the West.
Tiny Phillips helped bring in the J.W. Kirkbride well in 1895, at Rollersville, Ohio.
The train crew were friendly, as are all railway men with newlyweds and joshed them a great deal about that new job Tiny was going to at Woodside. The scribbler noted:
“They asked us if we knew anyone at Woodside. We said no, but we weren’t worrying because the syndicate would look after us. We didn’t catch the knowing winks the two men exchanged.
“After lunch, the brakeman asked if we wanted our trunks put off. I assured him we wanted to have all our belongings with us. I couldn’t understand why he laughed.
“The train left the small town of Green River and the country became more wilder and desolate. In a while, they stopped at a small station. We got off — and could only see one house. The conductor assured us that this was the whole town of Woodside. He laughed uproariously at our discomfiture.
This camp at Green River, Utah, was built out of railway ties in 1902. Tiny and Zulah Phillips arrived here as honeymooners.
“We at last tumbled to the fact the crew had been kidding us all along. We got back on the train with sheepish looks and a little frightened and crestfallen. We continued on to Desert Siding, which was a mileboard with the name on it, nothing else. The crew was helpful and suggested we go on to Helper, a small railroad town near the famous Moffatt Tunnel.”
It did have a hotel and they took a room there to await events. A company man came in from Salt Lake City and told Tiny to make his plans to set up camp, back there in the desert. Tiny ordered the materials, then while they were being shipped in, he and Zulah boarded the train to Salt Lake City, to enjoy the sights and listen to the organ in the big Mormon Tabernacle.
Tiny’s boss came out from Chicago and told them he was glad they had enjoyed their honeymoon, but that the drilling location out in the desert with temperatures that went as high as 110 degrees, was no place for a woman and suggested Mrs. Phillips return to Findlay, “for the time being.”
The “time being,” turned out to be a year before the newlyweds saw each other again. But they accepted this as a way of life in the drilling game. There were no complaints. The wife of a driller never knew when he went away on a job, when he would return.
The reason for his enforced stay at Woodside, was the poor and irregular supply situation. Often the crew had to shut down for days awaiting delivery of casing, pipe, tools or parts.
So while Zulah sat it out in Findlay alone, Tiny and his crew spent some of their spare time exploring the Green River Canyon, whose scenery is almost as spectacular as the Colorado River’s famous Grand Canyon. They saw many rare and awesome sights.
After all the effort and time spent on the well, it turned out to be a water well. It was half a century before drillers came along with more powerful equipment that could make more than pinprick perforations in the ground, as Tiny’s rig did, (1,000 feet) — and they discovered trillions of feet of gas.
Tiny arrived back in Findlay the next May, vowing to Zulah never to be out on a job so long again.
To make good his pledge, he bought a small store.
Chapter 3
Transporting Nitro to Pelee Island
One day in the summer of 1904, a man walked into the store. He had a drilling proposition on Pelee Island. Tiny could hardly wait to get home to tell Zulah about this exciting new venture, that would make them all rich.
She signed resignedly and said “Yes, but this time I’ll go with you — and stay, too.”
And so began an adventure that was to take him to Canada for life; and make him a member of the Elks Club in Calgary.
The man who came to visit him, represented a syndicate of New York financiers formed to drill on some oil leases they owned on Pelee Island, 14 miles offshore from the town of Leamington, Ontario in Lake Erie. It is the southernmost point in Canada. Sandusky, Ohio, is across the lake.
Tiny sent for Frosty, who was in California. They agreed to take on the contract late in the summer. For eight years before that, Frosty had gone wildcatting in Texas, Mexico and California.
It can be imagined, that Zulah was sitting close to the conference table. She was taking no chances that Tiny would go off somewhere for another year and leave her alone in Findlay. Thus when they left for the job, both she and Maud Martin were along. This was despite the fact they’d be living in rough bunkshacks on the isolated island.
Oil had previously been discovered on the island. It was being barreled and shipped to Sandusky in the steamer, Lincoln. Lincoln and another steamer, Excelsior, supplied the islanders — mostly fishermen, with provisions.
When Tiny and Frost arrived with two tool dressers, they found the first job they were expected to do, was clean out two wells already drilled with Canadian pole tools. Pole tools were an ancient type of rig, consisting of 20-foot hickory lengths screwed together like pump rods. The rods hung on a rope strung through a pulley at the top of a 40-foot derrick. One end of the rope was attached to a springed bull wheel, to keep it taut.
The outfit was driven by a steam engine with an upright boiler. The drill bit was not attached to the end of the pole rigidly, because the pounding action of the pole up and down at 25 to 30 times a minute, would cause excessive breakage. The rod was actuated by a walking beam which, in turn, was actuated by the steam engine.
When it became necessary to pull the pole out of the hole, a winch was used. Since there was no reverse on the engine, it was necessary to attach a 100-pound weight to the rope, to bring it back down to the derrick floor. This weight was called a cow sucker — but nobody knew why.
The pair decided to improve the drilling efficiency by buying a No. 5 Star drilling rig. They had no money, but Frosty went across the lake and talked the National Supply Company of Toledo, Ohio, into selling a rig on a “$1 down and $1 when you can catch us” proposition. It was said to be one of the first of its type in the Ontario fields.
There was plenty of everything on the island but money. The residents were nearly all Canadian fishermen, friendly folk who used pound nets and sail boats. There was always fresh fish for Zulah and Maud to cook.
To make money, Frosty hit upon a profitable little scheme. He would buy a carload of casing from the National Supply Company and sell it to the syndicate at a profit. The casing was brought over on the steamers and hauled by wagon to the well by his fishermen friends.
Another of his little money-making schemes did not find favour among his new-found friends, who were unwitting accomplices. The drillers were paying an inflated $3.50 per quart in Leamington, for nitroglycerine, for shooting the wells in the limestone strata. Frosty hit upon the idea of buying the nitro in Toledo for half the price, doing the shooting himself and pocketing the difference.
Since they wouldn’t let him use the steamers to transport nitro, he hired a crew of fishermen and their sailboat for the job, but he didn’t tell them the cargo would be 1,000 quarts of high explosive from the Hercules Torpedo Company.
When
