I remember getting my first paid vacation, I was working derricks in California and when told I had a full week's vacation with pay coming, I was in disbelief. I just didn't know that roughnecks and such received such aminities. Now, a week is a long time to young people, so I promply bought a 1964, Chevrolet, Impala hardtop and we drove to Oklahoma in 24 hours (we broke it in to run). The only times we stopped was when we fueled the car or changed baby diapers. I remember stopping in town and calling Mom and Dad and told them we were on our way. They thought we were still in California, and asked when we would get there. I told them we were driving straight through and should be there soon. Anyway, we drove into their yard about five minutes later. Now, that's a little ornery because we didn't give them anytime at all to prepare, but they were glad to see us as always.

I think it was that trip when my cousin, Floyd Atha, landed his Piper Cub in a Maize field when he saw we were there. He said he didn't recognize the car but when he saw the kids scatter like a covey of quail he figured it was us. I think he put a small rip in the fuselage and we had to glue it back together. Floyd worked his way through college by delivering the Sunday Oklahoman (a newspaper) over a large area of Westen Oklahoma. He did it with a plane; he would swoop down and put the carefully folded paper right in the yard.

After I started drilling I was oilfield hooked and couldn't imaging making a living any other way. The oilfield was always good to me. Now, I had my share of minor scrapes and broken bones (mostly fingers, but I still have them all), and I always took pride in not missing any work. Back then, you had to have a real major injury to miss work and even then you were usually replaced.

I remember drilling on a lease for Getty Oil Company and there was a boom going on, so we were short-handed. A hand out of East Texas and I worked two crews on that old rig for a flat year, 12 hours a day without a day off. Man! I'd sure like to have a job that paid like that in todays money. But I don't think I could stand up to the pace. Besides that, the IRS would probably take most of it anyway.

Two Good Ole Boys Make It Big

I remember two men that went together and started developing a lease that turned out good for them and their families. One had an oil field vacumm truck service and he had picked up the oil lease for a song. His partner had an old National Eighty B drilling rig and they started drilling the lease. The pay zone was a heavy thick crude (low gravity oil and hard to produce). They had tried to inject solvent to make it easier to pump, but to no success. Now, they had about exhausted their funds and given up on it when this major oil company contacted them and wanted to buy the lease. The Majors had all the surrounding leases and had started to experiment with injected steam. It was expensive but succesfull. The two was on their way to a meeting with the major oil company and decided they would make the oil company make the first offer. They would have been tickled to have received five hundred thousand and would have recovered their investment. Now, when that oil company offered five million they both nearly fell off their chairs. It always makes me feel good to see people who've worked hard all their lives to get a break like that.

The horseradish story told on the Oklahoma pages reminded me of something that happened much later (when I was pushing tools on a rig in Lybia in the Sarah Desert in 1978). We had a young man named Casey from New Mexico that was working as an assistant driller on the rig. He could do the work of two normal men, he was tall and skinny and ate like a horse. Anyway, this English mechanic, Dave, from near Whitby, England (where they hung the monkey thinking it was a Spainard) carried a jar of English mustard into the dinning room and spread some on his eggs. Now, Casey always ordered a dozen eggs and was just getting ready to tear into them when he noticed the mechanic eating eggs with the English mustard on them. Casey asked, "What is that?" The mechanic told him it was Limey mustard and ask if he would like to try it. So Casey applied it pretty liberally to his eggs. And after he had taken a bite or two the tears began to flow and he barely managed to say, "It don't taste like no lime to me."

Casey was a little gullible and one morning he made the comment that the eggs tasted kinda different. One of the drillers, Buzz, from Woodward, Oklahoma, literally convinced Casey that due to the scarcety of hens in the desert they used turtle eggs gathered from the beach near Banghazi.

I remember one morning in 1974 when I was pushing tools on an oil rig in the hills of Iran near Gasaron. There was a large encampment of Bedouians near our camp. They lived in black tents and had huge heards of camels, goats and sheep. It was said that they didn't recognize international boundries but they could tell you where they would be on any given day within the next year. I was up early and went to camp to eat breakfast when I heard a lot of women wailing and crying I asked the camp boss, a young man named, Goulham (from near Bandar Abas, Iran) what was going on. He told me a young woman had died in child-birth that morning and the camp was in mourning for her. I remember wondering if there was anything we could do for them, and asked Goulham if we could prepare food to take to them. Goulham said, "Oh, yes, Mr. Doran, this would be good. As long as it's okay to use the company stores." I told him I would take care of that end of it, and to go ahead and fix the food.

I remember thinking of my own family living in Tehran, Iran, and how blessed by God we were and knowing that if the young woman had received proper care in a hospital with a doctor she probably would have survived. Later on, I took a lot of pictures of that Bedouian camp and the people. I was told later that it was taboo to take pictures of them because they believe a camera captures their soul. I think they probably just tolerated my ignorance because of the kindness we had shown.

I always liked the Bedouian people in that part of the world as most were high-moraled and honest. They dressed their children in bright colors and it was plain to see that their kids received a lot of love and attention.

I remember some Bedouians in Oman that lived in the same black, goat-skinned tents, and on first impression you would take them for poor people. When in actual fact, in monetary matters, they could have bought and sold every worldly thing I owned several time over. Some of them owned racing camels that were worth thousands of dollars, and big heards of goats and sheep. They did buy four-wheel drive vehicles and sometimes you would see a small boy who could hardly see over the steering wheel driving. It reminded me of my early days in Oklahoma. I remember driving an old Ford truck (1934 V-Eight) when I was five or six years old. Dad would put it in granny-gear and jump off the running board, while I stood on the seat and drove the old truck in and around hay bails why he threw hay bails onto the truck bed. When he wanted me to stop I'd jump off the seat onto the clutch and pull the stick back into netural.

Gypsy Jack

Gypsy was a cook on a rig in Iran, he also filled in a camp boss when Goulham (the regular camp boss) was on leave. To say that Gypsy was a colorful character would be an understatement. I'm going to try to recall and put down some of the stories told by him. Now, he was a real Romani Gypsy, and was raised near Shanghai, China, and he remembered being driven to school in a chauffeur-driven Limo. Later, as a young man he fought with Free China forces under Chiang Kai Check against the Japanese, he could speak nine or ten languages (and probably more).

I remember once when an American driller didn't like the meal Gypsy fixed and the driller said he would never get hungry enough to eat that stuff. I don't recall what food Gypsy Jack had fixed that day but Jack was a good cook. The probablem was the meal wasn't steak and potatoes (good American fare). As Jack walked away from the Driller I heard him say under his breath, "Yeah, I bet you could get that hungry." Later, Jack and I were talking and he told me he had seen people stand in line for hours in China to get a piece of bread, and then run off spitting on it to keep other people from taking it.

After the war, Jack and one of his uncles was given property by Chiang Kai Check, only to lose it when the Communist took over. The entire family (90 some souls old and young) escaped China through Burma with a civil war going on there also. I guess most of the family settled in the Shaw's Iran. Jack and some of the family went on to South America. While there, Jack's young wife was killed by a stray bullet in a Bazzar somewhere in Argentina. Jack returned to Iran a broken young man.

Most of us have led pretty sheltered lives not knowing real hunger or hardship and most of our troubles would be considered a walk-in-the-park by other people striving for their family's daily bread in the world at large today.

I think I'll get on my knees for awhile and thank the Lord for the blessings He's allowed this old sinful Okie.