A few years ago, I shared a sketch that my father had made of a Victorian house in 1976.

Well, now I’ve come across another one…this time an oil field scene that seems to take place in the 1930s East Texas oil boom. Or at least that’s how I imagine it. Sketched in 1978, we had just moved from our South Texas roots to East Texas where my father was himself working in the oil industry. I wasn’t even three years old at the time, so my memories of those first years in Tyler are just brief flashes of ethereal images…an Allied Moving truck, the gross green shag carpet (quickly-replaced) at our new house, seeing snow for the first time when East Texas got hit with a few inches.

But I do remember my dad working in the oil fields. He’d be gone late at night, called out to a well to do…something? Honestly, I don’t really know what he did, but I do remember him driving an ugly yellow Baroid pickup truck with a small crane mounted on the bed. I feel like the term “mud engineer” was thrown around a lot.

At any rate, at some point in 1978, he sat down and sketched out this scene.