Pinned Post
Guess What THIS Oily Thing Is...
...hanging in this grand old mesquite tree in South Texas. The only hint is, it's very old, like me...and the mesquite tree. Trying to cut a limb off this old girl and you would burn three new Stihl chain saw chains into slick wire.
If you are right, you get a chicken fried steak with cream gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, biscuits, with sweet tea, at a joint in the Flatonia area whose business is picking back up after customers found a large chicken snake in the hallway leading to the bathrooms. After a local Bohemian lady beat it with a broom it was removed and let loose out the back door, confused but not harmed. No worries on the snake, or the cafe. The cream gravy is to die for.
Conway, damn it, I got you this time. I think.
Thank you, Paul. I appreciate you participating.
Before the 50's most oil wells in the US were drilled with standard, iron derricks. The drawworks were skid mounted and when the well was completed as a producer the draw works were moved off to another well, the standard derrick remained. If the well then went on artifical lift a crank or counter balance pumping unit was bulit under the standard derrick.
When a workover was required on the well and simple trucked mounted drawworks (big winch with 1 inch wire line cable) was backed into the well, the lines strung through the crown of the derrrick at the top and the well was pulled, just like a portable workover rig but no derrick, or mast, or pole. Tubing was stood back in the standard derrick, more or less just leaned into a corner...the derrick man stood on a 2 x 12 inch board.
This hanging in the tree is a sucker rod basket, or sort of carousel that was pulled up with the draworks, chained off to the top of the standard derrick and the derrickman stood a 2 x 12 board and hung each rod off in the separate chains dangling from the top. At the end of each chain you can see a hanger where the square pin of a sucker rod could be droped in and pulled back out. When all the rods were pulled they hung from this basked in a sort of perfect circle that could be pulled back out of the way and tied off on a derrick leg.
I have searched high and low for a picture of this basked full of rods hanging from a standard derrick but have not been able to find one. This particular basket was found lying in the dirt in an on old Humble Oil and Refining location in Bastrop County, on the famous Hilbig Serpentine plug, cir. 1935. The last standard derrick from this field was removed in the late 1970s.