Reflections of My Life by JL Byars – page 25

Later the boys and I decided we would like to try our hand at oil field jobs so we sold the garage.  I worked on cable tool rigs and drove trucks for Pat Moran, who was married to Doris’ Aunt Ava.  They sold us a small “shotgun” house just east of their home.  We now had Jean, so Kay had two little sisters!!

I worked on a lot of rigs in the Sharon Ridge field and later on rotary rigs of G.S. Taylor.  When the drilling slacked off I went to work as a carpenter and helped build an oil field camp southwest of Snyder. 

About this time I was offered a lease-pumping job with Lemay Oil Company out of St. Louis, Missouri.  The lease was between Ira and Dunn near the Colorado River.  I pumped for them and for Midland Oil for the next 15 years and worked on rigs at the same time – with the help of Doris and the girls.  In 1956 we had our fourth daughter, Connie and five years later, our son Jimmy was born.  The older girls were a lot of help taking care of him and Connie.  All five of our children attended all 12 grades and graduated from Ira School.  In the early 1960’s we owned and operated Ira Oil Well Service.  We had pulling units and water hauling trucks.

 In 1960 we built a four-bedroom house just west of the school and we lived there 37 years.  I went to work as maintenance man and bus driver at Ira School in 1968 and worked there until I retired in 1978.  Doris retired from the museum at Western Texas College in 1986.  We continued to see after her mother, Exa Grant, who lived next door to us.  She later was a patient on Long Term Care, 4th Floor, Cogdell Memorial Hospital for 3 years until she passed away March 1994 at the age of 96.  Since then, Doris and I have enjoyed going to auctions and flea markets.  While waiting for Doris to retire, I started doing carpentering and general repair work.  I got all the work I could handle, since big contractors did not want to fool with small jobs.  I built double garages, repaired cellar doors, put a new floor in a shower (the hardest) and put up doors and did lots of roofing.