Latest / The Jeff Crilley Show / Julie DeWees Sparks, Author of Under Texas Skies | The Jeff Crilley Show
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- Well, I'm so excited about this next episode because I'm fascinated with the rich Texas history of oil. We're gonna be talking to the author of this new book. It's called Under Texas Skies. The great Julie DeWees Sparks is in the studio. Her journey just ahead. Many are predicting that the worst is yet to come, which is unfortunate, said one person here. Until now, they've enjoyed the reputation of being the nation's icebox. Watched a burglar in his home this morning by webcam. As a journalist of over twenty five years, stories are what make my world turn. Reporting live from The Dallas Newsroom tonight, Jeff Crilley, Fox four news. But in 2008, I took the jump from my familiar life and started a PR firm from my home. We're talking about anyone with a camcorder like the one I'm using becomes a television network. We started slowly growing the company, and we now have over a 100 clients. And we've branched into the world of live digital broadcasting. I now own eight different TV studios and have a huge team. And the stories that I now get to share are sometimes the most important of my life. Life has a funny way of coming around full circle. This is the Jeff Crilley Show. In nineteen o one, Spindletop in Texas was forever changed. There aren't many books out there like my next guest wrote. It's called Under Texas Skies, Julie DeWees Sparks is in the studio. Thank you so much for coming on the Well, you for having me, I'm excited to be here. Alright, and I'm not overstating that, in nineteen o one when oil was discovered, it did change the state forever. Oil changed the world. It changed the world, yes. Because the internal combustion engine had already been invented, but it was like a toy. It was something fun to play with. And when spindle top came in and oil became so abundant, all of a sudden people like Henry Ford, whose car all of a sudden became economically feasible. Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about your background, because you've you've been in the oil and gas industry for many years. Yes, I have. I graduated from LSU and I moved to Houston, and didn't really expect to get into the oil business, but first job interview I had was with Getty Oil Company, and it was a fantastic company. I learned so much, I had a number of great mentors, and I stayed in the oil business for forty years. Wow. Alright, tell me about the eighties. Nineteen eighties. We all remember that, that was a rough time. Yeah, it really was. I mean, that was my first job and I was young and I was seeing all these people around me that were getting laid off and prices were, you know, crashing and it was just a it was a very scary time, but I was very lucky I didn't get laid off in the eighties and just kept on moving along. And got another job 1986 and like I said, I just kept going. I loved it. Mhmm. It's a good good industry. Beautiful. We're gonna pull up your website. You got an amazing domain name, texas1836.org and that was when Texas separated from Mexico. Right. They won their independence. Okay. So, when people go out and read your book and I encourage everybody to go buy it and we're gonna give you a website in a minute to to look and and order it. What are some things you want people to take away from the book? Well, first of all, it is not a technical book and it's not political. I somebody read it and they actually thought I was an engineer, I'm not. But I spent all of my time working with engineers and geologists and geophysicists, I learned a lot. And so it has a lot of industry insights into the oil industry, but I also touch on a lot of Texas history and bring that into the book. And as I was writing writing about all these big oil discoveries, the ranching aspect just had to be the story had to be told. So many big oil fields were found on ranches, and I found that the ranching stories were every bit as good, if not better than some of the wildcat stories. Alright. Do a little name dropping, like some of the very famous Texas oil families are featured in the book. Yes. Name a few of Oh, well, Sid Richardson was one of my favorites, and his fortune is what started the Bass Brothers with their money. Clint Murchison was one of his best friends, and they both were from Athens, Texas. Monty Moncrief was a big Fort Worth oil man. And of course, the Hunts. When I was a little girl, my dad when we had people come to visit, my dad would always drive us around White Rock Lake Oh. To go see the HL Hunt mansion. It was on everybody's stop. But then you've got Hal Booty, a big guy down in Houston, and Glen McCarthy. Wow. A lot of fun. He built the Shamrock Hotel, and he and Hal Booty were partners at one point in time. Wait. And you mentioned something before the show, Haywood? Haywood. That was a family of vaudeville, those four brothers that were in the vaudeville circuit, although they like to say that they weren't exactly vaudeville because they didn't tell dirty jokes. But they were musicians and they played all across The United States. They were booked from in the late eighteen nineties. They were in Colorado and the youngest one, Scott Haywood, started seeing a little bit of oil business there. By the time they got to California, he decided that he was gonna leave the musician business in music and get into oil. So he started working in the oil fields in in Bakersfield and learning the business. One morning, he was opening his newspaper in his hotel in San Francisco, blasted across the headlines with spindle top was discovered in Texas. It was about five or six days after the oil had come in. He immediately grabbed his suitcase, wired his brother in Chicago and said, meet me in Beaumont, Texas, we're That's gonna make some a great story. It was fun. Let's go ahead and show the book cover off of off of her website. Beautiful illustration. What what are we looking at? What's that picture? That is the Santa Rita well number two, which is the discovery well for the Permian Basin. And it's it's a huge well to be talking about because the Permian Basin is still one of the largest oil producing basins in the world. Incredible. And this was in 1923. Well, have you always been kind of a history buff? Yes. I've always read books and I loved historical fiction as a as a child. And then when I met my husband, he is a native born Texan. I can't say that I am. But his love of Texas history and his father had a love of Texas history, you just can't help but get infected by it. And we would go to places like Goliad, and of course the Alamo, and see some of these places and learn the stories, it's a big piece of my life. And let's talk more about the process of writing the book, because you do your homework and you know, you you hear these famous names, but when you do the research, were there some surprises, things that you didn't know? Well, I should probably tell the story, but I remember when I first started doing some research on the Hunt family, and I found out that H. L. Hunt was a bigamist. And I called up my dad who is also in the oil industry, and I said, daddy, you never told me that H. L. Hunt was a bigamist. And he said, well, you were six years old when we moved to Dallas. It's probably not the conversation that we would have had. But that's, I mean, that was a surprise. Sure. But my husband has a library at home and he inherited a lot of the books from his father too and he's added to them. And his collection is Texas history, oil field history, and ranching history. And it was always just a room that you know was neat and you know walked But when I started getting interested in writing the book, then I started looking at what was in his library. And my initial research was at home, just reading books from his library, making notes and studying on it. And that's what got me started. And your timing couldn't be more perfect because one of the best shows on TV right now is Landman. Landman. Yes. And then your book comes out. I'm fascinated with those those pioneer wire wild wildcatters because they were risk takers, weren't they? Were huge risk takers. Monty Moncrief who is loosely the basis for MTEX oil, Moncrief oil, and Monty, the character John Hamm plays in Landman, is a Fort Worth oil man. Moncrief drilled one of the discovery wells for the East Texas oil field. It was the discovery well for Gregg County. He drilled something like 29 dry holes before he drilled in East Texas. So Sid Richardson went through a downspot. He had was very successful, and then he went through a a real downturn. He was borrowing money from friends. And so, these guys, they put all their risk in into these things. I'm not a risk taker and I feel like if I had drilled 29 dry holes, I probably would have quit. Yeah. But they didn't. Alright, we have about two minutes left, so why don't you look into the camera on the left and talk to the viewer about why, even if they are the least interested in Texas history and the oil industry, why they might wanna purchase your book. I think that the stories that are told here are some I know there's people in this book that you've never heard of before. And just the grit and the energy that they had because the East Texas oil field was discovered in 1930. That was the height of the depression. And when the East Texas oil field was discovered, it was a huge discovery. Everybody came to East Texas. They wanted a piece of it because there was nothing in the rest of the country, and there was something here. And so you've seen pictures of Kilgore with all the oil rigs back to back to back, you know, side by side. It gave hope to people. Yes, the guys were doing it to make money. They wanted to be rich. But the best part of it is so many of them that did make money were very philanthropic, and they built our universities. We've got libraries, museums, hospitals. So many of them turned their good fortune around and shared it with the rest of the state. Plus the oil revenue that the State Of Texas gets keeps us from having a income tax, individual income tax for the State, which is huge. Thank you so much for sharing your heart and your wisdom and I urge everyone to go buy this book. We're gonna end with the website where you can purchase it or you can go to Amazon. It's texas1836.org. The great Julie DeWees Sparks. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. That's it for now. We'll see you next time.