, a pathway populated by restaurants, bars, barbershops and jewelry stores. The proprietors soon knew my name, and my poison of choice, greeting me happily when I stumbled through their door.

The last oil boom was populated by a cast of almost unbelievable characters – ex-used car salesmen sporting Rolex watches, diamond encrusted belt buckles and gold nugget necklaces, preying on the unwary investor, hungry to participate in the multitude of newfound riches and burning up with incurable cases of oil fever. I bought my own gold necklace, a half moon with a diamond eye, from an eight-by-ten jewelry store in the concourse that catered to the newly rich.

I managed to survive almost two years with TXO, having almost a hundred of my prospects drilled during that time. I do no remember if it was I that said uncle, or my liver. Whichever, I moved down the road with my life.

All this brings me to my cocktail story. Sometimes when I was simply too drunk to continue drinking Wild Turkey, I would switch to a drink called a Bullshot. A Bullshot is beef bouillon and vodka. I never learned the exact recipe although I tasted many varieties during my two years with TXO. The one I liked best came from an eight-ounce can. I cannot remember the company that produced it and I do not believe they are still in business.

The last oil boom is long gone, along with Penn Square Bank and thousands of drilling rigs cut up for scrap. Oklahoma now has liquor by the drink instead of liquor by the wink, and you can no longer leave a bar with a roadie to tide you over until you get home. Oklahoma City police no longer tolerate drunk drivers, nor should they.

An era of overindulgence died in Oklahoma City, along with the last oil boom. What survived was a group that could smile when someone said, “Last one to leave the State, cut off the lights.”

That was nearly thirty years ago and the lights in the City are again burning brightly. It has been nearly that long since I drank my last Bullshot. Still, the cocktail helped me survive an era every bit as exciting as the Alaskan Gold Rush, and Felten’s column every week reminds me that mixed drinks are more than a bartender’s recipe. They are an untold story.

Eric'sWeb