(Wireline 20) I go back to the Central Coast of California.

Schlumberger transferred me from Ventura to Santa Maria in 1955. There was a one truck station at Santa Maria. This was my fourth sojourn in this area. I spent six months at Camp Cooke (Lompoc) taking Army Basic Training in 1943. I spent six months at Camp San Luis Obispo (San Luis Obispo) taking amphibious training in 1944. I spent four years going to Cal Poly (San Luis Obispo) from 1946 to 1950. Now I was back in the area in Santa Maria. I was to spend about a year and a half in Santa Maria before being transferred to Newhall, California.

The staff at the Schlumberger Santa Maria Station consisted of three operators and myself. I typed the final log headings and made the finished prints. Handled the mail to Houston, etc. I had an IBM fancy typewriter and a print machine. Of course I went to wells and ran logs.

To mark the logging cable on the truck we had to go down to the Ventura District shop. The line had magnetic marks every one hundred feet and was marked once a month or sooner. One month the crew and I went down to Los Angeles and saw the Roller Derby. Do they still have Roller Derby?

Almost all depths in well records refer to the depth as recorded on the electric log. You must realize how important accurate wireline measurements are. We were very careful putting the marks on our line. I can remember hours of holding one end of a hundred foot tape and marking the cable while keeping a certain tension on the tape.

Union Oil Company of California was my biggest customer. I can remember the Union Oil man telling me that if the price for their crude oil (very heavy, very cheap) would go to $4.50 a barrel that they would drill more wells. I remember writing this in a letter to my boss.

I was at a well in the Cat Canyon Field. There was a puddle of heavy oil near the rig. Some oil in the Cat Canyon Field is as heavy as 6 degrees API. The roughnecks rolled up the puddle and put the oil in the back of a pick up to remove it from the area. That is heavy oil!

One time we rigged up to log a well on the beach at Guadalupe, we were so close to the ocean that the surf was breaking at our front wheels!