The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 151 - The Oil Boomtowns of Texas

Episode Date: February 8, 2016

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynold examine the oil boomtowns of Texas in the early 1900's. SOURCESTOUR DATES REDBUBBLE MERCH

When you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. That in-law sweet guest house where your parents stay only part-time Airbnb it and make some money the rest of the year whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. Hello when you are listening to the dollop. I'm emotional. American History

podcast each week I read a story from American history to my friend. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is going to be about. David. What? That's showing for a little more professionalism. Well this is this is just juice okay. Okay. God do you want to look who to do? I'll do one bottle. People say this is funny. Not Gary Gareth. Dave okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not going to come to tickle you quite good. Okay. You are queen fakie of made-up town. All hail Queen Shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious

virgins go to mingle and do a frame. Hi Gary. No. Is he done my friend? No. 1859 wait wait this podcast is brought to you by our patreon subscribers over a patreon. Thank you. Yeah very kind. Very sweet. Yeah. 1859 you guys already heard that. That was kind of let down. In 1859 the discovery of petroleum in western Pennsylvania caused a surge in drilling in the state. Oh boy drill baby drill. Girl more petroleum allowed oil refiners to bypass oil from coal patents that currently existed. Well I don't know if my brain can handle that but okay. So they're using they're making up to this point. It's easier to get

oil. Well they're making oil from coal and now they're getting. Oh now they couldn't ground. Okay better. So the lighting oil industry in the US completely switched over to petroleum in the 1860s. Okay. Yeah. Standard oil founded by John D. Rockefeller in Ohio became a multi-state trust and came to dominate the petroleum industry in the US. Then. Are you excited already? That was a good then. Thank you. That's a turn. Something's about to happen. Then. In 1889 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided on the rule of capture. Okay. This ruling said petroleum was a fugitive substance. Oh boy. Like wild game. What? That that moves

below the surface of the earth. They're calling oil an underground animal. Well they're saying it's like a chicken. An underground chicken. I can't wait to find out exactly why. A wild chicken. A wild chicken. More like a turkey. Yeah. A wild turkeys in the earth's mantle. So gases like quail. Yep. Yep. Exactly. Perfect. The court declared that quote if an adjoining or even a distant owner drills his own land and taps your oil so that it comes into his well under his control it is no longer yours but his. I believe we call that the I drink your milkshake law. I think that is. I drink your milkshake. That's exactly what it

is. Yeah. So you could just basically. You could drink another's milkshake. Right. So if you had your land if from your land you could drill down and get someone else's oil it's your oil. If your straw could reach a mug of another milkshake you could drink it. That's correct. I drink your milkshake. If the state of Texas state of Texas they had long known about the oil beneath them but it was seen as a problem instead of a bonanza because it was just a problem when they drilled for water. So you're they're like God damn it this money's getting in the way of the water. It wasn't worth anything at that point so

they would drill for water and they'd be like fuck it's oil. God. God. Get it out of here. This was a time when you said fuck it's oil. It is but we you know it's funny is that we're probably getting closer back to the time when the drilling for the water will be the most important part. So it's true. A rancher named William Wagoner. I have a real hard time believing his last name is actually Wagoner. Yeah. But he probably came over and was like I'm gonna change my name. I'm in a wagon. I'm the Wagoner. Yeah. That sounds like that sounds like one of those black and white show. This week on the Wagoner. It does sound like a black

and white show. Thank you. So William Wagoner struck oil while drilling for water and he said quote I wanted water and they got me oil. I tell you I was mad. Mad clean through. Whoa. You can see how upsetting it was to people. His bowels emptied. In 1886 George Dolnig was upset that he struck oil when looking for water. His well produced 48 barrels of crude per year. Oh my god. And that made him total profit of about $7 a year in present day money. Oh my god. 48 barrels of oil back then. $7 today. But after the Civil War oil production kicked off in Texas. Right. So everything changes. They actually start using petroleum

for they were finding it and using it in lands and stuff is valuable. The first oil field that made a lot of money was developed in 1894 near Corsicana. That caused more exploration around the state. In January of 1901 spindle top hill in East Texas erupted shooting oil 150 feet into the air. Drilling contractor Anthony Lucas was quoted as saying keep the people back and don't let them smoke. Don't let any of them smoke. It's a smart. Yeah. I actually found people saying that over and over and over again. Yeah. Every single time an oil log is off everyone's like you guys put him out. Well this is before they invented the sign. Once that

revolutionized the nose smoking around oil business. Signs didn't happen until like 1950. Pre the presigner. How are we going to say no though. It just looks like a sign for smoking. OK. That's fair. I say we put a line through the middle of that circle. Say what. A line right through the middle that almost says don't. So the sign is like saying half this and half that. I don't want you in these meetings anymore. You've always been distracting. Fair enough. So it was on. Right. This is the big one. Spindle top hill 100,000 barrels were being produced daily. Holy shit. 1901. The nearby town of Beaumont started cranking out 50,000 barrels a day

within three months. Jesus Christ. It was officially a boom town. Independent oil oil drillers pulled in. Those oil drillers were called wild catters. Wild catters. Wild catters. OK. The name came from a man in Pennsylvania who had put a stuffed wild cat on the top of his oil derrick. Cool. That's a cool. That's cool. I mean, at least he's decorating. Yeah. It's something. Right. Yeah. I mean, this is before hood ornaments. Yeah. So you just stuff a wild cat and shove it on your shit. Put it on top of your thing. Yeah. Wild catters would sell shares in the operation pitching to investors all over the country. One pitch to the

graduating class of Yale saying, quote, how would you like to get started by investing $100 in an oil company and have it later worth over $50,000? See, not a lot of people take like a graduation commencement speech as a time to really just make some scratch. Yeah. Well, that's the best picture. I treat it like a timeshare. Thank you. You know. Land that was recently cheap was now being bought up before millions of dollars. Now, these are the days before the EPA, obviously, and regulation and whatnot. Are we in those days still? This is what they want to go back to. So this will be an exciting story for people who are

into that. Yeah. This is Flint. So historian HP Nichols said, quote, the city water of Beaumont back in those days was soupy. It smelled like fish. Everyone soon learned that if the water was used for drinking purposes, that it caused severe stomach cramps or what was locally known as the Beaumonts. Oh my God. That is amazing. Sorry. What did you just say? I got to go to the bathroom. I got a real bad case of the Beaumonts. I've been Beaumonting all morning. Excuse me. That's my name. What's the name of the town? The name of your town becomes synonymous with diarrhea. Yeah. That's a bad town. That's great. Well, we're

just gonna pack up the wagon and take the kids down to diarrhea for the weekend. I think you're talking about Beaumont, right? Yeah. Nobody calls it that anymore. Gonna go down there for some diarrhea. You know, fish soup comes out of the tap now. Oh, that's two minutes. Yeah. A nice little miso. I thought you were talking about Flint. Hmm. Toilet facilities being limited. A bad case of Beaumonts called for biddings as high as 50 cents for immediate use of a toilet. Oh, God, damn. I'm liking some of the stuff I'm hearing. This is just how you make some money in a bad economy. If you have a toilet, you just give food poison people

and then charge them to shit. Uh-oh. What's they doing? He's just fucking draping out. Drapes. Uh, as speculators came, so did scam. I'll give you 25, please. I got a shit 50, 50 cents, please. One time I was in New York City and it hit me in, you know, New York City's nightmare. Yeah. So I just bought a ticket to a movie. A great move because in New York, what I would always do is I'd do the menu move where you go into a restaurant and you like look at the menu like you sell like you're like you plant the seeds for like you're gonna order something. So you walk in like, oh, you guys do have to stop. Okay. Yeah. I'm gonna. All right. I'll

go use the bat and then you just run out when you're done. Yeah. And you run out going, I had the ball. Yeah. The ball mods. But even peeing, you can't like in New York, like what the fuck, you know, it's the same thing. Starbucks or bust. That's how it was like here. All of a sudden there's always people and there's not that many toilets and half the people have the ball mounts. Relatable. Yeah. So as the spec speculators came, so did scam artists, prostitutes, gamblers, loon owners and looking all looking for workers paychecks. Basically the cast of deadwood. Yep. Here it is. Managers of crappy boarding houses charged rigors a

half a day's pay to rent a cot for 12 hours. Wow. Plus, I mean, if you had to use the bathroom for 50 cents, you really, I mean, there's not much upside in this. You don't have a lot left over. Others cooked dried beans in water and charged 15 cents for a cup. Nauseating gas hung in the air for miles around the town. People packed in and there weren't enough places to live to go around. Families lived in tents. Some had cardboard boxes draped around trees. It's just living, man. That's pretty great. Awesome living. Yeah. Well, look, you don't like a good fort. Right. Yeah. When 1914 came, the working man could afford a car

finally. So car production exploded. And so did the demand for oil. The United States was the only country in the world whose oil resources were in private hands. Wow. Yeah. Well, hopefully that doesn't bite us in the ass eventually. Then in 1917, the Texas legislature passed the pipeline petroleum law. Oh, boy. It designated oil pipelines as common carriers just like railroad lines. Good. This put the Texas Railroad Commission overseeing petroleum pipelines. Well, now Dave, I don't I would hate to be one to raise up a red flag. You know, I don't like red flag. Sure. Is are there a lot of crossovers? Well, the

fact they seem like they're very different things. Well, the one big crossover is the railroad men controlled everything. Right. And always got their way. Right. But that's all I got. Okay, good. That's enough. That is actually plenty. Yeah. Okay. In 1919, the oil and gas conservation law gave the Railroad Commission authority to enforce conservation and safety rules. Cool. President Calvin Coolidge created the Federal Oil Conservation Board in order to devise a plan to conserve oil for national security purposes. But oil companies said there was no there were no problems and there was no need for a

plan. I love man. You gotta oil companies have been consistent throughout history, right? They're just the whole time. They're just basically like, chill, baby. Chill. We got this. Chill. Are we drill, baby? We got this. That you worry your pretty little head. Lay down in this pile of money. The American Petroleum Institute sued and had Coolidge's board stripped of any enforcement power. That's crazy that oil sues the president and wins and wins. Yeah, it's not surprising. And oil production went batshit crazy. All over Texas, they looked for oil and wildcatters poured in. And of course, with the

Russian wildcatters came the captains of fucking horseshit crazy people. Wait, you just mean lunatics showed up. I just made something up right there. Right. Columbia's Columbus Marion Joiner only got seven weeks of formal schooling as a kid. That's plenty, though. Honestly, what do you need to know? No, you got the basics, right? What do you need to know? You now he knows how to spell his name. Maybe. Yeah, plus one. Get out there. Get out there. He was taught to read at home only using the Bible. That's just what, you know, you're just going to end a lot of words with th and sound kind of fruity. You are going to

sound a little weird. Where is are they? And yet, because you know, it's America, he practiced law and became a Tennessee legislator while the country. It's not. It's fucking insane. Come on. Well, he did Dave. He read the Bible a bunch and was in school for seven weeks. Put this man in a high power position. Anybody can be a lawyer. Like, yeah, I can. I got that. I'm a lawyer. After losing all his money in the crash of 1927, he started over and moved to Texas and least several thousand acres in East Texas. Where the humble oil company, but they've been doing the name game has been in the oil like they've just done so well. They're

like preservationist oil. You like land first oil. I think the humble oil company eventually became Exxon. I might be wrong. Where the humble oil company said there was no oil. So he goes and he buys a bunch of land in a place where the oil companies have already written off. Okay. Joiner was known as dad. That was his nickname. Weird. It is weird, right? It's a fucking crazy weird nickname here. Hey, dad. Hey, dad. How are you doing? Hey, there's dad. Hey, you're older than me, but you call me dad. That's right, dad. Okay. Bye, daddy. Give me a kiss. Okay. Well, I'm sorry. Kiss your dad. No, it's not that kind of dad. I want to kiss you.

Okay. I think you're thinking of daddy. Let's get out of here. Round them up. Joiner had a friend, Joseph Idlebert Durham. Yep. He had studied medicine. One more time. Joseph Idlebert Durham. Idlebert. Idlebert. Jesus Christ. He had studied medicine, worked as a government chemist, prospected for gold in the Yukon, and peddled patent medicines in quote Dr. Alonso Durham's Great Medicine Show. I love a great medicine show. Better than a regular one. If you can get down to see the new Prozac. Well, that's the thing that's so great about a medicine show is that like two months you have to wait to see if anything's

taken hold. So now he was going, he was no longer going by Joseph Idlebert Durham. He was calling himself A.D. Lloyd or Doc Lloyd. Sure. And he was telling people he was a trendologist. Meaning that he sees trends when they're starting? Yeah, he finds trends. He's a surveyor of trends. He will go out and discover a trend of some of the thing. That's a really hard job. Because a lot of times it's just one shithead. Yeah. Yeah. So he's the guy. Great. He's a trend spotter. He drew up a map. Sounds like he could have like a show on Bravo now. Oh, easily. Yeah. They should do the trendologists. Yeah. He drew a map of the

major oil fields in the U.S. showing trend lines intersecting in East Texas. So he sees that there is a trend of oil. Oil. Oil trend. Sort of building up there. Yeah, it's all coming together at that place. Yep. He said quote, I'm not a professional geologist, but I've studied the earth more and know more about it than any professional geologist now alive will ever know. Well, so you can't really nullifies the first part. Well, yeah, but I'm not a geologist. I just am the smartest. I'm not a professional geologist, but I know more than I'm better than them. Right. I drew. Look at this line. I drew on a map. Look. He came

up with a report called Geological Topographical and Petro. Oh, I should know this word. Petroliferous Survey. Portion of Rusk County, Texas, made for CM Joiner by A.D. Lloyd, geologist and petroleum engineer. So he just expanded his that's how you actually that's how you actually become something is you just publish something and say it right. So now I'm a petroleum engineer. Well, that's I think that's how Trump is where he is. Yeah, pretty much. I am the president. Okay. All right. So Joiner used this report to go around selling shares of his Wait, so his propaganda report is like his evidence. So his friend Captain

Fakie made a fake report about fake stuff and then now this guy is taken out and saying look at this news and everyone just reads the title and they go oh my goodness, right? It's not a time where you go to the internet and go hey is this A.D. Lloyd guy real? No, you just read the title. Yeah, that's the story checks out. Look at that title. Strong title. I'd be a fool to not grab this opportunity. So he goes around selling shares quote every woman has a certain place on her neck. Whoa, let me and when I touch it, they automatically start writing me a check. What? I may be strangling them. Is that the certain spot? I may be the only man

on earth who knows just how to locate that spot. He thinks he found a check nerve. He's like a money Vulcan. Totally. Totally. What? I feel like for the time period it's weird to say that I go around touching the ladies on the neck. Well of course they're writing your check. They're terrified. They want you to go away. At that time you don't walk up and rub a lady's neck. Let me guess that spot's called the neck, right? It's weird how they get unnerved and write me checks. They do whatever I say when I pinch their neck's hard. Oh God. The report also lied saying major oil companies were actively leasing in the area. So after Joyner

got his leases, he talked locals into helping him build a barely adequate wooden derrick. But look, I mean, you know, that's how like skateboarding started. Just a bunch of guys with some wood and nails. Give it a shot. You're you're that's a great. Thank you. Parallel sort of. This is like Lord's a Dogtown shit. This is exactly Lord's a Dogtown. And that's a great parallel. Like. Like other like other great. Drawing on this podcast before you're the parallel adjust. Listen, I've always said that. I'm the analogist. So it really, really the derrick was just a prop to impress potential investors. Like he

just did barely enough that people be like, wow, look at that. You are drilling a well. Right. May I see this? Well, sir, well, it's right there. Right there. Squint your eyes and turn around right away. He used secondhand drilling machinery, hired an inexperienced driller, used local farm workers to work as roughnecks. Roughnecks are guys who works on the oil rigs. And I think that's what you call the women after they're done writing checks. They do. They have. Yeah. They got a case of rough neck. And he fed the boiler fire with everything from greenwood slabs to used tires. Well, I don't know much, but I'm

guessing that's not a good call. Top notch, Josh, top notch operation. Right. Okay. Just to be sure. The oil companies employed scouts who would go around and report the progress of drilling in wildcat territory. Okay. If oil was found, the companies would immediately buy nearby land. Right. Because of the milkshake law. Yeah, the milkshake law. That's what we're calling it. Right. I think that's what it is now. Yes. After three years, the scouts had pretty much given up checking in on joiners rigs, of which he now had three. They thought he had abandoned the last well he was working on, but it turned out he just shut it

down while waiting for new parts. So they're kind of, they just kind of were like, yeah, that one's not working. If he builds another one, let us know. Okay. So they're not paying attention anymore. So if you have one of those and it's not doing shit, is it? Yeah, they're always just kind of drilling, you know? So this one's just sitting there. So they're like, oh, it's... So they're like, whatever. They think he gave up. They think he was like, yeah, there's no oil. And what is he doing instead? Well, he was just getting new parts. Okay. So he gets the new parts and he gets it going again, and he's ready to drill. And people in the

area were very excited that he was starting to drill again. So a big crowd came out. Sure. Because you had fuck all the do. Between 5,000 to 8,000 people. Oh my god. Gathered on October 2nd. I mean, how saturated our minds are now with shit to do. I mean, the idea that you would go watch oil, like... You're not watching oil, you're just watching someone dig a hole. He's just drilling a hole in the ground. And you're just like, well, this is a day, huh? Oh, man, I'll never forget this. Having a day! This is the best day of my life! Vendors sold peanuts. How am I gonna go to sleep tonight with all this excitement? I just shut my eyes and I picture that man

digging again. Boy, oh boy, what a ride! Vendors sold peanuts and soda? Get your peanuts and soda for the Dlamer show on Earth! And nothing happened. And they all went home that day. But they came back the next day. Yesterday was awesome! Yeah! Let's ride that high again! And that's when it happened. First the gurgling, then the drilling engineer screamed, put out the fires! Put out your cigarettes! Yeah, it's no smoking please. And well, number three blew into the air. Oh boy. Now people came from all over to see it. The seven-mile gravel road from the town of Henderson was packed with cars bumper to bumper. Everyone going to see. And just

because they struck the oil? Yeah. Right, okay. Every cop in the area was sent to deal with the crowd. Workers poured in. Nearby Kilgore's population exploded from 700 to 10,000 in two weeks. Oh, shit! Oils in the area! Plus, it's the Great Depression, so everyone's like, I think it, or this might be before. Whatever. I'm not talking. I don't know why you're listening. That's okay. It was, yeah. A couple months later, dad joiners sold 400 acres for $1,250,000. Not a bad haul, right? Yeah. And today money that amounts to fuck you. It's like a sandwich. Yeah. A nearby area came to be known as Happy Hollow. It was just on the

edge of the town of Kilgore. There were cardboard houses, shacks made of lumber, tents, and I, there was no description of what they were, but it said half-wall homes. Some, I'm assuming that people were living in what's essentially a cubicle. TV sets? Half-wall homes. They're like living on like a, like the Family Matters set, essentially. I think it's like a cubicle. You live like half of a house? It could be half a house, or it could be walls that just go up halfway. It could be either way. It could be walls that go up halfway. It could be a half-wall. And then what, what you just said, you're like, it's a cubicle. It sounds like you live,

you remember, you know those commercials where the person gets the cold and they're enormous in their house while walking around? It sounds like that. It sounds a lot like that. So you either have that or else it's just a half. I like the picture like a half house. Okay. Yeah, that's fair. Just half. You gotta have everything. Between a hundred and three hundred people live there, but it was regularly rated by cops. They would clear people out, arrest them, and as soon as they did, more people would just move in. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, new houses were unheard of because working in oil fields paid so much more than construction that there were no

workers to build anything. Wow. Locals usually look down on all the boomers. Right. Of course they did. Yeah. The City Cafe would serve men chili made in wash tubs 24 hours a day. One more time. And what, why don't eat that chili? The City Cafe would serve men chili made in wash tubs 24 hours a day. So basically. But they gave them bathtub chili? Yeah, it's bathtub chili, but it's not like there's a guy in the bathtub. They, I'm sure they emptied it out first. You could get a cauldron. Well, they needed something big because there's so many guys wanting chili. Okay. And that's what became known as Fartown. Workers would use napkins that were left by the

last customer. Uh-huh. Because there weren't enough napkins to go around. So you would eat your chili. Why don't you get in there? Everyone's doing oil. Why not get in the napkin game? You see a hole. You plug it. Yeah, but okay. But the restaurant's not gonna buy napkins because everyone's just leaving their napkin and then the next guy's using it. So it's just. Don't get in the way of a man in his dream. I'm gonna start this napkin business. What if it's a way to help the environment? Sure. You went into it Denny's and you used the last guy's napkin. Do you help? Do you like the environment? I love the environment. Yeah. Okay. I'm willing to do that. Take your. But I'll tell you, I'm gonna eat a lot more

delicately and I will not have a beard anymore. That'll be gone. All right. So workers would sit in there and eat quote. The mud they tracked in accumulated two inches deep on the floor of the cafe creating just eating chili in a mud cut out of a bathtub without napkins. Or if they are, they just have to use trash as napkins. Yes. Great. I'm yum. I don't know if I'm eating the chili or the floor. The mud they tracked in accumulated two inches deep on the floor creating such a mess that the more than 30 newly hired employees only made a half hearted attempt at scraping it out. There was mud because heavy traffic on unpaved streets created massive clouds of dust during dry weather. The dust went everywhere. Then

it would rain and all the dust would turn to mud. It just sounds like a great time. It's a good time to live. Great time. Groceries are hard to come by. Sugar and flour quadrupled in price. You just weren't going to find milk or eggs. Salt water coming from the oil wells killed vegetable gardens. Every business had long lines. It's all coming together. It just sounds great. Hopefully people like oil because that's all there is. Obviously the tents had no plumbing so people would just throw their garbage into the street which made for unsanitary conditions. And by garbage, I'm assuming. Yeah. But garbage. Keep going. In the town of Wink. Come on. That's what it said. Was everyone shady in the town of Wink. Hey, welcome

to town. Hey, you want to get out of here? Hey, you. Huh? What do we. I know the guy who knows the guy. What do we. What's happening right now? I'm sorry. I'm from Beaumont. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I didn't realize you were from Diarrhea. I just need to find a bathroom. Oh, that'll be 50 cents. Why are you winking? Is it 50 cents or not? Hey, 50 cents, whatever you get a second pal. Okay, but you're okay, but you're winking. So I just need. I'm having a stroke price. In the town of Wink, the typhoid rate was 10 times the national rate and dysentery was four times the national rate. People living near wells just got used to inflamed eyes and being nauseous all the time. Hey, you got to pay a price. You do. Sorry. Live in

the dream. You got to. You want to live the dream where you get to eat tub chili? Sorry. You're going to have to look like you've been crying all day. Wait, this is mud. Oh, no. Women wouldn't like matches for fear of fire and cold meals became the norm. Oh, okay. That's because women only cooked. That's what you mean. Yeah. I mean, it. The story basically said that I just cut that. It must. It must be so weird to be like what if they were you're a guy who loved to cook? I mean, you'd have to be like closeted. You just have to be like and Frank and Emeril combined. Just like slowly just like raising some pork shoulder. Nobody was playing. Just start. You're like making a risotto and you're like, Oh, that's perfect.

Oh, God, they're home. They're home. They're home. That's why barbecue chili in the bathtub. Hurry. That's why barbecue exists. A man can pretend. Yeah. Like, you know, I like to cook. I'll do it by the fire. Got that big fire. The roar from oil gushers was very loud. And Des Demona, the local paper reported, quote, conversations are shouted. Talking over the phone is almost impossible. What a time. Mothers can't coo their babies and lovemaking is a problem. Why is lovemaking a problem? It's too loud to fuck. Baby is never too loud to fuck. Oh, you don't know about oil loudness. I just won't be able to drill you as hard as that thing outside. No, it's not even worth it. No, I don't want to. That's they put

in the paper. Yeah, in the paper, the paper that lovemaking is a problem. So people aren't fucking a lot. I assume it's the noise. Obviously that has something to do with the drilling. Oil stained clothes had to be treated with gasoline to remove the oil. What? Then they would be rubbed on a washboard and then boiled to get rid of the gas. It could maybe it's not a place to live. There's other places to live. Go live your napkin fantasy. Go do anything else. Oh man, we're lucky. What a boom. Anyway, I'm just going to boil my clothes while I eat chili tub. Huh? No, I haven't. No, I'm not I'm not crying. No, that's just what happens to your eyes here. Oh, don't mind her. She's just pissed because I can't

fuck anymore. After you boiled the clothes to get rid of the gas, then you could wash them with soap and water and hang them dry. Then you got to wash your clothes. After you put gas in them, boiled them, then you could wash them. Yeah. Well, perfect. Two fun steps added. A new called a new town called Joinerville popped up right where all the people had camped out to watch the well blow. Okay. So they just started a town there. That's fun. Can we do that now? Henderson six mile away six miles away was also packed in nearby La Grande local Madame Miss Jessie started taking chickens as payment. One chicken for one screw was the motto. You know, I, I know that prostitution was looked at differently back then. But you

have to feel kind of demeaned when you see a bird being handed over to fuck you. Now, hold on a minute. I want the whole chicken. I told you, I'll give you a few feathers and then when we're done, I'll give you the full bird. Okay. And you, you want to have coitus. That'll be one whole chicken, whole chicken, one chicken, please. One hopping around chicken. Yes. Pretty soon chickens were all over the for a cow. You can do backdoor. The rooster. Yeah. Pretty soon chickens were all over the brothel. It became known as the chicken ranch. What kind of name came from so you can't fuck where the name came from. You can't fuck when something's being drilled near you, but in a house full of chickens, right? No problem.

Yeah. Well, those are, yeah. Okay, sure. The chicken shack. In one town, when a prostitute left a beauty shop, the owner would put a magazine on the seat that she just vacated. So a woman of virtue wouldn't have to sit on the same seat. Oh, that's, that's fucked up, right? I mean, it's fucked up. Yeah. Right. Well, it's, I mean, look, yeah, it's weird. It's, it's gross and it's weird and maybe not wrong. Who knows? I also assume that he had to take a chicken for payment. Yeah, absolutely. The whole currency in this town is. Oh, I look lovely. Here's a turkey. Can I have a bottle of whiskey? That's a turkey. God damn it. What's going on? I started accepting chicken as currency. I don't know what's we're

all doing it. I get, I don't know what the fuck's happening. Drilling was everywhere. Many landowners not in the bedroom. No, no drilling there. Many landowners divided their property into small mineral leases and gave them to the highest bidder. They were cut into amounts as small as one 30 second of an acre. Oh, man, that, come on. You're living on a prayer, Jack. What? One 30 second of an acre. This is like scratch offs if they were land. The odds are just not good. Oil field machinery came in from other states in Kilgore wells were drilled in the yards of homes. The Derek legs touched each other. One city block had 44 wells. Dude, it's and it's not like it's on the country. They're

just doing it. They're going to start sucking wells and other wells at this point. It's just in their yard. Right. Yeah. This is perfect. Can I go outside and play? No. Not if you want to live. You can't go anywhere. Go get me some chili. There, take a chicken and go buy me some chili. Oh, you brought home pussy. Here we go. Because of the rule of capture, wildcatters had to drill wells as quickly as they could once they found oil or else their neighbor could drill and start sucking it up too. It's basically like cocaine in studio 54. It's fucking insane. Yeah. During this time, horses were commonly used to pull cars out of boggy places, which were plentiful because of the dust mud situation. Local started

putting teams of horses where roads were boggy, then cars would get stuck and the horses would pull them out and they would charge them a giant fee. Tow trucks. Tow trucks. Well, I'll be about five chickens. Wait a minute. Five chickens. I don't have any chickens. What do you mean you ain't got no money? No, I have money. You just said you ain't got no chickens. I don't know what, is this the Twilight Zone? What is this town? Chickens are money and we're all sucking the land. Now, if you want to fuck this woman, cost you a pretty foul. This practice then led to what became very common in East Texas toll roads. Landowners would pave the boggy places in roads with logs and then charge anyone to use that part

of the road. And there we go. We have our seed. And Texas is born. Yeah. Gambling was of course a big thing. George Parker Stoker, a local doctor described it this way. It was a blaze with light pimps, professional gamblers, drillers, gunmen and businessmen stood at the bar drinking, arguing, swearing and telling filthy stories. Games were being played by tense excited men. Earnings of a week were tossed on a number or a roll of the dice and lost stacks of currency. Piles of gold and silver stood in front of eager eyed players. Players were droned. I don't know what that means. The click of the dice, the world of the wheel, wild laughter and oaths filled the air. So they just roll their roll. Yeah,

they're rolling in fucking money Wall Street and they're just having a fucking great time. Itzy Collins was the owner of a gambling house for black people in the town. Quote, lots of colored people had oil if they had retained their mineral rights and they didn't know what to do with the money. Whenever gambling, wherever gambling be at, that's where I be. And when the East Texas oil field opened up, I made my headquarters in Kilgore. I made so much money, I was scared to go to sleep. Fuck. Didn't know that was an issue. There's one of those problems you don't envision when you suffer from afluenza. I can't sleep. Too much fucking money. Gas blindness. Sure. And gas induced death were always possibilities

for the workers. Yeah, that makes gas blindness. Well, that one is new to me. It's just where your eyes get gassed out. That seems like you might have a case of the gas blindness. I can't see. Guys would get woozy and then just fall down and pass out and go sleepy sleep and then they'd die from the gas. Oh, well, okay. That's how Mike Malloy went. I didn't look up gas blindness because that one seems just very self-explanatory. Yes, blind from gas. Fist fights and saloons were common as were shootings. In the town of Ranger, city residents renamed the Daily Times newspaper The Daily Crimes. Cute, right? Cute. Life was so dismal for people in boom towns that a lawyer named H.P. Belsford defended a woman

who was charged with killing her husband by arguing that it was justified, justifiable homicide because he had brought her to the town and made her live such a terrible life. Wow. That's quite an angle. She was acquitted. Get out. Well, she had no choice but to kill him. Look at how shitty this place is. Fuck. We're with you, sweetie. What are you going to do? Let him off the hook? He deserved to die. Oil fires were common in the town. Is there anything bad that wasn't common? God damn it. Gas blindness was common. Husband murders were happening. It's terrible. It's when there's a when you have gas blindness and there's an oil fire. Yeah, or if you have gas blindness and your wife's trying to kill

you. It's horrible. In the town of White Oak, rain led to runoff into a slush pit full of oil. Then lightning hit near the pit and the oil caught on fire. Oh, lucky. The continuing rain and the now boiling slush pit caused burning oil to run down the main street. Hey, whatever. Whatever. Just another Thursday, boys. Gotta crack a few eggs, right? Still, even with all that. Could have done without that lightning strike in retrospect. That was the nail in the coffin if you think about it. Not a good thing. Still, even with all that, when there was a new gusher, people would drive out to see it. Of course, because we are idiots. Fucking morons. Join as well was the first in what would turn out to be a major new oil

field. It was 42 miles long and 12 miles across. Wow. Price is plummeted from 350 a barrel to 25 cents a barrel. But of course, the wildcatters kept drilling wells and producing more oils. While the big guys, the companies called for rationing. They said the wildcatters were selfish and short sighted. The wild. They're wildcats. They're wildcats. What do you do? Sorry. You know the deal. It ain't. I was gonna say a really bad joke. I stopped myself. That a boy. What was it? Now that you were gonna say it, we know that you thought it's not a domesticated dog. We're all glad you didn't do it. Right. It would have been horrible. Not good. So I did. I did. You pulled. You pulled out.

I stopped myself. You pulled out. I'm happy I did. You pulled out. And we found out what I would have done inside the mind of a comic. The wildcatters. Wait. I hate autocrack. Don't worry. Okay. The wildcatters. And this is obviously gonna surprise people coming from a place like Texas, Texas, said this was about the sanctity of private property rights. Yeah, exactly. This is the fuck you. This is principle based. Thank you. I can do what I want on my land. Yeah. But we're all starving to death. What do we do? That's you. Try to take my freedom from me. The wildcatters said the big companies wanted to execute every little independent operator. Exactly. You're trying to kill small business. It's it's it's they're

killing small business. Nice that nothing has changed. Nothing. In April, 1931, the Railroad Commission decided that a limit of 160,000 barrels a day should be produced from East Texas. Well, so they're trying to put a fucking cap on the ship to get the prices back up. The commission was immediately hit with 40 lawsuits. Wow. It's a lot. That is a lot. Good amount. The federal courts granted temporary injunctions and stopped the limits. So there's no stopping the producers. There were 500 new wells being drilled a month, and the commission only had six guys and their assistance out in the field. That's enough. And on June 1, 1931, there were 1200 wells producing 500,000 barrels of oil a day. That was 15% of complete

domestic consumption. The price of oil plummeted to 15 cents per barrel. How many chickens in some parts of Texas oil only cost 2.6 cents a barrel. Oh my God. The industry considered a barrel a barrel of oil for 2.6 cents. Fuck. Not even three. No. Can we please round it up? No. Can we please round it up? No. I don't have a barrel. Two and a half cents. I don't have a half cents. For a barrel. I don't have a half. Water's more expensive. Okay. I guess I'll give you two barrels for five cents. Okay. Got my own that chicken, too. The industry considered $1 to be the bare minimum for profitable oil production. So close to profit. So knocking on the door. In June, 1931, a federal court ruled that the railroad commission was attempting

to regulate the market of oil instead of oil production that threatened geologic integrity, which is what they're supposed to do. Right. They told them to knock it off. The state conservation law of 1929 only allowed the commission to regulate physical waste. But in the truth, both were true, the fuel oil pressure was being compromised. But the courts were like, no, it's America. So. Freedom. Everybody get what they want. Freedom. The founder of Humble Oil, who was now the Texas governor. Not so humble. Ross Sterling called a special session of the legislature. They passed the Oil and Gas Conservation Act. Under the act, the railroad commission was given the power to regulate oil production. Rumors started that landowners and

1500 oil producers were organizing to dynamite drilling rigs and pipelines of those who were overproducing oil. Oh, shit. What? That's how you get them to stop drinking the milkshake. It's about to blow the straw. Blow that shit up. Humble Oil hired armed security to protect its property. Governor Sterling then mobilized state troops. Fuck. From Sterling's proclamation, there exists an organized and entrenched group of crude petroleum and natural gas producers who are in a state of insurrection against the conservation laws of the state and are an open rebellion against the effort to enforce such laws. It is necessary for the preservation of the petroleum oil and natural gas that the reckless and illegal exploitation be stopped until such a time as the

said resource may be properly conserved. I do hereby declare martial law. Exactly. In order to stop the recklessness, make it legal to put dynamite underground. Thank you. Yes. In order to stop all this lawlessness, no laws. No laws. So I do hereby declare martial law and direct Brigadier General Jacob F. Walters, two without delay, shut down each and every oil and gas producing well in the East Texas field. Okay. So he's trying to shut down all the wildcats. Yeah. 4,000 troops from the Texas National Guard. Holy shit. And the Texas Rangers were sent to enforce the production levels. Jesus. They came on horses because rains had made the roads impassable. Great. Now, General Walters was a member of the state National Guard, obviously,

which means he had a day job too. Sure. And his day job was working as general counsel for Texaco. Perfect. So there's no. No problem there. No, there's no crossover issue. General Walters wrote, quote, all men have openly said that if the governor could not hold the field down, they were going to take charge of it themselves, hang a few sons of bitches and if necessary dynamite pipelines and save this field from destruction and save the oil industry. So not playing a coy. It's getting, yeah. Letting it out there. General Walters didn't allow any protests and started hunting arsonists who had started burning down buildings. Jesus. It's just a good time. Jesus. This is just a great time to live in Texas. It sounds fucking awesome. I'm good.

Good. Walters also banned the wearing of beach pajamas. Thank God someone had to. Somebody had to stop the beach pajamas. Hey, by the way, what are beach pajamas? Beach pajamas were worn by prostitutes. What? I can't figure out what they were. Beach pajamas? I mean, I just assume. You can tell she's a whore. Look, she's got a beach PJ's on. Are you going down the beach to sleep? Oh God. Beach pajamas. Go get a chicken. Texas Ranger manual lone wolf Gonzales. Real name being. I feel like he works. Real name being. Yeah, manual lone wolf. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He raided tents and arrested 300 people since there wasn't a jail big enough. He made

his own. What? What? He just built a jail. He's not making a jail. Clearly at full walls. Quote. He turned the old Baptist church into a jail. We chopped a hole in the floor up near where the pulpit is and then a hole down the back and run a chain. Old Malcolm Crimm used to have it in front of the store where you tie up your horses to it. So they got the chain from old Malcolm Crimm. Malcolm gave us all the padlocks we wanted with one key and put the chain around the prisoner's necks. Up where the pulpit is, I put a man up there sitting with a shotgun in parentheses laughs. He laughed at that part. That's a very funny part to be fair. Hilarious. That's the jokey part. It's very funny. And he never let nobody off that line.

They came in there to open joints. A string of girls were open up gambling houses. They came to rob the working boys out of their money. They were just thugs from all over. Now we didn't put working boys in jail. We did that way of telling between a working boy and one who wasn't working. Beach pajamas. Beach pajamas. We got them even so where they put their hands out when you stopped them. And you know what? I just put my hand on there. And if you had calluses, I'd say go ahead, boy, and go about your business now and behave yourself. That's an easy way to get out of jail. So just to sum up, if you were a criminal with calluses, you're free to go fucking scot-free. Yeah. Anybody who had ever worked at anything, if you had calluses, you're good. It was not a

moisturizer's time to thrive. It was not a moisturizer's time at all. No. And by the way, this jail sounds really good enough to code while we're taking a time out. Just three head of guys chained around the neck of a church. Yeah, with a guy who's just got a shotgun like he's about to shoot fish in a fucking barrel. That is a funny part. Independent oilman, Walt Watson Wise described lone wolf consolves, quote, he came down to Kilgore, one man, and shot about three people and cleaned the place out. He used to show me his finger and say it gets itchy. He'd give you a warning and if you didn't heed, he'd shoot you. Sometimes he would just shoot you in the leg. Wow. So lone wolves is doing this thing. What do you want? He's a lone wolf. Yeah, he's the

law. That's the law. Yeah. In case you're wondering who that guy was. The law. That was the law. Right. Right. Humble oil's William Farish, disturbed by the goings on, said quote, if an inhabitant from Mars were to visit us, he could hardly escape a feeling of bewilderment if not actual dismay at the manner we earthlings carry on this great enterprise so essential to our convenience and welfare. He's right. That Martian's head's going to be spinning. I'm sure a lot of people got on board with that message. They were like, can you... Hey, what's the deal with the Martian? Well, just, you know, I'm trying to say that if, you know, someone from another world wouldn't understand how we work and I just thought Martian was a great way to... Are you talking about the

chickens? Boy, we are not on the same page. So... Well, what about just like someone from Oregon? Would that be enough? Why does a person have to be from... I just kind of like the idea of a Martian. But how does that person get here? The Martian? Yeah, I'm having problems with... I would think probably via some sort of spacecraft. I mean, my guess would be a spacecraft. Their spacecraft would crash. Like a car that goes in the air? Like a flying air car? Sure. Yeah. What if it gets stuck in the mud? You get Skyhorses. Pegasus. Okay. I guess so. Thank you. I'm glad we did this. I am too. On October 13th, 1931, a lawsuit was brought against the railroad commission, the attorney general and brigadier general Walters to end the limits on production.

A federal judge then issued issued a restraining order. Oh boy. But because it's Texas Governor Sterling... You know, it's Texas. He didn't listen. He refused to recognize the court's authority and continue with martial law. Sure. A newspaper wrote, Governor Sterling today said that only orders from President Hoover or the United States Supreme Court can halt state regulation of oil production despite the federal... Despite the fact that federal is overstate. But martial law only went on for another month. Walters got bored and went home. In November, 1931, Sterling withdrew all the troops and ended martial law. Okay. The railroad commission continued to issue limits on production, but it couldn't be enforced. Oil was hauled. They just couldn't stop it even with all

the troops there. Oil was hauled from wells at night and no taxes were being paid on it. The refineries kept no records of their purchases. Employees of the railroad commission threatened... were threatened with violence by men with shotguns when they went to refineries. At one of the plants, commission inspectors were turned away one day and when they came back the next day with a warrant, they found the owners had cut down the steel stairway to the top of the tank. Oh, we were going to do that renovation anyway, boys. Timing, huh? Oh, what a shame. I guess you can't find out. Oh, well. Anyways. In March, 1933, a federal judge restrained the oil commission from inspecting all wells in the East Texas oil field. The U.S. oil industry was

facing economic collapse. On July 14, 1933, FDR signed an executive order to enforce the regulation of crude production. Federal investigators were sent to check out the situation. They found that the industry was in a state of, quote, utter demoralization and its failure threatened the general economic situation in the country. Good. Just because, by the way, this is the free market if anybody wants to know. Capitalism, maybe. This is the free market at work. Capitalism. If anybody wants to know what the free market at work looks like, this is the free market at work. Dave, quit trying to put a cap on the American dream. So with federal inspectors now trying to enforce limits, the East Texas field reported its greatest production year. 11,867 wells produced.

Where wasn't a well? I mean, you see the pictures. They're fucking. I mean, on wells. Yeah. Yeah. So that amount of wells produced 216,291,397 barrels of oil. And on top of that, bootleg oil that they couldn't keep track of. Right. Like the B sides. Was being cranked out about 500,000 barrels a day. Jesus. Oil industry leaders and others pushed to have the Secretary of Interior declared the oil dictator and to nationalize the oil industry as a public utility. One 1933 telegram to the White House from an oil producer said, quote, we want an oil dictator. A Texas Railroad Commissioner said the commission was now completely helpless.

Good. President Roosevelt then issued an executive order, the petroleum code prohibiting the interstate transportation of illegally produced oil above the allowable limit. Okay. They'll stop it. Yeah. No, just saying don't. Don't do that. Don't do it now. Congress then passed an oil tax in 1933. This gave the feds the rights to look at the books of oil producers and refineries. That way they could figure out who was selling and buying illegal oil, which is also known as hot oil. Yeah. Federal employees watched fields at night for activity. It didn't change anything. Hundreds of thousands of barrels of hot oil was being produced and sold. Still.

Another lawsuit was filed and they got an injunction stopping the government from looking at their books. Then Congress stepped right. Well, it's just it's so it's so but it's so funny to hear the because it think about if it was something that was like if it was something that the we did like gas or electricity to have oil be one of those things would be such a different fucking world. Yeah. As opposed to now. Another lawsuit was filed. They got an injunction. Then Congress stepped in and passed the Connolly Hot Oil Act, which gave the federal government the power to enforce the directives of the Texas Railroad Commission. Like there's so many things that are getting passed just so the government can do shit. Just anything. They just just anything.

State governors and oil company executives formed the interstate oil compact to stabilize the industry with a steady supply of oil, predictable prices and minimal federal interference. The acceptance of the Connolly Hot Oil Act in the IOC marked the end of the oil wars and the beginning of the era of regulation. And with that oil production became profitable again. As for Columbus Marion Joyner, who sold 400 acres for 1.2 million in cash. Well, he actually didn't get it in cash. He's actually just given 30,000 in cash and the rest in promissory notes and future oil payments. Oh, that's fine. IOUs and pieces of paper. Yeah. That's as good as cash. Joyner spent the rest of his life looking for another

East Texas oil field and died nearly broke. You really know how to end them on a high note. Oh, I'm not done. 2016. Oh, Jesus. Texas Governor Greg Abbott began pushing for a constitutional convention to weigh what he has labeled quote the Texas plan. Oh, God made up of nine constitutional amendments. He says will quote reign in the federal government and restore the balance of power between the states and the United States. One proposal prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within a state. What? Yeah, they're fucking idiots because they don't know history. Read your fucking history books, you dipshit. Wait, this is what the fucking that's such a

crate like. Yeah, that's quite a move today. They love the people love the people who love the Constitution the most are all sit like when it comes to certain things are also willing to just amend it whenever need be. Let's change it. I love it, but let's completely change. It's a perfect document. Here's nine new amendments. We need one more thing. Today, Saudi Arabia is flooding the world with oil, plunging oil prices with the goal of hurting US oil producers. They want to kill off shale oil producers in the United States of America. That would be good, though. Yeah, that's I'm fine with that. That's it's it's time. It's time for the OD so we can go to rehab. Um, yeah. Well, that's a very

interesting origin story, David. It sounds like pre regulation things were pretty fucking great. Yeah, and it sounds like we need to go back to that. And this is why regulation is bad. Well, it's the government. They got their hands all over. They're just kind of like, it's kind of like if you know, you're going to have a party. Do you really want you need someone there to watch you party? I would also like to point out, there's a very common myth that corporations are against regulation when the actual reality is corporations are the ones who push for and create regulation. And this is an example. Yeah, the big companies wanted regulation because it was just insane. Right. No one was making any money. Right. Companies

want regulations. Yes. For things like this. Right. Yeah. Well, it's strange when you're on the side of the big corporation. Vote Hillary. Anything to say, Jose? What do you got, Jose? I just licking your foot? Yeah, just foot licking head wiping. Oh, God, you know, that's how I clean my ears. Ah, this is awkward. I just lick my hand and rub on my ears. Okay, we're good. So we can end this one. Oh, he's licking his neck. What a freak. Dude, who licks their neck? He's a beautiful prince. All right, you guys, we're signing cars. Thank you.