Workday Wednesday - Offshore Drilling for Oil

This is one of my favorite pictures of my father-in-law, aka Ed.  It's about an 11 x 14 that I've had reduced so I could scan it to have an image to place with this blog entry.  The photographer's stamp on the back is Paul Dorsey from Houston, Texas.

The story, as my father-in-law told it to me, is that J. Paul Getty sent a photographer out to take pictures for the company magazine.  Notice my father-in-law is wearing a straw hat.  When the photographer submitted the pictures, Ed received a call and was told, "I've got the pictures here and can't use them.  I've got to send the photographer out again, and this time make SURE you're wearing your hard hat." 

 Both pictures were taken in 1958 in the Texas Gulf where my father-in-law was the drilling foreman on this rig.  The family was living in Anahuac, Texas at the time.  He had a boat assigned to him and a driver that took him to and from the rig.  He has this picture labeled "State Track #74 #1, Triple Completion, Spudded 7-12-58, Completed 9-4-58"  I learned that the date a well is "spudded" is the very start of drilling on a new well.  He's very proud it was the first triple completion of its kind, which means it was pumping oil from three zones or depths.