Tells of the lives of early-day oil field families in Texas boomtowns.

Snuggle up to your loved ones and say goodnight to the oil patch! As the sun goes down, join the car ride around the oilfield - from computer code to lease road - as it gets ready to call it a night. A story for all ages, this oilfield picture book is sure to leave you smiling!

Daddy is a busy man, and he has to work away a lot on an oil rig. When he goes away he misses Mummy and his sons. Follow Daddy's adventures as he travels to the oil rig, by planes, helicopters and boats! Throughout all this, he still keeps in contact with his family. Luckily, Daddy isn't away for too long and the family count down the days until they can see him again! Andrew Douglas has written this book for any other children whose parents work away from home. He wanted his own children to know that he still thinks of them whilst he's away, and hopes that other children (and parents!) are comforted by his story.

A wall that was five feet high and built of concrete, rock, and mortar split Crane, Texas, in half more than a half century ago—with blacks on one side and whites on the other. Evelyn Rossler Stroder, a longtime teacher, gave little thought to the wall as she ran teacher errands to the former Bethune School for blacks, which in the late 1960s became the Bethune Annex to the Crane school system. In this history, she explores the origins of the wall, the community’s recollection of it, and how it symbolized the ugliness of racial segregation. She also examines the consequences of separating the school systems, swimming pools, movie theaters, and most every facet of life in the small oil field community. The story also celebrates how sports brought the two communities together, beginning with the Bethune basketball team, which had won three state championships in their conference of all-black schools, coming together with their new, white classmates in 1965. The integrated team brought Crane all the way to the state finals. Discover how sports helped a small West Texas town move forward in this inspiring tale about The Wall That Failed.

"Contextualizes and analyzes the key energy transitions in U.S. history and the central importance of energy production and consumption on the American environment and in American culture and politics"--

Carol Mogensen begins a chronicle of her nomadic life by describing her family's wandering from one Texas oil boom town to another during the 1940s. These wanderings over the dry Texas plains instilled in her a thirst for adventure and led to living in Puerto Rico and, ultimately, on a small island in Alaska. She titles her book Riffraff as that is the way many residents of the small Texas farming communities whee cotton fields sat stop oil fields viewed the influx of nomadic oilfield workers into their communities. Although some may consider her early years a hard scrabble existence, she describes a childhood of being led into mischief by an older brother with humor. Other stories describe the experience of being the first woman to parachute with Sky Divers in Potter County in 1960, a car trip through Mexico in 1961 with her college roommate, an unpleasant incident at the notorious Jack Ruby's nightclub in Dallas, the pathos of loss of a loved one to suicide, and starting a new life with a new love in southeast Alaska, delivering supplies to remote island locations.