January is typically an uneventful month. After the monetary and culinary excesses of December it a time to lie low. The only notable event was Spindletop. More precisely the 100 year anniversary of Spindeltop. What am I talking about?

Even though petroleum has been in use for thousands of years (caulking canoes and impregnating mumies) people became serious about it only in the second half of the 19th century when kerosene lamp was invented. Wells were drilled, oil discovered and fortunes started to be made. However, until January 1901 it was all on a rather small scale, kids stuff. Spindletop was not the first oil well drilled in the world, it was not the first in the US or even in Texas (Corsicana came first). But it was the first BIG TIME well. In the first 24 hours it produced about 100,000 barrels of oil. Today, that would have a street value of about a quarter million dollars. Not bad for one day!

Obviously, if you are a petroleum geologist you should make a pilgrimage to the Spindletop site. After having lived in Texas for a total of 11 years, one of those in Houston, I felt quite guilty about not having taken the time to visit this shrine. So, when I heard that the local citizenry was going to stage a re-enactment to commemorate the 100 anniversary (how do you stage a re-enactment of a blowout???) I took a day of vacation and headed down I10 to Beaumont.

All things considered, it was a rather miserable day. It was cold, windy, drizzling and serious rain clouds were moving in from the west. Luckily, Beaumont lies to the east and so I was able to out-drive the rain. The weather may have been why the turnout was not overwhelming, but I suspect that a more important reason is that oil just is not sexy anymore. It did not matter, the overall small town feel only made the whole event more endearing. In addition to several loads of shivering school children who were bussed in, the local citizenry turnout was beefed up by the Austrian ambassador, president Bush (the elder), secret service personnel, television crews and the ubiquitous Russian secret agent (lower left in the right photo).

The re-enactment was actually fairly good. It is amazing what you can do with a couple of rock concert-type speakers. I could feel the ground trembling under my feet. Hosted by www.Geocities.ws