The Single Dragonfly Book 2 - California Alaska and More Here I Come

By Tony Lawrence

While Tony Lawrence has authored numerous technical publications over the years in his career in the energy industry as a petrophysicist, this is his second book that annotates his amazing personal life experiences while traveling the world. Much like the path of a dragonfly, from one place to the next, this is the story of his life, an anthology set of books from his humble beginnings to one exciting adventure after another. Continue to follow him from his home-sweet-home in Alabama to exotic places all over the world, such as the frozen Arctic and the highest peak in North America, to the Thousand Islands and Bali in the South Pacific, along with Europe, Africa and Asia along the way. See how he was able to integrate business with pleasure during his career in fulfilling many items on his "Bucket List.” The stories found inside are based on true life events that are often ironic and funny and which, occasionally, border on the "believe it or not" category!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781365778636

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The Single Dragonfly Book 2 - California Alaska and More Here I Come

THE SINGLE DRAGONFLY BOOK 2

CALIFORNIA ALASKA AND MORE HERE I COME

TONY LAWRENCE

Copyright © 2017 by Tony Lawrence

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: <2017>

ISBN <978-1-365-77863-6>

Lulu Press, Inc.

www.lulu.com

Foreword

This is The Single Dragonfly Book 2 California Alaska and More Here I Come, of The Single Dragonfly series.

As mentioned at the end of the previous Book, The Single Dragonfly Book 1 Early Adventures, it was time to get ready for another big adventure, The Single Dragonfly Book 2 California Alaska and More Here I Come.

Much like the path of a dragonfly, from one place to the next, this is the story of my life, an anthology set of books from my humble beginnings to one exciting adventure after another. Follow me to be a part of this incredible journey to exotic places all over the world, such as the frozen Arctic and the highest peak in North America, to the Thousand Islands and Bali in the South Pacific, along with Europe, Africa and Asia along the way. Be a part of these adventures, starting from my home-sweet-home in Alabama to other intriguing places, far away. See how I was able to integrate business with pleasure during my career in fulfilling many items on my Bucket List. The stories found inside are based on true life events that are often ironic and funny and which, occasionally, border on the believe it or not category.

Chapter 1 California Here I Come 1975

My friends always told me that California was the land of fruits and nuts. I was excited about getting the job offer there since we had always wanted to see the place. My wife, Ellen, and our daughter, Stephanie, were also excited about the move. Billy Moore, the Dresser Atlas manager at Long Beach and his wife picked us up after dark at the Los Angeles airport in the spring of 1975 and drove us over the Grapevine Pass to Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Big Valley, where I would be working as a Sales Engineer. Driving over the mountains between Los Angeles and Bakersfield was my first experience with any place with high elevations. There were several places where escape lanes were cut out of the mountains so that 18 wheelers could get off into deep gravel pits to slow them down if their brakes failed. We were told that, in the old Model T days, the cars did not have fuel pumps. They only used gravity feed to send the gas to the engine. The gas tanks were at a slightly higher elevation than the engine. However, when going up the mountain, since the gas tank was behind the engine, the engine became elevated higher than the gas tank and so the car would stall out. What they had to do to get over the Grapevine Pass was to drive the car backwards until they reached the top so the gas would feed to the engine. Driving backwards could make for a long trip.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapevine,_California

Arriving in Bakersfield, we were pleased to find out that, even though it was not a particularly exciting place at first glance, you could be in almost any environment with a two hour drive. In the morning you could go surfing on the beach, but in the afternoon, you could be skiing in the mountains. In two hours, you could be at Magic Mountain, Hollywood, Disneyland (the original), Ventura, and Sequoia National Forest or in just a few more hours, Yosemite National Park.

We found an apartment, that was the center of action there, called The Meadows. Bakersfield was the home of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard and the radio station there was KERN, named for Kern County. KORN was used as a takeoff name for KERN in the Hee Haw popular television show. Buck Owen’s Band, The Buckaroos, were the initial house band for Hee Haw.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Joaquin_Valley

http://www.kernradio.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hee_Haw

Ellen studied real estate while we were in Bakersfield and after obtaining her Realtor’s License, went to work for John Shipman, the owner of Shipman Realtors on Stockdale Highway, who also owned The Meadows Apartments, where we lived. John’s wife, Vicki, had a sister that was a popular actress in Hollywood so they were always going back and forth from Bakersfield to Los Angeles. The Meadows had a tradition of throwing great parties, especially Halloween, which made it a fun place to live. There was always something going on around town. One of the top ARCO engineers and his wife also lived there and we would occasionally sit around the pool and chat about other things besides business.

Buck Owens drove a special automobile around town built by the Las Vegas custom car maker, Nudie Cohn, who did a lot of automobiles for Hollywood movie stars. Since Buck would come to visit one of the ladies that lived in our apartment, we would often see it parked there and also at the KERN Radio Station. The special car had a Texas Longhorn on the front, 1000 silver dollars imbedded in the upholstery, a saddle in the middle seat, and pistols and rifles attached to the sides. In those days, he left the top down, since no one would even think of stealing anything from Buck. He had a special permit to drive it on the highway, which might be hard to get these days. His license plate was BUCK 1 when we were there. The car is currently in his Bakersfield Crystal Palace Museum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Owens

http://www.buckowens.com/

Bakersfield was also noted as a refugee town as a result of the dust storms that struck the Midwest Dust Bowl during the depression in the 1930s. There was a saying in town: What are the first three words spoken by a person from Oklahoma? The answer was Mommy, Daddy and Bakersfield, since families moved from Oklahoma to California as soon as they could to find work. The saying was an inspiration from John Steinbeck’s great novel, The Grapes of Wrath.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath

There were some excellent restaurants in Bakersfield, despite the town’s small size. One of the finest French restaurants was Maison Jaussaud’s, but there were also special Basque restaurants where one could try the unique taste of rabbit along with several other specialties. Of course, most of the oil field workers preferred chicken fried steak, which contained no chicken, as the name implied, having only beef for meat. They said that, if chicken fried steak had not been invented, then there would have never been any oil wells drilled. In fact, the last meal for Buck Owens was chicken fried steak. He remarked it was his favorite, a few hours before having a heart attack. He had planned on cancelling his show that night at his local restaurant since he was not feeling well. However, some couple complained they had driven all the way from Oregon to see him, so, he changed his mind and performed one last time, passing away right after the show.

One of my favorite songs was Streets of Bakersfield, written by Homer Joy and originally recorded by Buck Owens and later made more popular with his duet with Dwight Yoakam. Note the interesting car near the end of the music video.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streets_of_Bakersfield

Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens Streets of Bakersfield - YouTube

Back to the subject of work, Dresser Atlas was owned by the parent company, Dresser Industries (who merged with Halliburton, later in 1998, but other divisions such as Kellogg separated and the oil field equipment group was purchased by GE in 2011). At that time, Dresser Industries also included other service products such as valves, heaters, pumps, engines, compressors, oil derricks, blowers, drill bits, refractories, and drilling mud, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresser_Industries

Shortly after being transferred to Bakersfield, Dresser Industries decided to try an experiment and send some of their promising employees to a twelve week Super Sales School in Houston. Four people were selected from Dresser Atlas - Bob Carr, Ted Turner, John Kowalski and I. Having barely unpacked from our move from Houston to California, we were headed back to live in a hotel room for 3 months. Fortunately, our daughter, Stephanie was only five years old so she went with her mom and me for the duration. Twelve weeks is a long time in a hotel, but we made the best of it with frequent trips to Astroworld, Galveston, NASA, etc. along with a trip back to Alabama to visit both families. Dresser Industries had a private Skybox at the Houston Astrodome so a couple of times I was able to watch the Houston Oilers in style when we entertained clients there.

The Super School actually did help me to gain confidence in public speaking, doing sales presentations, learning marketing techniques, etc., so when we went back to California, I was ready to hit the ground running and sell some logging services. Shortly thereafter, I co-authored my first technical paper there, The Use of Photon Logs to Evaluate Gravel Packing (SPE, Bakersfield, California, 1977), working with fellow authors Billy Neill, Dennis Lynch and Johnny Haire out of Ventura.

https://www.onepetro.org/conference-paper/SPE-6532-MS

The Use of Photon Logs to Evaluate Gravel Packing (SPE, Bakersfield, California, 1977)

Jerald Heflin, the guy that originally convinced me to join Dresser Atlas, worked out of the Ventura office and I worked in Bakersfield, but we often did joint dog and pony show type presentations to the clients. When we were working together on the Continuous Carbon/Oxygen Log (which was a solid state update to the old Van De Graaff generator Neutron Lifetime Log, described in Book 1), we spent a lot of time together at the rigs and in customer’s offices. The new Carbon/Oxygen log was an improvement since its measurement of the relative amounts of carbon vs. oxygen could tell the difference between oil and water behind steel casing and it worked in fresh waters which existed in many California reservoirs. Oil is a hydrocarbon while water is hydrogen and oxygen so the ratio of carbon to oxygen is a good indicator of oil.

Jerald came up with a novel idea of overlaying the Carbon/Oxygen ratio curve with a reversed Silicon/Calcium ratio curve to find oil. Limestone, which is calcium carbonate, looked like oil on the carbon/oxygen ratio even in water zones, since it had also had a lot of carbon. By using a reversed Silicon/Calcium ratio curve, the amount of carbon in the rock could be subtracted out, leaving only the carbon in the oil fluid. 

I first put the Heflin Continuous Carbon/Oxygen film overlay method to