Letter: personal history outline - addressed to "Family Ross Parrent" p 1-3

Oct 18, 99

Farafield, MT

Howdy you guys!  Well a visit is in order - I need a visit Ha!  Yeah - maybe you would find it a bit interesting why may career path was and why I made the decisions I did.  

Well - when I got out of the Air Force in Dec 1945 i had decided that the farm & ranch kids had spent their lives learning to farm and ranch and that it was valuable time to them.  OK - I had spent my life around drilling rigs & oil wells - I should salvage that experience.  I should go into the oil business.  

Coach Lynn Stein (Coach at Sunburst High) and also Otto Thielman (an old time friend of our family) both threatened my life and limbs if I didn't go to college.  OK-I'll go, but your mother & I were courting and I decided I'd get married (not make that wait) and go to college.  Other vets did it.  I would do it.  

Mom and Dad encouraged me.  Dad said I could work for him summers and he (with mom's very forceful insistence) said he would help me w a little cash in the winter.  So I tried to get into CSM [Colorado School of Mines], but they had too many Colorado vets applying & could not accept a Montana vet.  So I applied at Montana School of Mines, took the tests and showed a 152 IQ.  I guess that was pretty good.  I never verified that.  

Summer #1 (1949) your mom stayed in Cut Bank, MT at her folks home while I worked for Dad at Cow Gulch and Old Woman anticline north of Lusk, Wyo.  I slept on the ground in my bed roll and atae out of my cooler & grocery box.  I cooked my steaks & canned beans over an open fire.  I saved every penny I could.  I had all my gear in my pickup.  Water can, clothes and all.  I'd often go week w.o a bath and very little sleep.  You mom was secure in Cut bank so I gave myself 150% to my work.  

My sophomore year was routine at school.  The second summer I drilled a well for Dad's client up West of Thermop on Brooks Dome.  We lived in Thermopolis [Wyo] in a nice little house w a good garden.   We ate a lot of delicious corn, tomato and bar-b-que burgers.  

The third summer I and another guy drove down to Socorro, NM in my new 1951 Mercury.  I loved that car -  a beautiful green coupe.  That was my first time out of Montana since I was discharged.  the work was pretty tough - field surveying 3 am to midnite (calculations) and 3 of us doing the work of 4 (the fourth guy didn't show up much of the time.  He eventually failed)  *I drove home from there and immediately enrolled in a summer field geology course.  When that was over I collapsed.  I was exhausted.  I had done two summer's work in one summer.  I got real sick - kidney infection - was hospitalized, lost some 35 pounds - but I recovered in time to begin year #4.  70 of us started as freshmen.  10 of us made it in 4 yrs.- spring 1952.   

We went to Casper, WY.  Dad helped me buy our first house (so I helped you).  I worked for Dad for about 6 months.  One nite - 35º F I was under my truck chaining up in a blizzard out at Tisdale anticline north of Casper when I got pissed off and decided there had to be a better way.  I had had a pretty good bit of experience by then on cable-tool drilling and well completions.  I reasoned that working in the political environment of a major oil company was not my cup of tea.  (I had seen the workings and politics & sloth of the Texaco employees at the refinery in sunburst and didn't like it.)  So I decided I would get the experience I figured I needed by working for various of the service companies which I liked better than the gradual working thru all that politics & games for a company.

So I went to work for McCullough Tool Company.  They did logging perforating, [tool] fishing from Mexico to Canada - a good variety of experience.  they offered to prompote me, but L.A. said, "no", so I quit and moved to Cut Bank to work for Emrick Oil Field Mgt as a consulting engineer, drilling wells where I stayed for about 1½ years until Bob Emrick got Polio and closed the Cut Bank office.  He gave me a car, office equipment (I still have the steel book case and the binocular microscope - a real good German type - they call it antique now but there was none better.) and I headed for Newcastle, Wyo. where an outrageous drilling boom was going on - 100 rigs!!!  I was going as a consultant and I knew nothing about rotary rigs & deep drilling.  I was scared as hell!!  I got work - did OK and you guys joined me.  I don't think your mom liked Newcastle.  In fact - it was a horrible town.  I got a chance to be engineer for Dyer Drilling Co in Casper so we moved back to our pretty little (900 ft ²) house in Casper.  (it had been rented) & I went to work for Dyer Drilling.  They had 3 drilling rigs , one completion rig & wells in Wyo & Colorado.   100,000 miles per year as fast as my car would run.

I was gone a lot - damn near constantly. I figured that by working full throttle until I was 36 (10 years our of college) that I would have caught the brass ring and could slow down.  Maybe I was right, but I never had a chance to prove it.  your mom was having emotional problems - they got serious after 7 years of marriage 0- and ur Lord brought me a job in Salt Lake where we got a nice home and your mother got psychiatric help which strengthened her, but the "Doc" said her problems were my fault.  (The whole detailed story is in my files).

... to be continued