TALES OF A WESTERN NEW YORK
BOOM TOWN
By Constance Taylor Williams
As I sit here under the canopy of the RV parked atop
Richburg Hill, lean back in my canvas chair and look out over the
valley, I feel very insignificant. It's as if I am one with the trees
and the hills surrounding me. It's wonderfully quiet and peaceful
here on my now-private summit, and so very beautiful. One can
see for miles in three directions. The only activity -aside from
the butterflies bouncing from buttercup to buttercup across the
meadow and the deer flies buzzing over my head -is a tractor
off in a distant valley, silently pulling a hay wagon. Horses in a
field far to the south appear unmoving because of their distance.
I close my eyes and try to recall what it looked like fifty years
ago, when I was a child growing up in that distant valley where
horses now graze.
It seems so long ago that we lived in Allentown and yet, not long ago at all... ...
As a little girl I was fascinated by the constant activity on the
hillsides near where I now sit in near-silent solitude. There were
always people -men, mostly. The hills for miles around were
peppered with powerhouses from which rod lines protruded in
several directions. They bounced up and down as they tugged
at the pumping jacks which brought the "Pennsylvania crude"
nearer the surface so it could flow through pipes to collection
tanks.
I always sort of resented the term "Pennsylvania crude." We
were New Yorkers! Pennsylvania was all the way the other side
of Alma, where my Dad and both of his parents were born and
various aunts, uncles and cousins by the dozens still lived.
Great Grandpa Julius Caesar Quick's big Victorian house with its
wrap-around porches and beautiful, ornate chestnut woodwork
was built at the very top of Alma Hill and I'm told it was the
site of many a "shindig" on the Fourth of July for at least two
generations... ...people came from miles around to play “town
team” baseball and sample the homemade ice cream which
Grandma Agnes made using packing ice from the bear cave in
the woods. The children were allowed to take turns cranking the
ice cream machine by hand [and considered it a privilege]
The oil from the leases which my father worked was stored
in the tanks until "tankers" (trucks) came to pick it up and
transport it to the refinery seven or so miles away in Wellsville.
At the foot of Norton Summit -on what is still called Yaeger
Road for a family long gone -was a tank farm, from which oil
from other leases was collected and pumped through pipelines
directly to the refinery.
The pressure plant, where Grandpa Taylor spent part of
each day -except Sunday when he strictly kept the Sabbath -
polishing equipment until it shone, contained powerful machines
which were seldom idle. The "BOOM, boom, boom, boom,
BOOM, boom, boom, boom" which the engines emitted,
continued day and night. My grandparents lived next door to the
pressure plant on Phillips Hill and my brother and I loved to stay
overnight at their house. We'd sleep on the pulled-out studio
couch in the parlor, under Grandma's homemade scrap quilts,
and be lulled to sleep by the rhythmic booming from the
pressure plant.
Three generations of men in my father's family were
drillers and pumpers, although Dad was a "roust-about" and a
"tool dresser" as a young adult. Each day the pumpers would
start the noisy gas engines in the powerhouses, walk the miles
of rod line trails and periodically make their way to a collection
tank, where they would climb to the top, open the hatch and
measure the depth of the thick black liquid within. One had to
take a deep breath of fresh air before opening the hatch as it
was easy to be overcome by fumes. Occasionally the gas or oil
would catch fire and the volunteer firemen would have to come
and put it out. (Most of the men in town were volunteer firemen. )
Once I asked my grandmother why Grandpa's feet were so
peculiar... ..he wore specially-made black shoes and his toes
"weren't right." She told me that nobody talked about it
anymore, but that Grandpa had to jump from the top of a big
tank one day, as the oil and gas under him had caught fire. I
thought that sounded exciting! Little did I realize at the time
how Grandpa must have suffered that day and for many days
thereafter as he did his work.
It seems to me that Grandpa always carried
something over his shoulder as he climbed the hill to the
powerhouse -sometimes a huge pipe wrench, but more often a
scythe. The scythe served more than one purpose. It was used
mostly to keep the grass and weeds trimmed under the rod lines
and around the powerhouses; it also served as a weapon if one
of the "spotted adders," which often sunned themselves around
the engines' exhaust pipes, decided to be aggressive. {Those
spotted adders were bad news! Sometimes the boys would
climb up the hill behind the Allentown School during lunch
recess, catch one, and chase the screaming girls with it until a
teacher or Nate {Swarthout) or Lyle {Ellsworth), our school
"janitors" (they were more than that!) came to the rescue. ...(but that's another story!)
Between our house on Allen Street and our neighbors' was a
pumping jack, which squeakily pumped oil from morning until
night. There were jacks everywhere in our town. There was
even one in the middle of the school's baseball diamond,
surrounded by a picket fence. There were special rules which
applied if anyone had the good fortune ( or misfortune, if on the
defending team) of hitting the ball inside the fence. The batter
was only allowed to go as far as second base, while one of the
poor unfortunates in the field climbed the fence and retrieved
the oily ball.
Drilling rigs -sometimes referred to as "standards" or
"derricks" -dotted the hillside between the powerhouses. A rig
was typically 24 feet across at it’s base, tapering considerably at
the top, and 72 feet high. (I checked this out with my Dad!)
Drilling was dangerous and hard work, especially so in the
winter. I've heard Dad tell about the daily climb up one of the
steep slopes near our house through chest-deep snow, to the
rig where he would begin the midnight 'til eight shift. He would
dry out his frozen clothing in the warmth of the rig as he
worked. In those days he was a "tool-dresser" -low man in the
chain of command. One of his jobs was to keep the bits
hammered out so that a sharp one was always ready. Shouting
above the clang on the metal and the noise of the engine, the
driller would, from time to time demand a change of bits,
whereupon the string of pipe would be raised from the drilling
hole, the bit changed, and the operation continued. Occasionally
the cables would break or some other calamity would arise which
would necessitate having one of the men climb the 72 feet to
the top of the rig to make the necessary repairs. During freezing
western New York winters, this was an extremely dangerous
task, but Dad apparently never had a major catastrophy -at
least not any that he told us about! He said each man was
allowed only one such catastrophy, and he didn't want to use up
his allotment.
I recall once when curiosity overcame my fear of punishment
and I bravely ventured inside a rig when Dad was drilling. It was
incredibly dirty and noisy, as the metal bit was pounded deeper
and deeper into the ground in search of the oil. From time to
time as the hole filled with water, the "tools" would be pulled up
and out, swung aside, and a bailer attached. The bailer would
then be lowered down into the hole, allowed to fill with "sand
pumpings," again raised to the surface, swung outside and
dumped on the ground. The sand pumpings were a smelly
mixture of oil, clay, sand and water and usually were a grayish
color. As children we loved to play in the sand pumpings on the
hill behind Clevelands' house if we could do so undetected. We
made mud pies and even pottery-like baskets and bowls, which
we'd hide somewhere so they'd bake in the sun. I recently
talked about my early potter's experience with a petroleum
engineer acquaintance who worked for the New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation. He exclaimed, in a
horrified voice, "My gosh! Imagine the PCB exposure you all
must have had!" Then I told him about my great grandfather,
who worked all of his life in the oil fields and only retired from
pumping at age 92 because his eyesight was starting to get a
little fuzzy and he was finding it somewhat difficult to accurately
read the pressure gauges. Perhaps Great Grandpa John would
have lived longer had he not been exposed to all of those
carcinogens?!
There were other dangerous occupations in the oil
fields, such as that of the "shooters," whose job it was to bring in
the nitroglycerin. When a good well was drilled, a hole would be
"shot" by lowering the nitro down into the hole and setting it off.
The resulting explosion (which ideally wouldn't occur until the
exactly planned moment) would create a pocket at the base of
the hole, which would allow for much easier extraction.
Needless to say, all shootings didn't go as planned, and lives
were frequently snuffed out in accidents involving nitroglycerine.
Before oil was discovered in the area in the late 1800's,
logging and farming were the main sources of livelihood in
Allegany County and its environs. Petroleum production here
reached its peak between 1920 and 1940, when it was
determined that water could be pumped into the wells, forcing
the natural gas to exert pressure which would force the oil into
underground "pools," from which it could more easily be
pumped. This new "water flooding" practice resulted in a
gigantic boom in oil production. One lease in the area produced
over 1,000 barrels a day. It is said that wells were located
almost every 300 feet (alternating lines of water wells and oil
wells) over an area which extended for approximately ten miles
in each direction.
Our town in the valley was referred to as a “boom town” as I
was growing up. As a child I thought the term was a reference
to the sounds made by the powerhouses and pressure plants.
There were several general stores in town, one owned by my
maternal grandparents) a multitude of houses which varied in
size and elegance, pipeline supply stores, saloons, and even an
opera house. The small wooden schoolhouse rapidly filled to
capacity and was replaced during the 1930s with a good sized
two-story brick edifice with a large, well-equipped
gymnasium/auditorium and a library. It was financed entirely by
the villagers' oil money on a pay-as-you-go basis -no
government funding! It remains today, with its big, old cast iron
school bell still intact. Sadly, however, it is no longer used as a
school, the last graduating class being in 1959. Today the
children ride the school bus to Scio, a few miles away, where
they sit in much larger classes and are taught by teachers who
probably don't know a whole lot about drilling except what
they've heard from their grandparents, or perhaps what they've
read.
Once each June those who graduated from, or attended, the
brick school have a potluck supper in the basement of the Allentown
United Methodist Church. They look at pictures and talk about the days
when the creek was so full of oil that no self-respecting fish
would be caught dead in it and when Allentown had a reputation
for being a "real stinker."(Crude oil is rather odiferous!) Mostly,
though, they reminisce about the days of the deer and the
derricks. They talk, gratefully, about the days -not so long ago -
when nearly everyone in town knew your name, your parents,
what instrument you played in the school band which trekked up
the hill to the cemetery every Memorial Day, and probably the
month of your birthday. One couldn't misbehave too badly at
school or on the way home because chances were great that
Mom would already have had a report by the time you got there!
I lean back in the chair and pick up the binoculars. In the
distance I can make out two children, running toward a pond
behind a red barn. One is dragging what appears to be a
shovel, the other a homemade net. They're probably hoping to
catch some pollywogs in the pond.
Maybe they'll even shape some bowls out of the muddy clay soil.
Some things never change!
Copyright ©2003 Constance Taylor Williams
(Constance Taylor Williams was born & raised in Allentown,NY. She has served actively in many Organizations and currently holds the office of Chaplain, NYS D.A.R. -- What's more, I am proud she's my sister and I wish she would write more articles like this one. 2005/rt/Webmaster)