My dad, Earl Milan Johnson, was born on October 23, 1921. For his hundredth year, I'm publishing some writing of his that I found a few years after he died. Here is the first installment.

Oil and Gas

By Earl Johnson

Another early recollection was oil wells and gas wells and especially the drilling of the wells.

Dad, Don, and I would go to a drill rig almost every evening and sit and watch the drilling operation. We heard many tales from the driller and tool dressers and made many acquaintances including a driller by the name of Herb Long. He would become a partner in a wildcat drilling operation later with Dad and Grandfather, John A. Johnson.

As boys, Don and I had our own play drill rigs with which we drilled our own wells using the pully, rope, and bit method. I remember standing outside North Union School and seeing the Chinburg well blow in, spewing oil and water into the air high above the derrick.

There was a booster station right next to North Union School which was used to pump crude oil to the refineries.

There were two refineries in McPherson, the Globe Refinery which later became the Coop refinery and is still in existence as the CHS Refinery, and another whose name I can’t remember.

Don and Earl with their mother, Ida Johnson.
1937

I remember one incident of an explosion where two oil company workers were killed. They were laid on an A-frame truck, and were brought out past North Union School, a sight that several of us remember. There were no ambulances in those days.

There was an influx of oil company workers into the community at that time. They lived in temporary shacks, or tents, or in their cars. I remember a shack and tent village that was set up in the Roseburg timber. The Skates family, the Reynolds, the Hallenbacks, the Brinkmans, the Boyds, the Byerlys, the Donhains, the Birges, and other oil company families became important citizens of the community.

Alfred Hallenback was in my class and was later killed in an oil field accident. We were up to 44 kids one year at North Union School, all 8 grades and one teacher.

The Reynolds family lived just across the road from our house. They had 8 daughters. I remember Juanita and Rose Marie as being two of them. They were wonderful neighbors. Bill pumped and maintained several of the wells in the area and was a wonderful help to Dad.

The Johnson estate, the 3 eighties of flat land, had several oil wells and at least 2 gas wells. One of the gas-producing wells enabled our grandparents to retire when Grandpa was about 60. They spent their winters in Texas and summers in Kansas for many years. They had purchased an eighty of unbroken land in Texas around World War I.

The wells were nearly all Kansas City line formation wells and drilled to approximately 2300 feet. A few were drilled deeper to other formations but produced a lower grade of crude oil. At that time, they drilled 4 wells to 40 acres, evenly spacing helped. Most oil wells produced some gas, and this produced fuel for the gas engines used in pumping the wells. Access roads to the wells were arranged in north-south or east-west directions and were another hindrance to farming. Also, one engine often pumped 2 wells with a pump rod in between.

Many farmers were able to bring the gas from the wells to their homes and had free heating fuel and gas-lighting.

There was lots of “wildcatting” and many “dry holes.” A typical setup would be a road to the site, a slush pond to handle sludge from the drilling operation, a wood derrick possibly fifty-foot tall to handle the cable, bits, and bailers, and install casing in the wells, an engine house for gas or oil field engines, and a beltway or rod way house between the engine room and the drilling rig to operate the tools.

Drilling is really a misnomer as the early rigs used the drop bit method to produce the hole. They were called cable tools.

Dad, Herb Long, and Grandpa Johnson owned a cable rig and drilled two wells, one near Bushton, Kansas and one near Hoisington. The Bushton site produced a good well, as much as 800 barrels per day if allowed to produce at full capacity. In order not to have an oil surplus, wells were prorated down, big wells sometimes to 1/10 of full production. The Hoisington well appeared to be an even better prospect, maybe up to a 1000 barrels per day, but after developing, acidizing salt water came in and ruined the well. That ended the oil business for Dad and Grandpa. They lost the Bushton lease, the cable rig, and it left them with almost thirty thousand dollars in debt. Dad assumed responsibility for this and offered to give up his share of the land inheritance. His brothers and sisters did not accept this and later made him an equal heir. Needless to say, it caused our family some difficult years along with the depression and drought years of the thirties. Grandpa was financially able to shrug it off because of income from wells on his land.