By Bobby Weaver
I was late getting down to the Rig #8 last Thursday but as soon I got there and my eyes adjusted to the dim interior I spotted all the regulars gathered at a corner table in what appeared to be a somewhat somber mood. I got my usual long neck and joined the crowd, from which not a single word of greeting was offered.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Somebody grunted,“We just got word old “Big Elm” Johnson died last week and we are holding a wake.”
“Who in blazes is “Big Elm” Johnson and how did he get a moniker like that?”
The question seemed to ease the mood at the table a bit as they began to enlighten me with stories about how that as a young geologist in the early days of geophysical exploration he was one of the best doodlebuggers in the country. But the learning curve on the job was pretty steep, which directly related to how he got that unusual name.
Being new at the work and impatient as most young people tend to be, he soon grew upset with the slow work pace of drilling all the shot holes and other activities necessary to get good subsurface readings. It all came to a head one day when they were working on the outskirts of a little crossroads country town and he figured out a way to get a better job done without all the fuss and bother. It was a technique that had not been tried before but he convinced the boss to let him give it a try.
Accordingly, Johnson located a huge elm tree on the edge of town and proceeded to plant a large charge of dynamite in said tree. The theory was that the shockwave from the blast high up in the tree would cover much more territory, which would render unnecessary all that slow preparation work that so bothered him. He was right about the shockwave part!
When the charge went off it so scared livestock as far as three miles away that it was almost a month before the milk cows began giving milk again. The blast broke out every window in town, totally disrupted a prayer meeting down at the First Baptist Church, and awakened a sleeping-on-duty bailiff whose sidearm went off and put a hole in his leg, causing him to sue for loss of livelihood. By the time the lawsuits were settled, the windows replaced, and the remains of the tree given a proper burial, Johnson was known by one and all as “Big Elm” and the name stayed with him for the rest of his life.
Spending 20 years laboring in greasy overalls in the oil patch and doing a hard time stretch collecting oral histories for Texas Tech has provided Bobby Weaver with a wealth of oil field yarns. He can be contacted at
bobby-weaver@cox.net.