what he had on board, they were scared to death. The slightest jar could set the stuff off and blow them all sky-high. Nobody, including Frosty, himself, breathed easily until the boat docked and he got the dangerous cargo ashore.
The fishermen gave him and his schemes wide berth after this, but the lure of ready cash led him into one more transportation deal in late winter, which was also dangerous and could have gotten them all drowned.
When the lake was frozen over there was no way of reaching the mainland, as the ferry shut down. To get around walking 14 miles to land, they built an ice boat called the “Yankee,” and learned how to sail it. This was great sport and when there was a good wind, the speed was “estimated” at 100 miles an hour.
The mail was brought over from Leamington by a sled boat pulled by a horse. One day in March the mail they expected did not come. There was no word from the syndicate and no money. Frosty and Tiny decided to go to Leamington, to wire the president and get matters straightened out. They started out at 6 a.m. one day, guided by a Boy Scout compass. When they got six miles out in the channel they had to abandon the ice boat, and walk the remaining eight miles to shore on glare ice, as the ice had heaved and left pressure ridges, cracks and cakes all over the ice surface.
They arrived at Ed Ryall’s Hotel at 8 p.m., after being picked up and fed by a farmer. They knew Ryall as he had backed some of the Pelee Island wells.
They were surprised to find the bar full of old-time contractors and friends from the Findlay field. They had quite a reunion that night at the Huffman House, a hang-out for oil drilling types.
Even without hang-overs the next day, the pair would have found the news was bad. The syndicate had gone broke — and so were they. By nightfall, however, the story had changed.
On a previous visit to Leamington, Tiny and Frosty had come into contact with J.C. Hickey, of the National Supply Company. He told them one of the companies, in which Capt. Ed Winter and Ed Wigle were interested, was looking for somebody to drill a couple of wells near Leamington. They went around to see Winter and Wigle and before the day was over, made a deal under which the National Supply Company was to repossess the syndicate rig and turn it over to Tiny and Frosty. The whole clout of the deal was some 13-pound 6½-inch casing Frosty owned. The deal also included a $350 advance. Frosty also talked them into endorsing a note for an additional $350 operating loan at the bank.
The only problem now remaining was how to get the rig off the island. This called for ingenuity on their part, as the spring breakup was at hand. The Leamington teamsters they contacted would have nothing to do with them. It was too near break-up for their liking. They pointed out that Pelee had open water on both sides and, in case of a storm, they had little chance of surviving.
Tiny and Frosty walked home across the ice next day, arriving at 11 p.m. Despite the lateness of the hour, Frosty rousted out some of his fishermen friends who owned teams and sleighs and talked them into risking their necks on his behalf. They responded to that $350 in his pocket.
During the night they worked, breaking camp and dismantling the rig. The next morning, they began the most unorthodox entry of a drill rig ever to be found in oil history in Canada: a most hazardous trek.
The boiler was on one sleigh, the string of tools and casing on another, timber on the third and the derrick on the fourth — all overloaded, but easy sliding on the ice. Staring ahead apprehensively, they set out. The ice proved safe. It is noted in Tiny’s scribbler:
“Everything went well until we came within a quarter mile of shore. There we ran into a five-foot wide crack in the ice. We solved the dilemma by cutting a large cake of ice and floating it into the gap, then laid planks across it. Somehow we got those loads across that unsteady bridge but it was tricky.
“We arrived at Leamington early in the evening. Being afraid the ice might break up at any time, the teamsters returned that night. Two days later the big break-up came.”
The rig they ferried across the ice wasn’t much to look at; their drilling pals ribbed them about having a “pile of junk.” However, there was enough “junk” to drill three wells. But there was no lasting production in any.
Both men had had enough experience by this time that they could show their fellows a trick or two, especially when it came to water troubles in holes. Most of the holes were drilled into Guelph stratum. A peculiarity of this stratum was that water plagued drillers by rising in every hole. Various methods had been tried to stop the water without success.
However, Tiny devised a method of pulling up the casing and pouring four or five feet of concrete into the bottom of the hole. When set, the concrete effectively sealed off the water seepage. Then he would pound through the concrete plug and keep on drilling to pay dirt.
Chapter 4
Over Lake Erie Ice to Leamington
The Americans, in strait-laced Leamington, were looked upon with askance for their hard drinking and ebullient ways, by everybody except the kids.
They were heroes to the kids around town, especially on the Fourth of July, when they would give them 50 cents to buy firecrackers — bigger ones than most kids had ever been able to buy before with their pennies.
While the use of alcoholic beverages may be defensible on social grounds, it is indefensible when its use interferes with public safety. Elmer Selkirk, a former town clerk of Leamington, recalls how mixing nitroglycerine with alcohol resulted in the deaths of two oilmen. It was on a day when he and a chum played hookey from school to go to the Ira Rymal farm, to watch the drillers “shoot” a well.
Because of the peculiarities of the rock strata in the Leamington field, it was necessary to shoot nearly every well. This was a spectacle well worth any young fellow’s time to stay off school, albeit it was a dangerous one.
When the drill had gone into the oil sand, (all kinds of rocks and soil strata were called “oil sand” by the drillers), it was frequently found the gas pressure was not enough to force the oil to flow through the pores in the rock, or that the rock was not sufficiently porous. In that case, a charge of nitro was sent down and exploded. This shattered the rock and almost invariably started the oil flowing.
The nitro was brought from the factory near town in square cans by teams and buckboards. On the side of the buckboards were two Ys, in which the cans were strapped. The reels for lowering and firing were carried behind. The buckboards were drawn over the rough roads at a fast pace, the drivers seemingly careless of the enormous power stored in the cans underneath them.
“The few car drivers of the time, used to give the well-known wagons a wide berth. They thought them dangerous,” said Selkirk. “When drivers saw one of them at a distance, they always seemed to think it convenient to go up the next concession, or to take the other side road.”
Delivered to the well site, the nitro was poured into long thin cartridges or shells which, as a rule, held 10 quarts. Three, five, six or ten of these cartridges — according to the judgment of the shooter — were filled. Then, hooked to the end of the wire lowering line, the shells were slowly let down the casing. They were allowed to descend one on top of the other, in such a way that one fitted into the other. When each shell came to rest, the hook disengaged and the line reeled up. The lowest shell was supported up to the proper height in the sand, by a small tin tube called an “anchor.”
The shooters had to be extremely careful in lowering the first shell; that it went to the proper place and had not stuck on some projection in the wall above where it was
