Reflections by W.T. (Dub) Riley

By W.T. Riley

This is the story about growing up in a poor cowboy/farmer family, serving in the armed forces during WWII, and then starting at the bottom in the oil fields of West Texas and then rising to an office position in the Gulf Building in down town Midland, Texas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Outskirts Press
• Release date: Jun 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781977266002

W.T. Riley

Dub Riley was born in 1927. His dad was a ranch cowboy and the family moved 13 times and finally settling in Odessa, Texas. He served in the Marines during WWII and came back to work in the oil fields starting as a roustabout learning oil production from the bottom up. He would eventually become the purchasing agent for Gulf Oil Company. His knowledge of the oil field led him to help develop oil field production in several counties in Texas and New Mexico.

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Reflections by W.T. (Dub) Riley

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2023 W.T. Riley

v2.0

The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Outskirts Press, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-1-9772-6600-2

Cover Photo © 2023 W.T. Riley. All rights reserved - used with permission.

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Chapter 1 The Beginning and My Family

Chapter 2 My Early Years

Chapter 3 My Military History

Chapter 4 Early Days in the Oilfield

Chapter 5 Newly Married and Work Life

Chapter 6 Stories of folks that I met in the oilfield

Chapter 7 Investing in land

Chapter 8 Motor Home and Travel Group

Chapter 9 Stories of Living in Odessa

Chapter 10 Early Radio and Television Stations in the Permian Basin

Chapter 11 Rileyisms or my Sayings

Chapter 12 Stories written by my Uncle

FOREWORD

Dr. R. Mikel Lemons

(Agriculture and Horsemanship Instructor at Odessa College)

I HAVE KNOWN Mr. Dub Riley for many years. He and his wife Sue were part of the crew that fed a large group of students that came out to the YT Ranch on an educational NRCS Field Day trip each year. I would also see them at Hamburger Night at the American Legion in Odessa, Texas. Sue and I were talking one night and she told me that she had made some good Fig preserves from a big bush that grew in their backyard. I told her that I had made some grape jelly. We traded jars and the fig preserves were wonderful.

Dub would call me at the Odessa College Ranch every now and then to offer magazines that the students could use when writing papers. He has donated to different scholarships at Odessa College and was recently recognized as the oldest living graduate of Odessa College.

Dub is full of oilfield wisdom and has a vast knowledge about country music singers and other facts about the history of Odessa and the oil field. He also tells great stories of his time in the Marine Corps and World War II. He was recently awarded a Marine Corps ring that he is very proud to wear.

After Sue passed away, one night when we were at Hamburger Night at the American Legion. Dub introduced me to his Lady Friend, (Nancy Spano) and told me that they had been friends for a long time. Well a few months later, he and Nancy married.

At Hamburger Night about a year ago, I gave him a book that I had written about Cowboy Philosophy. Dub mentioned that he wanted to write a book. Nancy and I encouraged him and said Let’s get it done, so he purchased an iPad and began to make voice recordings. Nancy is such a sweet lady and she has been a great cheerleader for this project.

My wife and I have become very close friends with both of them. Beside Hamburger Nights, we have gone dancing with them and to many other functions. At Hamburger Nights at the American Legion, it’s always the table that Dub and Nancy sit at that’s the loudest. He always says that we solve the world’s problems when we are waiting on our burgers and I would say that at least we try. From time to time, I would take the recordings from his iPad and put them to type written form to put in this book.

I am still impressed with his knowledge of the history and the people that he crossed paths with. In reading this book, you will learn about the simple life that country folks in west Texas lived back in the 1920’s and beyond before we had all the pleasantries of life that we are used to today. You will also learn about the early oilfield technology and see how it has progressed to the automated oilfields and equipment that we have today. I hope you get as much out of this book as I have in helping Dub get it done.

Chapter 1

THE BEGINNING AND MY FAMILY

THE BEGINNING

I’m going to tell you a story of my life, where it started and a few things that happened along the way, but as I go along, you will find that my family moved about 15 times between when I was born and when I left for the service during World War II. I actually grew up in the farming and ranching industry in West Texas and then came home after the war to have a career with Gulf Oil Company. I served in many capacities during my tenure in the oil patch. We lived in Goldsmith for twelve years when I first started out in the oil field, then moved to West Odessa, then to Midland when I was transferred to the main office for eleven years as the purchasing agent for Gulf and then back to Odessa where I currently reside. As a veteran, I am proud that I was able to serve in the armed forces and am also proud to be a Marine. I initially wanted to title this book Roots, but that title was already taken and then I thought of Ruts because it seemed like my family was always in a rut, but I guess I will just settle for a classier title. I’ll just call it Reflections by W.T. Dub" Riley. Anyway, let me tell you a little about my family and where we came from.

One of the first Riley’s to ever come over here to America was Hugh Riley. He came to New England and settled in Maryland when he was about 24 years old. He lived there about two or three years and then brought his brother over from Europe and settled in what is now Washington DC. He had about a section of land or whatever he could cultivate there. He had a bunch of kids and some of that bunch migrated down to North Carolina. They lived down in that area for about 75 to 100 years. Some of them then moved to Alabama and my grandfather was born near Montgomery Alabama. I don’t know the year, but he was a 14 year old kid during the civil war. He was at the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi where the Yankees tried to starve them out.

My aunt Ellen told me stories about my grandfather and the civil war. My grandfather had four or five brothers there in Alabama, but after the war was over, my grandfather never went back to Alabama. He was in the Siege of Vicksburg with a bunch of Texans and had heard about all the land and frontier, so he came to East Texas after the war and settled in Gatesville. He married a lady from Gatesville and they had three kids. His wife died and he was raising the three kids and so he married his wife’s sister. Her name was Tabitha Ann Franks. She was my grandmother.

Another side note is that my aunt Ellen eventually lived in Roswell, New Mexico. She found an old map that she could not identify or did not know why it had been saved by her mother. I ended up with the map and showed it to several people that tried to figure out what it was saved for. I eventually showed it to the people at the museum in Eden, Texas. They were able to understand it and identified it as land in a part of Bexar County before Concho County was split off of Bexar County. It was probably saved because my grandparents had acquired land in what was then Bexar County, Texas. I donated it to the museum in Eden, Texas. It now hangs on the wall in the museum and has a plate that shows that it was donated by Dub Riley.

So, here is a little more about the Franks. There were a bunch of Franks that lived in Gatesville. One of them was John Franks who owned Franks Meat Market over on the North side of Gatesville. So my grandmother was my grandfather’s second wife, but they got busy and had a bunch of kids. That’s where the Riley’s came from. My Grandmothers dad was named David Richardson Franks. He helped organized Coryell County in 1854. He was the first tax assessor and was later was elected the sheriff. My grandmother was from Arkansas. They were interested in the wide open spaces of Texas and that’s how they ended up here in Texas and in Gatesville for that matter. Most of the Riley’s and the Franks were farmers or even if they worked in town, they farmed on the side.

I might mention that Gatesville is located on the North East side of the Leon River and at times the river gets out of the banks, gets deep and covers up some of the lower areas. We were down there in the RV Park on the banks of the river just south of the Courthouse one time and the river got up and we had to evacuate and RV park and move up at to different place in town because the RV Park that we were staying in was under water in a matter of hours. The river goes on down and empties into Lake Belton at Temple, Texas.

My grandpa eventually bought a section of land just west of Eden, Texas at a little place called Live Oak. He farmed maize and grazed cattle there. My dad was born in 1893 at Live Oak. My grandpa traded that place for 640 acres about six miles north of Millersview, Texas. My grandpa died in 1909 when my dad was about sixteen years old. My granny then traded that for 320 acre farm about one mile north of Millersview. She and her children farmed that for a few years. My dad went to visit his brother out in Arizona and then granny moved into a two acre place in Millersview, Texas. My grandpa Wiley Tom Riley was the first person buried in the cemetery in Millersview. Many of my relatives are buried in Millersview, but there is not much there now. My grandpa’s brand is on display as one of the original settlers and cattlemen of the county.

W.T Riley Brand

MY FAMILY

My Mother and Daddy were married in Duck Creek which is half way between Millersview and Paint Rock, Texas. A lot of those old towns just withered and went away, but the Duck Creek school house is still there. It is a hunt camp now. I remember my mother telling the story that they went off in a horse and buggy. The old horse was named Dasher. I don’t know where they went or what they did. I don’t know much about that part of their lives, but it wasn’t very long until my sister Lucille came along. My mother was only 15 years old when they got married and my dad was 20 or 21.

My mother was the sweetest, most caring person I have ever known. She was the mother of seven children, five girls and two boys. In the fall of the year, when it was cotton picking time, she would pick cotton and often she carried one or two of the babies on the cotton sack as she was picking. Before lunch, she would have to stop picking the cotton, got to the house and prepare lunch and sometimes she would even have to cut wood to get a fire going for cooking. She would boil beans and make cornbread. That was a steady diet in our household. My mother met the demands of a difficult life, but never seemed to complain. She loved the Lord and read her bible every day. Going to church seemed her only joy in life aside from her children. I know she is at peace now and within the Lord she worshipped.

I had four sisters that were older than me. Lucille was the oldest and married Pat Bowen. She was born in a place called Concho, but the highway doesn’t go by it anymore. It is near lake O.H. Ivie. There isn’t much there, but the cemetery now. Oma was the second child and was married to Cooch West. Virginia was the third child and was married to Speck Holder. The fourth child was Bobbi and she married Creed Fisher. I was the fifth child and I married Sue Anduss. Then there were the two younger kids, Ann and then Don, so there were seven of us kids. Don was the only child that was born in a real hospital and was the baby of the family. The rest of us were born at home with the help of neighbors where ever we lived at the time with no doctor to help with birthing.

The Riley Family

So my oldest sister Lucille married a guy named Pat Bowen. His uncle John owned a mattress factory there in San Antonio and also owned a farm down near Dilley, Texas South of Pearsall. So he made a deal with his uncle and lived on the farm near Dilley for several years. They later moved to a farm in Moore, Texas which is about fifty miles south of San Antonio. After a year or two they bought a farm five miles east of Pearsall. They were farming and needed help. We went down there to help on the farm during the summer when I was in my early teens. We grew mostly watermelons and peanuts there.

I also worked for them for two summers after we moved back to Millersview. I was old enough by then to drive the tractor for them. That farm would make two crops a year because the growing season was so long, but plowing up the filed from one crop and preparing to plant another took a tractor driving crew that could work day and night. One person would take the midnight to noon shift and then another would take the noon to midnight shift until we got it all finished and the new crop in the ground.

My next sister named Oma married Cooch West when she was about 15 years old and he was about 21. It was hard to find a job at the time, so they kind of lived off of us most of the time early on. I guess two poor families were better than one. They had two girls. Actually all we had back then was family. Back in those days, we took care of each other. A lot of families lived together from time to time when things were tough.

My other sister Virginia was the next one and when she was about 16 or 17, she left home and went out to Iraan, Texas to work with my aunt Nell. My aunt Nell was married to TJ Griggs. He was a Pipeline Superintendent for Humble Oil Company. She got a job working in a café for a while and then found out about a job up in Goldsmith, Texas working in a boarding house. She went up there and went to work at the boarding house and started dating a handsome young man named Speck Holder.

So Virginia and Speck had a 1939 Ford car when they got married and they came down to see us when we lived down in Moore, Texas. He got to telling me about the oilfield and how good the jobs were. He seemed to me to be a very rich man, because he worked for an oil company and got paid every two weeks. At the time, we did not even hardly see a paycheck or any money that often. I was only about 15 years old at the time, but it excited me. So later on when I got out of the Marines, I headed for Goldsmith, Texas looking for my pot of gold and Speck got me a job with Gulf Oil Company. I worked for them for 35 years in various capacities.

My sister Virginia had a son named Mike became the Golf Coach at Oklahoma State University and eventually became the Athletic Director for Oklahoma State University. I think he recently retired from Oklahoma State University. He built a golf course there in Oklahoma named Karston Creek Golf Course. I guess they still live on the golf course there. His teams won the NCAA golf championship about nine times while he was the coach.

My brother in law was Creed Fisher. He was a driller for Noble Drilling Company. He had been in the Navy and was a Navy Seabee during World War II. He had helped build airfields on many of the islands in the Pacific during the war. When the Navy came in and secured an island during the war, they called in the Navy Seabees to build landing strips for planes. They used metal landing mats that hooked together for their air strip. When they built the one on the isle of Iwo Jima, they were getting shot at all the time. They had been told that the Japanese had all been cleared out but evidently that wasn’t the case, because they were shot at everyday while they were there. Anyway, he came back from the war and went to work for Noble Drilling Company and worked for them until he then retired.

After he retired, he moved back to the Gatesville area to a place on the Leon River called Owl Creek on Lake Belton. Owl Creek was not near any highway and did not even have any paved roads to it. He had a big boat and like to go down Owl Creek to get out on Lake Belton and fish. He had some heart problems because he had smoked all of his life. He wouldn’t quit smoking and finally had a heart attack and died. He was buried in the cemetery on the North side of Gatesville and my sister Bobby was also buried down there when she died.

I guess I’m next and I got married to Sue Anduss. She lived at the Phillips Petroleum camp out just west of Goldsmith. The houses have all been moved from that oilfield camp, but most of the foundations are still there. We had three children. Ron, the oldest was born in 1951. He now lives in Ransom Canyon east of Lubbock, Texas. He owned Riley Geological Consultants and recently retired. Bruce was our second child. He was born in 1953 and lives in Midland, Texas and owns several businesses. Our daughter Deana was born in 1955. She is married to Terry Scott who is a land man for Diamond Back Oil Company.

When Sue and I married, we lived in a trailer house in Goldsmith. A trailer house in those days was more like a camper without a bathroom. It wasn’t much, but we made do. I built a ten by ten bathroom beside it so we could live better and as each of the kids were born, I added more. The parts that I built on eventually became our house. We later sold the old trailer and moved the house to Odessa. I built the house from pay check to pay check,