Joints

This is Little David Ashford's place S.E. of Tomball a couple of miles off the farm to market road heading toward downtown Houston. The year is 1945.

We've been celebrating joints around America's oilfields on Oily Stuff for a long time; the criteria is generally cold beer, because, well, its the oilfield and no oilfield in America got developed properly without the support of local beer joints.

We like places like Little Davids because you can also get fride chicken, or hot fish, and play a game of Moon in the evenings drinking ice cold Jax. If you don't know what Moon is, we can't help you much, sorry. Mr. Ashford is standing in the photograph next to his business, he could explain just fine.

Places like this little joint always had two out buildings with toilets, one for the ladies and one for the men... that men walked behind, not in, to do their thing. These use to be outhouses but as life became more civilized in the 1920's these outhouses were turned int0 out-toilets.

I still visit joints in the South occassionally where the mens and womens bathrooms are actually out in the back back and down a well worn, dirt path. When the bartender jerks his thumb over his head and says, "outback," that is pretty much all you need to know. Best not piss the bartender off asking for minor details as you might need him later in the evening. Outback is outback.

The original commuminity of Peck, in Harris County, about 30 miles N.N.E. of downtown Houston was renamed after a fella named, Tom Ball. Mr. Ball was an attorney for a railroad company and, after he bought everything he could in Peck, talked the railroad into re-routing a major line thru Peck and building a stop. Peck was immediately renamed Tom Ball, then shortened to Tomball. A train depot was built, saloons, hotels and whore houses sprung up like spring flowers and the community grew.

Left, an Humble landman with leasees outlined on a map, the community of Tomball's smaller town tracts in the upper right.

Gravity measurements on the surface taken around the Tomball area in 1928 suggested a deep seated salt feature existed, but it was only after the discovery of nearby Conroe Field in 1931 that Humble dusted off this old idea and did some surface geology with a torsion balance. A possible anticline expression on the surface was mapped but the William Martens No. 1 was a dry hole. Then Humble brought in a new seismic process using reflection measurment of sound waves, not refraction. The data was much better and burried anticline below stuck out like a sore thumb.

The Kobs No, 1 was drilled in 1933 by Humble, to an Oligocene sand called the Cockfield at 5000 feet and made an oil well. Ths sand was over 100 foot thick and had a 25 foot oil column below a gas cap. The oil column was developed first. By 1935 Humble and a few other johnny-come-latelys had drilled 185 wells in and around Tomball that in 18 months had made a little south of 3 MM BO.

Humble built a large, very very comfortable camp just S.W of town that eventually housed nearly 500 employees and their families. The camp had a recreation hall, baselball fields, tennis courts and large, man-made lake for boating and fishing. It bought fee land all around the community and allowed its employees to run cattle on the grass. A lot of Humble employees working from this camp also worked down in Humble Oil Field, not very far away. Humble made sure its camp's schools were the best and provided well for its employees.

Remember this? Everyday from 1st grade thru the eighth, each morning started with the Pledege of Allegiance. Without fail. So it was in Tomball schools, 1945. What happened?

The gas in the cap overlying the oil column was found to be very rich in liquids with a high BTU content. The apex of the subsurface structure was directly over town lots so Humble went to the City of Tomball and made a deal to develop these town lots on very conservative Railroad Commission spacing and, in return, Humble would provide the City with drinking water and all the natural gas it could use for the next 90 years. Humble then formed the Tomball Gas Unit and unitized most of the town lots.

Over the ensuing years Eocene pays were found deeper than the Cockfield, and minor Miocene pays, shallower. Over 1,000 wells were ultimately produced in Tomball Field.

All of the Catahoula Cockfield and deeper Eocene Queen City and Wilcox wells in Tomball weree set- thru completions with surface casing and large O.D production casing, generally 7 inch or even 10 inch. Once cemented they were perforated with large OD bullet guns. In the photo on the right, above, there is a large perforating gun being picked up to run in the hole. This was the era before shaped jet charges would simply vaporized holes in the casing and these bullet guns shot big chucks of iron thru the casing, did not penetrate very far, just far enough, but created very large O.D. holes, often better when completing unconsolidated sands.

This gun being picked up looks like it will shoot a 4-5 foot interval with 4 shots per foot, generally on 120 degree phasing and probably make a hole big enough to stick your thrumb through. When these guns were shot the percussion was so awesome it would skake the entire rig. The impact on the casing would often destroy the cement to casing bond and create all kinds of problems with channeling behind pipe and loss of seperation behind pipe. Now days high energy shape charge perforating simply burns a hole in the casing and can penetrated up to 30 inches out.

Many young men with oilfield experience capable of being drafted, or enlisting during WW II were asked to stay behind and contribute to the war effort by managing America's oil resources and to refine and get oil, aviation fuel and diesel to Allied Forces in Europe as soon as possible. It was important.

In 1945 gasoline rationing in the U.S. was in full swing. James Tanner, a gauger from Humble in the Tomball Field, did his part by managing production in the field from a horse and buggy.

Below, at one of several field offices across the flat coastal prairie in north Harris County (you should see it today!), Mr. Tanner is hitched up ready to make his daily rounds in Tomball Field.

Below, a deep Eocene gas test underway by Humble Oil and Refining Company right outside the Tomball city limits, in the Gas Unit, 1945.

Above, Tuesday, May 8, 1945; downtown Tomball. VE Day for Victory in Europe. Germany has unconditionally surendered and the great war is over. There is celebration all over the world, and in the United States, including prayer meetings like this on Main Street in Tomball for the men and women never to return home.

Tomball Oil Field produced over 103,000,000 barrels of oil and approximately 400 BCF of natural gas until 2018. Humble, then Exxon, sold its interests in the field in 1988, about the same time it and the City of Tomball terminated its 90 year agreement to receive free natural gas, and drinking water from Exxon. Today there are still wells in the city limits operated by small indepenent operators.

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I relied on the Texas Portal of History, the APPG, the SEG Library, the Texas State Historical Society and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art for references, as well as some old USGS data and a paper by the Houston Geological Society.

On the left is the great American photographer, Esther Bubley (1921-1998). She was an acclaimed photographer for many publications, including head photographer for Vogue. In 1941 she was hired for a large scale public relations project funded by Standard Oil of New Jersey where she documented the every day lives of Americans living across the country during World War II.

In 1945 she was sent to Tomball and S.E. Texas by Humble Oil and Refining where she shot thousands of photographs now stored and categorized at the University of Lousiville Digital Library. For more on Esther Bubley's career readers can go to Wikipedia.

All of the photographs used in this post, except the well sign photograph and the TRRC GIS map, I proudly used Ms. Bubley's work of her time in Tomball, Texas in 1945.