Rocknocker: A Geologist’s Memoir. George Devries Klein
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Meyers, and a tech), a regional geologist (John Rogers), Jim Westphal (geophysicist) and a petroleum engineer. Also present was Jimmy Johnson, the Vice President of Exploration Research. Jimmy was a geophysicist. Bernie Rolfe reported to him as manager of geological research. The meeting was chaired by George Fanshaw, president of the lab, and included another Vice President who was an engineer.
Fanshaw opened the meeting to announce that the lab would handle all in-house training. We had a month to get ready for the first course. Assignments were given and because I had just arrived, Fanshaw asked if I could prepare a presentation. I offered to give a two-hour talk on the application of sedimentary structures to determining environments of deposition. Fanshaw commented that this would be new and encouraged me to put it together
Afterwards, Bernie and Robbie and I went to Bernie’s office. They assigned me to work on the reservoir sedimentology of the Minnelusa Formation (Permian) of eastern Wyoming and western North Dakota. At Sinclair Research, most project work was contract work for the operations division. The Casper, WY, office requested this project and funded it. I was the lead geologist and would coordinate with Chuck Tenney in Casper. During the previous summer, Chuck, Robbie, and John Rogers collected samples and thin sections were cut. I was first to complete a petrographic study, point counting all four hundred thin sections (all 400 samples were quartz arenites as per Bob Folk’s classification). Bernie and I were to fly to Casper in late October to meet Tenney and do reconnaissance field work, because I also was scheduled to give a paper at the GSA in Denver beforehand. I was to return next summer to continue detailed field work.
Bernie (BS CUNY; PhD Penn State; clay mineralogy; Cities Services Research, Sinclair Research, Consultant) then brought up something else. He explained Robbie did not have a PhD and asked if it would be a problem for me to have Robbie as my supervisor. I explained that Robbie had more experience in the oil industry than me. Robbie and I agreed he would train me about the oil business and I would be his resource person in areas where he wanted more expertise.
Bernie was a tough individual. He grew up in the streets of New York City and was drafted into the US Army. He saw action in the Battle of Bulge and survived without injury. The GI Bill provided him with the opportunity to receive a university education and achieve a better life. However, the hard street side occasionally flared and one had to be careful with him. He also liked calling me “kid” because I was the youngest of the professional research staff.
Sinclair Research’s facilities were located on the northwest side of Tulsa in the old Pan Am Research Lab across the street from the Carter Oil Research Lab. When Pan Am built a new lab in South Tulsa, they tried to sell the old lab but no buyer was forthcoming. Pan Am finally donated it to the University of Tulsa who rented the space to Sinclair. We were located in four buildings, an administrative building with a small library, a core storage building, a maintenance building for trucks and equipment, and a lab building. My office was in the lab building.
My office served another function. It was where the only coffee pot in the lab building was located. There was no refrigerator. Only black coffee was available. When tasting my first cup, I discovered its unique taste. It was Luzianne Chicory coffee. When Jake, Robbie, Jimmy Johnson, and John Rogers were working in Louisiana on geophysical crews they acquired a taste for it. They assured me that I would too.
I spent two nights at a nearby motel and searched for a furnished apartment. After finding one and moving in, I returned the car to the rental agency and had no car. Jacobsen lived nearby and picked me up every morning and took me home at night. Grocery stores were in walking distance so I could manage until I bought a car.
After receiving my first paycheck and opening a local bank account, I bought a 1954 Ford station wagon. My bank provided a loan. I planned to camp out on weekends if I wanted to see something different and used it to do some extracurricular field work in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma that fall.
Slowly, I began work on the Minnelusa and prepared my two-hour lecture for their October short course. We also offered the course in November and December. The October course was for regional managers and Sinclair housed them at a motel with its own private club and a conference room. In Oklahoma, the only way to buy liquor was from a state store and drink at home or be a member of a private club. The motel provided club membership for its guests and during the training sessions, for Sinclair instructors.
Bernie suggested I stay each evening and become better acquainted with the regional managers, even joining them for dinner. That enlarged my network into the company. I also obtained a close-up view of what happened to career geologists at Sinclair, how it influenced their lives, their attitudes, their politics, and their morale. It was a mixed picture.
I presented my lecture the first afternoon of the course. During the middle of it, an older gentleman appeared at the door and Bernie went outside the room to talk with him. I continued and they returned. During the discussion period, that visitor asked me questions, most of which I answered without difficulty. When discussion was over, Bernie came to the podium and said,
“Thank you George. By now you know we have a surprise visitor, Fred Busch, Sinclair’s Chief Geologist. Fred, would you care to say a few words?”
The older gentleman who arrived in the middle of my lecture was Fred Busch. He made the usual remarks about the importance of the new training programs at Sinclair and even said that “. . given what I heard so far from George Klein, this program is off to a strong start.”
Busch stayed the rest of the afternoon and invited me for a drink so we could get better acquainted along with some of the other participants. Bernie took me aside and told me that normally, he would have interrupted so Busch could give a pep talk but Busch insisted on hearing what I had to say first. In the corporate world, breaks like this seldom come in a lifetime, let alone during the first month on the job.
However, I observed a sobering side-show. While having a drink with Busch, Rolfe and some of the others, I noticed three attractively dressed women in their late twenties at the bar. They were having drinks with different patrons and now and then, snuck off to the patron’s motel room. One didn’t have to think hard about what was going on. Underneath America’s bible-belt family town, there was, indeed, a dark side.
I also joined the Tulsa Geological Society and attended most dinner and luncheon meetings. Consequently, I met a lot of well-known geologists in Tulsa and reconnected with Gerry Friedman (BSc Imperial College, University of London, PhD, Columbia; sedimentary petrology; Univ. of Cincinnati, Uranium Consultant, Pan Am Research, RPI, CUNY, Northeast Science Foundation) and Harry Werner (PhD, Syracuse, petroleum geology; Pan Am Research, University of Pittsburgh) at Pan Am Research. They apologized for not arranging a plant trip and explained that when A. F. Frederickson was fired, all hiring stopped. Frederickson found a new job as head of the department of geology at the University of Pittsburgh. I developed a lifelong friendship with Gerry Friedman and his family.
I attended GSA in late October and presented a paper on Triassic sandstone petrology challenging the paradigms of tectonic associations and sandstone petrography. The paper was scheduled in a general session and I was the second speaker. The speaker before me was Larry Sloss who presented a paper on “Cratonic Sequences.” The room was packed. When I reached the podium to make my presentation, the room was half full. Instantaneously, I resolved to give the best talk I was capable of presenting and make sure I never spoke to a half-full room again. Later, I met Sloss in the halls who apologized for leaving and said he heard I gave a great paper.
Bernie and I met at the Denver Airport and flew to Casper, WY via Cheyenne, WY, the first stop and then Laramie, WY. We flew over the “gangplank” as the ground rose to meet us. We arrived in Casper and were met by Chuck Tenney. It was cold, snow was falling and we went to the Sinclair office where Bernie met everyone and introduced me.
After meeting in Chuck’s office reviewing maps, cross-sections and Chuck’s perspectives of the project goals, we drove to Beulah, WY to stay at “Ranch A” a dude ranch. We arrived on October 31 for dinner. The place had many hunters from Minnesota, Nevada, and elsewhere. Some hunters also brought along their girlfriends or mistresses (not sure which). Bernie commented over drinks that “they’ll shoot poorly with their rifles