Transcript
Podcast Host (0:02)
Welcome back to the Horror Horror Stories from the Golden Age ofradio since 2007@ Relicradio.com. our story comes from Quiet, Please this week, a series written by Willis Cooper, who also started Lights out years before. This one series debuted on June 8th of 1947 over mutual stations. It aired on Mutual until September of 1948 when it moved to ABC Radio. It aired there till June 20, 1949. Produced 106 episodes. The one we'll hear today is from August 9, 1948. Here's the thing on the Forbel board.
Ernest Chappell (Narrator/Porky) (1:07)
The Mutual Broadcasting System presents Quiet, Please, which is written and directed by Willis Cooper and which features Ernest Chapel. Quiet, Please for tonight is called the Thing on the Portal Board. Me, Amaropnek. Well, I was a roughneck. I mean, 20 years ago. A little too old, too slow now. Besides, I got a dollar now. I don't have to be a roughneck. You see. Married, got a nice home. Had to meet my wife. Hey, Mike. Her name's Maxine, but she likes to be called Mike. Mike. I guess she's busy out in the kitchen someplace. Besides, she doesn't hear very well. Shame, too, she's so pretty and everything. Well, you'll meet her. Sit down. I was saying I was a roughneck. Well, no, that doesn't mean exactly what you think it means. A roughneck is an oil field worker. Specifically, a guy in a drilling crew. Call them roughnecks. Like you call a section hand on the railroad. A gandy dancer, a garage hand, a grease monkey. Same time you work around a drilling crew for a while, you're going to be a roughneck in every sense of the word. Boy, a derrick floor or four ball boards. No place for a guy with a bow tie. Because when you have to fool around with drilling holes that go farther down the ground than it is from the top of Pike's Peak down to sea level. Sure, they do. Time I was a roughneck. We got this one well down to 7,313ft. That was a record. But last May, pure oil brought one in out in Natrona Valley in Wyoming. At 14,309ft. That, friend, is almost three miles. Quite a hole that, huh? Sure. I don't think there's an oil man in the world that don't wonder one time or another what's down there besides rock and oil and gas. Oil that's made out of trees that died 20 million years ago. Oil that's made out of dinosaur bones. Oil that's maybe made out of the flesh and blood of men maybe that beat each other to death with a stone axe. Ate saber toothed tiger for lunch.
Billy Grunewald (Geologist) (3:15)
Yeah.
Ernest Chappell (Narrator/Porky) (3:16)
Get to wondering, you look at the cores that come up from way down there. And sometimes the little shells, trilobites mostly, that was alive when Manhattan island, where New York is, was under half a mile of ice. We found something once, me and Billy Grunewald. And something found us. I'll tell you about it. We were down to around 5,400ft. We'd set casing. We began to get water so we hadn't stopped drilling, and cement off. Well, you see, when water begins to seep in the hole, you pull your drill pipe. Then you let down a cementing shoe inside the casing and you plug up the bottom of the hole, casing and all, with quick hardening waterproof cement. Then when it's hard, you drill through the cement, go on down. And the cement outside the casing at the bottom keeps the water out. Well, we had the drill pipe all pulled and racked. The cement was setting, see. So he was shut down waiting for it to harden. We'd been coring just before. Well, you see, a core drill is hollow. And as the bit digs down, it stuffs the drillings up inside it. So when you pull it out, you got a sample of the kind of stuff you're going through. And a geologist can tell a lot from that. So there's nobody around the rig except me. That night, the rest of the crew's going into town. I was toasting some pork chops over the forge for myself. I heard a car pulling up. Look out, it's Billy Grunewald, a geologist, and I give him a hello. Hi, Billy. Come and have a pork chop.