Little Guys and the Oil Fields My grandfather worked for CCMO (Chanslor-Canfield-Midway-Oil co.) in the Brea, California oil fields. He was shop foreman in the company garage just up the hill from Carbon Canyon and east of Brea. Olinda was another nearby community and the area was called Brea-Olinda at the time. My dad attended Brea-Olinda high school and won quite a few letters in several sports. The letters were BO and more than likely caused a few fights with guys from other schools. Dad grew up on a Montana ranch, a Nebraska wheat farm and for the most part in the California oil fields. When he was just short of 22, he landed a job in the oil fields at the same company where granddad worked although dad was at the Ventura lease and granddad remained at the Brea lease. Eventually dad became the shop foreman in the company garage CCMO was acquired by several different companies over the years and was known as CWOD, Santa Fe Energy and when the Santa Fe RR was taken over by Burlington Northern I believe the oil company section is known as Burlington Energy although I’m not positive there. Backing up a few years, dad met Joe somewhere along the line and the two became best friends. Joe lived in Torrance, California at the time, double dated with their eventual wives and they lived the lives of typical California young men. Typical being, body surfing since the beach wasn’t too far away as well as dabbling in hot rods along the way. Dad didn’t lie and once in a while he’d tell stories about the Huntington Beach surf that were hard to believe. Many years later I got to see for myself. An awe inspiring place it was at the time and I understand that even though additional jetties and the like are in place, the surf there can still be fearful at times. Like happens for most of us, dad got married, got a job at the Ventura CCMO lease and two years later I came along. Dad always liked fast cars and fast motorcycles. Owning an Indian four cylinder before marriage and a 32 Ford Phaeton after. In fact, I came home from the maternity home in the Phaeton. I knew what Phaetons were at an early age, but like dad, what I really liked were roadsters. Dad had a couple of pals who raced at the dry lakes, one ran a roadster and the other a 36 Ford. The roadster, a Chevy body I believe, and what I remember most about it was that the main frame rails were oil field casing tubing. To say the car sat low was an understatement. Granted, nothing like the scraping on the ground mostly impractical wonders we see nowadays, but it had the capability of switching ends and driving off in the opposite direction while using only one lane of the narrow two laners of the day. Try that with most other cars of the era and you’d find your car on its side or on the top in a ditch. I remember being a little guy, visiting Joe, his wife and son, Joe Jr. in Torrance and always looked forward to visiting. Joe Jr. was about a year and a half older than I, we got along good and I looked up to him like a big brother. Joe Jr. fulfilled the big brother part pretty well. He introduced me to climbing the side of the two story apartment building where he lived and a whole lot of other ‘big guy’ stuff. The best one being an introduction to Dime Gliders. (If you don’t know about those, I have another short story written about them and can post it upon request.) It’s a wonder that Joe Jr. and I didn’t get killed along the way. I was pretty fearless as a kid and Joe Jr. didn’t know what fear was. Geez, once Joe and dad took me and Joe Jr. to work with them on a Saturday afternoon callout to the oil lease and we got into all kinds of trouble. We were probably 7 and 8 years old at the time. The best one probably thinking the 4-wheel oil field flatbed trailer with a 12' long deck, about pickup bed high, four truck tires and in essence a heavy duty trailer with pivoting axle steering like a wagon. In our brilliance, we didn’t have a clue how heavy this thing was, looking from here, many years later, it probably touched on 2000#. We got it unchocked, rolled it around so it was pointed downhill, climbed aboard and let er go. The angle of the steering tiller was too much and the two of us working together couldn’t steer it. Never mind that it didn’t have brakes of any kind. Brakes or not, it didn’t make any difference. The first good pothole we hit, we were probably clipping along at 15-20 per. The tiller got yanked out of our hands, fat lot of good it was doing, the trailer did a slow motion roll, the two of us were tossed off with Joe Jr. sliding off the road and over the bank on the oiled dirt oilfield road. I landed right in front and strangely enough, the trailer dug in and stopped on its side without going all the way over. Probably a good thing me. I was trying to scramble out of the way and had landed on my feet running, but it was too much speed and I may have made 2-3 steps before I went down right in the middle of the road. The usual comment here would be, when the dust settled, but due to the oiled road there was no dust to speak of and lots of oil. We were pretty dirty and Joe Jr. was a touch oiled up since he’d hit the low, oil soaked dirt berm at the side before he went over it. We were glad to see that the trailer hadn’t gone all the way over. Thinking was, we’d just push this baby upright, tow it up the hill, park it and figure out some way to explain away the blood, oil and dirt. Not to be, that sumbitch wasn’t going anywhere. Not even with some pipes we dragged out of the unlocked supply shop for levers. I learned some interesting new words from Joe Jr. though, he was pissed. Not because we were so stupid as to get embroiled in the little adventure in the first place, nor the fact that we were in trouble, hadn’t been chewed out by our no-nonsense dads or even knew what the punishment would be. He was pissed because the two of us skinny little shitheads couldn’t get the trailer back on it’s wheels by ourselves. So we had to do was what all of us have done somewhere along the way. We had to go into the generating plant where our dads were working and confess. We at least had the brains to make it into the doghouse and figured if we were cleaned up, things wouldn’t be so bad. Good ol Boraxo and the huge round sink with its step-on water control. It wasn’t long until we had clean hands, clean and bright faces. The powdered soap would clean damn near anything, but it was bitch scrubbing our faces with it. Brilliant us, we didn’t even see the bar of pink face soap on top of the wash ring. We just shut up - no whining allowed, we were guys and guys didn’t whine - and scrubbed our tender skin with the powdered and gritty Boraxo. Heading for the generating plant, we didn’t have a good story and couldn’t for the life of us think one up. Sometimes the crime is so immense it just don’t make no difference. Closer we got to the plant, the noisier it was and once inside, you couldn’t hardly hear yourself talk let alone hear the other guy. The generating plant contained five big ass diesel engines. When I say big, I mean big. An inline eight cylinder, 20" x 20" bore and stroke, 8' flywheels roller rockers 3' long and you had to climb the steel stairs so you could stand on the deck beside the hinged rocker covers if you needed to check up there. Large by huge these engines were and once in a while on startup, they’d backfire and it would damn near lift the corrugated roof off and blow out the asbestos based side panels of the steel framed building. Your ears would ring for a while, but it was worth it. Dad and Joe came outside and we pointed down the road at the trailer lying on its side and told em what we’d done. I think it scared them so much that they didn’t get mad. They grabbed some heavy rope and cut off timbers and one of the I-H pickups. Me and Joe Jr. got in back, dad and Joe in front and we drove down the road to where the trailer was. A couple of well placed ropes, a yank with the pickup and the trailer was back up on it’s wheels. They towed it back to where it had been, unhooked and chocked it then we went back to the generating plant. Before we went inside, we were instructed to sit at the operators desk and not leave on pain of death - or worse. Duty at the operators desk turned out to be . . . not too bad. Bein’ snoopy little SOB’s we pulled open the big desk drawer on the right side and found a stack of hunting and fishing magazines. That kept us busy for a few minutes, but what really caught our attention was a couple of girly mags at the bottom of the stack. Geez, the girls in the pictures were a whole other ball game far as we were concerned. We pretty much gave up on letting our dads get busy and forget us so would could sneak out. This was far more interesting and it was a sure bet we weren’t going anyway anytime soon. I think dad and Joe knew what we were up to and figured, well, if it’s keeping them quiet and out of trouble, ok with us. It seemed like no time at all until dad and Joe were finished with repairs. They lit off the big engine with no problems although we were a little disappointed that there was no backfire. Seemed like dad or Joe could get the big engines lit off with no problems, but other guys . . . well . . . it made you wonder why the roof was still there. Dad dropped Joe and Joe Jr. off at their house. Me and Joe Jr. exchanged looks of confusion. Confusion because neither dad or Joe had said anything about punishment. When dad pulled into the driveway at our house, he said, "we’re not going to talk to your mom about this. Understand?" I nodded my head and we went toward the side door. Once we got onto the back porch, he had me pull off my shirt and pants, empty the pockets of the ever-present pocketknife and whatever other boyish treasures came out, then tossed the clothes into the incinerator. It made sense, there probably wasn’t a washing machine west of L.A. that could have gotten those clothes clean. It was late and I put on some fresh PJs and went to bed. I figured me and dad had pulled off the perfect crime. Not to be though, when mom found the black stains on the pillow cover from my filthy hair she was a little put out that dad had let me get my hair that dirty. He feigned surprise, promised to talk to me, winked at me and took mom out to breakfast. I didn’t waste any time when they left. I hit the shower and must have washed my hair 4-5 times before the rinse water came clean. Hardest part was cleaning the filthy bathtub. Dad never said anything more about it and from what I could tell, mom never got the full story. She probably just chalked it up to being the mom of a PITA kid that couldn’t seem to stay out of anything. Life held no fear for me or the guys. Even so, sometimes these little memories flash back on me and I wake up in a cold sweat. It’s hard to believe, even now, that we got away with some of the stunts we pulled. Maybe we were lucky, but I think Ol Man Death let us get by just so he could see what we were gonna do next....
I can tell ya First hand the Ventura Oil Fields are nothing like that now. Its all Pollitics & Safty Police. Cool Job to have.. sorta..But the storys the Old Timers have sounds like a real blast right up till the '80s.
Great reading. Do you ever wonder why you are still alive? As kids, we all pulled some real stunts like that, but you write it down very well.
That was a good slice of kidhood, thanks. It's amazing how fast things can happen when you're bored and free of adult supervision. I wouldn't mind hearing about those Dime Gliders whenever you might get a chance.
I'll post the Dime Glider story under . . . what else? Dime Gliders. It'll be up in a few minutes....
Thanks for the nice words. Kinda funny that the Dime Glider story mentioned here took off pretty good and this one faded pretty fast. To top it off, this story started off differently and wandered into the oil fields. Writing is funny stuff, you don't always know where it's going, but it's always good to let the characters lead the way. Listening to the muse be good....
Good read as usual, C9. I see where you must have gotten the inspiration for your vocation (wink - couldn't get the smilie to work). Reading you memoirs takes me back to a time when Southern California was a whole different place, and we grew up, sometimes, in spite of ourselves and providence. My growing years were in the San Gabriel Valley and environs east, but adventures in orange and walnut groves, and in the mountains that were so near to hand were in much the same vein as yours. Like Ole Don said: "...you write it down so well."
Great story C9! Enjoyed it,from the aspect of a kid growing up in an environment that today's kids would only dream of, ( sort of like the old "Our Gang" movies) and on looking back, we all wonder HIH we lived thru it! I'll be 71 Friday and grew up in small town GA doing stuff that kids today would either wind up killed or locked up for doing! Also enjoyed the talk of the oil fields, as I worked there, both in Texas and LA delta in the mid to late 50s. Good pay,hard, dirty, dangerous work, just what a crazy young fool such as I wanted and plenty of places and people to rook me out of that hard earned money! Had a ball and look back on those days with a mix of nostalgia and wonder that I survived them! Dave
Glad to see the Dime Glider post, thank you! I was hoping you'd mention the windup models at least in passing, got plenty more than I bargained for. Excellent accounts, both stories.
great read!!! this really hits home for me. I just left the boilermaker industry and started running a few leases up here in the "guts of the golden state". The antics you pulled as a kid sound like the stuff my two boys will be doing when they get older. They (LA oilfield 'ol timers) say the oil fields up here in porterville look like they're right out of the 40's....which they are!!! we still use the original tanks from the late 40's!! cool story!!
too cool story.. what doesnt kill you only makes you stonger.. the proof is in todays society of pany waste kids these days. I havent got the fingers to type all the shit I got into, and the life experiances..but man the memories, whew!
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