Eight Feet Deep

It would be hyp­o­crit­i­cal of me to slam the oil and gas indus­try right now as I finally unloaded one oil and gas prop­erty last week for more than just pocket change — not much more than that to be sure.

But I don’t con­trol the petro­leum mar­kets, obvi­ously, or I wouldn’t be sit­ting here writ­ing on a blog that only a cou­ple of friends, a few of my broth­ers and I read. I’m jok­ing, of course. I have had read­ers from 21 dif­fer­ent coun­tries on the last 500 page hits. How­ever long a period that might be. And it might inter­est you to know that behind the U.S. and Japan (my friend Paul), 1.6 per­cent of my page vis­its have been from the Ukraine while 11 coun­tries includ­ing China, India, Ger­many and Iran tie for 0.2 per­cent of my read­ers, vis­its, what­ever. Filler. That’s what that was.

The point I was going to make was that gaso­line remains higher than it was a year ago, accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy. On aver­age it is any­where from $0.70 to $.0.95 per gal­lon through­out the U.S. It seems, as well, that it might just take another jump because of the explo­sion and sink­ing of Transocean’s Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Coast Guard Cut­ter Zephyr from Pascagoula, Miss., searches Wednes­day for sur­vivors from the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon explo­sion about 50 miles south­east of Venice, La. USCG photo

No one is say­ing that right now, except peo­ple like myself who know absolutely noth­ing about the work­ings of the oil and gas indus­try. How­ever, doesn’t it seem log­i­cal? Even though the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon had yet to pro­duce any oil it would seem a rig which would cost about $600 mil­lion to replace, not to men­tion scores of law­suits that one might bet are already on the hori­zon, sorry for the pun, would set off a chain reac­tion. And it seems that at the bot­tom it all ends with the con­sumer pay­ing more at the pump. S**t rolls down hill, we used to say in the Navy. I don’t know why, it doesn’t seem much like a nau­ti­cal say­ing to me.

Transocean Ltd. oper­ated the rig for BP, the artist oil com­pany for­merly known as Prince British Petro­leum. That com­pany is rel­a­tively fresh from hav­ing mil­lions upon more mil­lions of dol­lars extracted from it in fines and from a set­tle­ment engi­neered by local (Beau­mont, Texas) lawyer Brent Coon over the BP Texas City, Texas  refin­ery explo­sion five years ago. That blast killed 15 workers.

With the oil rig’s sink­ing, the Texas City saga some­what fresh and the fact that both Transocean and BP each lost more than 50 cents in stock trad­ing today on the New York  Stock Exchange, it would cer­tainly seem that a chain reac­tion is not unex­pected. That, of course, could set off more s**t run­ning down hill and ulti­mately cause motorists to have lighter pock­et­books or at least fewer dig­its to the left of the dec­i­mal point in their bank accounts.

It goes unsaid that as time goes on from when the explo­sion hap­pened that the fate of the miss­ing work­ers becomes more and more omi­nous. That has noth­ing to do with the price of gaso­line in Beau­mont, Texas, for now at least, nor does it affect the price of eggs in China.

Peo­ple have real issues over which to worry such as whether their loved ones are alive or dead in the some­times unfor­giv­ing waters of the Gulf of Mex­ico. Whether we pay more for gaso­line because of this is really irrel­e­vant when looked through the lens of  life. Nev­er­the­less, some will pay with their lives so we can pay at the pump.

Inar­tic­u­late per­haps as it is to say, it sucks. How­ever, it’s just another day’s work.

Dri­ving home this after­noon from Nacog­doches I decided abruptly to take a drive through the Angelina National For­est. I turned off U.S. 69 near the Neches River on the road that leads to the Upland Island Wilder­ness Area and the Bou­ton Lake campground.

It has been years since I drove the whole enchi­lada from the other side of where the road leads. I didn’t know how far it was to Bou­ton Lake this way. I didn’t want to spend all after­noon dri­ving so I decided I would drive five miles and then turn around if all I saw was road.

As I drove about five miles I had noticed some guys in a lit­tle four-wheel buggy of sorts — some­thing like John Deere’s Gator — but I don’t think that’s what it was in which they were actu­ally motor­ing. The guys waved. In fact, every­one I encoun­tered dri­ving down this road waved. Friendly bunch.

Just up the road it began to get smoky and I could then see some fire crawl­ing along the edge of where the tim­ber­line begins just off the road.

As the woods start to get a lit­tle smoky I real­ize I am with­out marshmellows.

I kept dri­ving a lit­tle ways and noticed that the fire went off into the woods for a lit­tle ways. My first instinct was to call for a fire depart­ment or the for­est ser­vice. Con­di­tions have been a bit dry lately in East Texas and cer­tain areas have been beset, for a num­ber of rea­sons, by woods arson­ists. But I thought, well, those guys had just been dri­ving away from where the fire began.

The more I thought about the fire the more I began to won­der if this was a so-called “con­trolled burn,” or a fire inten­tion­ally and legally set for one rea­son or the other. In the older days, fire from nat­ural sources such as light­ning used to cre­ate their own sort of con­trolled burn. Those fires would destroy the under­brush and allow in cer­tain areas a park-like ground cover in the woods. Growth and Smokey the Bear put the brakes on uncon­trolled woods fires in more recent years. Of course the Smokey cam­paign was well-intentioned but per­haps sort-sighted in sell­ing to the pub­lic that all wild­land fires were bad. They’re not.

I came to my five-mile limit and turned around. A lit­tle ways down the road I saw the two men in the lit­tle four-wheel util­ity vehi­cle. They were parked in front a big pickup truck which had attached an empty trailer, I sup­pose for the lit­tle cart they were using. I stopped to ask about the fire and almost felt stu­pid ask­ing because I noticed some type of tank in the bank of the truck of the type used for var­i­ous types of fuel. Fuel like that used for set­ting con­trolled woods fires.

” I’ll gas up my hot rod stoker we’ll get hot­ter than a poker/ You’ll be broke but I’ll be bro­ker tonight we’re set­tin’ the woods on fire.” Hank Williams

One of the men told me he could under­stand why I would ask and seemed almost grate­ful that I did. He called his fire a “very con­trolled burn” and said that the fire was just creep­ing along the edge of the woods. I didn’t ask  them why they had set it. I fig­ured if they wanted me to know, they’d have told me. I just wanted to sat­isfy my mind that it wasn’t a wild­fire, which I did.

My lit­tle fire pic­tures, thank­fully, are noth­ing com­pared to the fire pic­tures I have seen like the ones com­ing from the off­shore oil rig Deep­wa­ter Horizon.

Fire boats del­uge the oil rig Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon about 50 miles off the tip of the Louisiana coast. USCG photo

The rig, located about 50 miles south­east of Venice, La., exploded overnight injur­ing more than a dozen work­ers, three crit­i­cally. The U.S. Coast Guard said 11 work­ers on board the rig, owned by Transocean, were still miss­ing despite word from a Plaque­m­ines Parish gov­ern­ment offi­cial who said they’d been found.

I’m happy my encounter with fire worked out okay. Let us all hope those miss­ing from the explo­sion and fire on the Gulf of Mex­ico are found safe and sound.

By the way, old Hank’s won­der­ful songs depicted a lot of the back­woods, cracker life of the South of his time. That makes me won­der if all the words in “Set­tin’ the Woods on Fire” were strictly figurative?

It’s hard to believe that I haven’t lived in the coun­try for 25 years. When I say “the coun­try” I mean in the sticks, rural free deliv­ery, the out­back. It does not mean I haven’t lived in the U.S. of A., but some­times I won­der if it is the same coun­try that I have been liv­ing in all these years.

For two years and then another year after a year in the city, I lived nine miles out­side of Nacog­doches, Texas, on about 200 or so acres of mostly pas­ture land. Since I was in col­lege most of the time I lived there the place was just right for par­ties, big par­ties, big nor­mal col­lege par­ties where you would do things like  empty your guns into a couch and then build bon­fires out of the couch, then walk on a log thrown on top of the burn­ing couch, or sit on the roof or in my late friend Waldo’s case, fall off the roof. No the fall from the roof did not kill him. He died of can­cer about 14 years later.

I went on a photo safari today dur­ing my drive in the coun­try to my old haunts and to down­town Nacog­doches where I once worked as a fire­man. Unfor­tu­nately, my old dig­i­tal cam­era seems to be giv­ing up the ghost. I’d say that is quite appro­pri­ate since I’m vis­it­ing my old haunts. I took a bunch of pic­tures, includ­ing those of where I used to live. Wouldn’t you know that those I took of “the farm” were absent.

Lit­tle pines grow to be big pines for 30 years or so until they are “harvested.”

It is impos­si­ble to con­vey how much I miss coun­try life. True, I haven’t lived in any humon­gous cities since I left col­lege. Well, I did spend some time, equal­ing maybe a year and a half in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. But mostly I have lived in cities the size of the one I am liv­ing now. A city of about 115,000 with a metro pop­u­la­tion of about 250–300 thou­sand peo­ple. Still that doesn’t even com­pare because when I lived in the coun­try it was out­side a city of about 30,000 peo­ple. Whether all of this is rel­a­tive, I can’t tell you.

All I know is the coun­try out toward Woden and King­town seemed on a beau­ti­ful semi-cloudy spring day as even more beau­ti­ful than I remem­bered it. I drove down what used to be called “CCC Road.” Whether it was trail­blazed by the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps I couldn’t tell. I can tell you a cou­ple tales about that road.

First, after I grad­u­ated from col­lege I came back to Nacog­doches and had intended to stay with a friend for the week­end but that friend wasn’t around and I couldn’t get in touch with some of my other friends for some rea­son. This was, of course, before every­one had cell phones. So I ended up out toward where I lived and then pulled onto a lit­tle trail off CCC Road into the woods a lit­tle ways. I stopped there and spent the night. I think my car seat com­pletely reclined all the way back. The next morn­ing I woke up and saw this huge dog, some­thing like a St. Bernard, star­ing at me through my win­dow. It wasn’t hos­tile or any­thing. Just kind of mat­ter of fact.

Another time, leav­ing out all the gory details, Waldo and I were trav­el­ing into town from the farm. He lived there for about a year before mov­ing to the Dal­las area and then I moved in. We were in his lit­tle Ter­cel hatch­back. Ironic, sense he had com­plained that the lit­tle Ranger pickup he had before could carry a pay­load of maybe … “crackers.”

The entire area near the other end of CCC Road had been clearcut for tim­ber. Since they cut down or “har­vest” pine trees after25-30 years, it was no coin­ci­dence that the same area was clearcut today.

On with my story, for what­ever rea­son, I sup­pose it makes trees grow bet­ter or some­thing, I don’t remem­ber. But the peo­ple who owned that land that had been cut over planted just about the whole thing in water­mel­ons. I mean, it was a major water­melon farm. Big trucks pulling what Waldo described as “rat­tle trail­ers” (’cause they rat­tled) would be going down all the roads around Water­melon World at all hours of the night. Also, for some rea­son, the dirt on CCC Road near all the mel­ons had turned to what I believe — from my two semes­ters of Geol­ogy — as being some of the area’s Sparta sand. It was very dif­fi­cult to nego­ti­ate even on the best days dri­ving through those sands. And the night we attempted to go to town we got stuck in what I had dubbed “The Moon.”

We went back to Waldo’s, later my place, and called a wrecker. The wrecker guy said he’d be out. Asked what it cost, he said: “That’ll be a $50 bill, Bubba.”

On through CCC I trav­eled this after­noon and then shortly after turn­ing onto Lacyville Road, I then turned on another par­tially dirt, par­tially gravel, par­tially clay road called Saint’s Rest Road, so named for the mis­sion­ary Bap­tist church about a mile from Lacyville Road. I don’t know if I had ever actu­ally got­ten out and looked around the church before but I did today.

The wooden build­ing is a sim­ple, but fine lit­tle struc­ture. The kind of build­ing most folks who would like a lit­tle church in the coun­try, would want. It reminds me of that old hymn, or I guess that’s what you would call it, “The Church in the Wild­wood,” altl­hough the lit­tle brown church or the song wasn’t brown at Saint’s Rest. It was white.

Trees out in front of the church sport moss, at  least  a few do. They say moss gath­ers on trees on the side pointed toward a river. In this case it is true because the Angelina River isn’t too far away.

I got back almost to pave­ment after dri­ving onto Pine Flat Road, to what even­tu­ally becomes a Texas farm-to-market road. As I rounded the curve right near where the dirt turns into pave­ment,  a big old county dump truck was parked with a load of asphalt. Two county pris­on­ers in their black-striped uni­forms where shov­el­ing asphalt.  I wanted badly to, at least try, to take their pic­ture but decided against it.

One thing I recall from rid­ing down these coun­try roads this after­noon — aside from all the good mem­o­ries — was how serene I felt. It was if I didn’t have a care in the world. That was even the case when my co-worker called me and told me she was going to have to change sched­ules with me next week and I would be out for eval­u­a­tions with my boss for two days on Mon­day and Tues­day instead of Wednes­day and Thurs­day. Who cares? I didn’t have any red lights at every inter­sec­tion or cars that were rolling boom boxes or the con­stant hum of noise com­ing from the interstate.

It has been so long I don’t know how I’d adjust liv­ing in the coun­try again. I remem­ber after mov­ing back after being gone just that one year and it freaked me out for awhile lis­ten­ing to all the crick­ets out­side at night. But if there was any­way to make it hap­pen, to still make a liv­ing or to make a bet­ter liv­ing, I might have  to try one more tour in the coun­try before I get too old and have to once again live near folks.

The drive today just told me what I already knew. I really miss the country.

 It’s been a long, hot sum­mer in Texas. Why, you might ask, isn’t it sup­posed to be?

 Well, yes and no. If you start look­ing at num­bers like aver­ages and means and the hypotenuse of the pitu­itary then you start get­ting your eyes all glazed over after becom­ing con­fused to the point that you just want to go back to bed.

 But there it is. Today has been one of those days when it’s nice to go back to bed. At least it seems like the typ­i­cal early Sep­tem­ber day in Jef­fer­son County, Texas (home to Spindle­top and the mod­ern oil bid­ness, Babe Didrik­son Zaharias, Harry James, Johnny and Edgar Win­ter, and last but cer­tainly not least, Jason’s Deli.) It’s been cloudy, rainy and a bit on the humid side. Of course, humid is Beaumont’s mid­dle name. Yes, I kid you not. Beaumont’s whole name is Beau­mont Humid, Texas, Sr., with a Junior to be named for a Trey at a later date.

 It will only get wet­ter too, or so says the Bureau of Weather, also known as the “Bureau of Whether.” I am just jok­ing. I have a lot of respect for the weather bureau and NOAA. Do you find some humor in the fact that the orga­ni­za­tion which con­trols the National Weather Ser­vice is called “Noah” as in “Hell, I don’t Noah, you build the ark.”

 And did you know there was a “Noah’s Ark Water Park?”

 “Ris­ing in the Heart of the Wis­con­sin Drells, The Water­park Cap­i­tal of the World.” Check it out for your­self. Maybe you will even dis­cover what the Wis­con­sin Drells are. Per­haps they are related to Archie Bell and the Drells . Archie Bell and the Drells hail a mere 90 miles away from me in Hous­ton, Texas. I would not have known that fact had Archie not men­tioned it in the intro to their hit “Tighten Up.”

   “Hi everybody/I’m Archie Bell of the Drells/From Hous­ton, Texas/We dont only sing/but we dance/Just as good as we walk … ”

 Then Archie and the band began tight­en­ing up every­thing from their drums to their bass to their gui­tar to their organ (or per­haps their organs) to the point that every­thing is pretty well tight­ened up. And just as tight as things can pos­si­bly be, some­one from main­te­nance comes along, whips out his socket set and pro­ceeds to untighten every­thing until there is noth­ing but a large mess of the untight­ened strewn from Hous­ton to just the other side of Cut and Shoot. And yes, that is a real city in Texas.

 At some point in time, we hope that the mean­ing behind the lyrics con­cern­ing Archie and Drells singing and danc­ing “as good as we walk” will be revealed. I must point out here that per­haps it would not have been as funki­fied, but I think “or even bet­ter” at the end of  “as good as we walk” would have been an appro­pri­ate aside. It might have been fun­nier. But then, we are deal­ing with my sense of humor here. : ” :

 Any­way, it looks like rain for the next few days. Maybe even some flood­ing. But that’s just nor­mal for early Sep­tem­ber in Beau­mont, Texas. So I plan to stay high and dry. Well, dry at least. I plan to tighten up too. But not so much that my friends wouldn’t rec­og­nize me.