Free That Night at the Palace by L.D. Watson Page B

find yourself picking up and moving on to the next lease. Once, he recalled, they dropped fifty wells before hitting pay dirt, but it was worth it. That strike was one of the biggest since the old days when Kilgore had pump-jacks on the school playground. Of course, Murdock didn’t get a piece of it. He was a lowly roughneck in those days. He was lead-man on that rig, which was quite an honor since he was barely out of his teens, but he was a roughneck nonetheless, which meant that all he got were his simple wages. Unlike the company owners, landowners, leaseholders, and bankers who became millionaires off that one hole, he did the labor and only got a day’s pay.
    It was a long hard road, but Murdock went from being a roughneck to manager of a region that covered a territory larger than the state of Rhode Island. As such, he could now get a piece of every hole drilled. Mind you, it was a very small piece of the pie, but in four or five years he’d retire quite comfortably. More importantly, Garvis was happy that he no longer came home smelling of sweat and crude. For over twenty years Murdock sank pipe, a job that had taken its toll on his back and had put a lot of good men in an early grave. Those days were over. Murdock rarely drew a bead of sweat these days. His white shirt was always crisply pressed, and his tie was never loose. And, thanks to Monroe’s Tailor Shop and Dry Cleaners, his suits were always clean and freshly creased, even in the brutal August heat. It didn’t hurt, of course, that he could now afford to drive a 1940 Cadillac complete with the miracle of weather-conditioning.
    The Caddy was about the only luxury Murdock allowed himself. He had the unimaginable luck to stumble on it while in Houston for a manager’s meeting. It was a rare find. Murdock stopped in the Cadillac dealership because his old Ford spent more time being fixed than rolling. At least that’s how it seemed to Murdock. He really didn’t want a Cadillac. A Chevrolet or Buick would have suited him just fine, but Garvis insisted he needed an automobile that suited his station. Murdock didn’t care in the least about his “station,” but when he spotted the red Cadillac LaSalle through the showroom window, for some reason that now escaped his memory, he pulled the old Ford over and walked in.
    The LaSalle, of course, was absolutely ridiculous and without question the worst possible automobile to use driving to and from oil fields. It was bright red with a shine you could comb your hair in and had a chromium hood ornament that looked like a shiny buck-naked angel in flight. After only five minutes in the dealership, Murdock came to his senses and started to walk out when the salesman mentioned those two magic words - “weather-conditioning.” According to the salesman, the automobile had been ordered straight from the factory for a rich oilman, but his wife hated the color and thus he refused to take delivery. Apparently, Cadillac red was not a deep enough tone to suit her sensibilities. That same salesman went on to say that this was the only Cadillac in all of Texas with weather-conditioning, a fact which Murdock Rose knew to be wholly untrue. Three of the board members of Powhatan Oil drove Cadillacs, and all three had weather-conditioning, a fact that Murdock did not hesitate to make known. Furthermore, it made no small commotion in the showroom when he proclaimed he was not about to purchase an automobile from a bold-faced liar.
    He was back in his Ford with the motor running when the sales-manager, along with the dealership owner, convinced him to come back in and hear the apology from the salesman and re-consider buying the LaSalle. Murdock, by that point, had long since made up his mind that he wasn’t going to drive around East Texas in a hot automobile as long as one with weather-conditioning was sitting there available to him. His calling the salesman a liar simply served to point out to the salesman, his sales