The story tellers you meet in the oil-rich Permian Basin call themselves "old boys" and sometimes "old sumbitches." They have sat at conference tables and dinner tables with royalty and rascals and oil tycoons who had hardly two coins to rub together a week before. They love their wives, children and dogs, and there isnothign they'd rather do than tell each other stories they've heard a hundred times before. Most, they'll say, are lies, but at their core lies the beating heart of the oil patch, where you ahve to be a gambler to survive.
This collection of oil patch folklore contains a lot of humor, some tragedy, and vast generosity
Among the storytellers are Clayton Williams Jr., oilman who once ran for governor of Texas; petroleum engineer T.B. O'Brien, who was sent to Kuwait to put out the fires resulting from first President Bush's war on Iraq, and others who have made and lost fortunes over and over again in the Permian Basin oilfields.
2009
Oil Patch Publishers, 216 pages
Available in hardcover
