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The maroon and white Saberliner, painted in the colors of Texas A&M University , caught the gleam of the bright July sunlight as it lifted off the runway of the Midland airport and headed for the small West Texas town of Fort Stockton. The people on board focused their attention on the handsome elderly gentleman who was wearing an oxygen mask—Clayton Wheat Williams. Though he was seriously ill, the mask did not detract from his dignity and courage as he made the sad journey home. W ıth these sentences, I began years ago to write the story of my father’s life, having promised to complete the autobiography he had begun in his final year. Clayton Williams’s story is one of rugged individualism and risk-taking in a period of transformation for the Trans-Pecos region of Texas. It begins in Fort Stockton at the turn of the twentieth century, continues through the development of Texas as a major oil and gas producer between the two world wars, and ends in the West Texas landscape of small towns, large ranches, water wells, and oil-pumping units.My father,like his father before him,helped tame a harsh land and extracted from it the resources of oil, gas, and water. And also like his father, he never lost his love for the land’s rich heritage, spending his last years documenting the colorful history of the region and its people. Somewhere below the wings of his son’s airplane were the Pecos River and the Grandfalls ranch where Clayton had lived as an infant, a place that represented many years of hardship for his mother and father but a place also filled with cherished memories. Oscar Waldo Williams (O. W.), Clayton’s father, had come to the pioneer hamlet of Fort Stockton in 1884 with his young family, his Harvard law degree, and his surveying instruments. By his death in 1946, O. W. was one Prologue xii Prologue of Fort Stockton’s leading citizens and had earned a reputation for integrity and honesty as a county judge and lawyer. In the early days, while trying to scratch out a living on the ranch north of town, he had made ends meet by accepting surveying assignments in the vast, uncharted landscape that surrounded Fort Stockton. It was on these trips into the wilderness that O. W. honed his skills as a keen observer of the land and its inhabitants, both two-legged and fourlegged ,and he later recorded these observations in stories published in pamphlets for his children and grandchildren. Clayton and his older brother Waldo accompanied their father on some of these trips while boys. Years later, Clayton applied early lessons from his father about “reading”the landscape to a successful career as an oilman and rancher. Like O. W., he explored the harsh land, though his efforts initially focused on what its surface features could tell him about what was hidden underneath. In less than twenty-five minutes the airplane was touching down in Fort Stockton. There to greet Clayton and his wife and family was a large group of people both young and old, his friends from every walk of life.“Welcome Home Clayt & Chic” and“We Love You” were painted on signs held by friends. Signs and balloons were everywhere. Clayton was put in a limousine and mariachis serenaded him while friends came by to shake his hand and wish him well. All around his car family and friends cried and hugged as they acknowledged their beloved Clayton. Throughout his life, Clayton was a risk taker, tackling tasks that would have prompted another to back off or go around.He developed toughness as a youngster and as a cadet at Texas A&M—toughness that would serve him well both in the war to come and later in the rough-and-tumble life of the oilfields. Seeing that his country needed officers as it entered World War I, he volunteered before the draft was instituted and served with distinction in France and Flanders. His letters home, inspired by his father’s urging to record his experiences in writing, provide an unusually nuanced picture of what life was like for an American officer in France during the war. Returning to Texas after the war, Clayton recognized the opportunities in the developing Texas oilfields and taught himself to become a first-rate petroleum geologist—so good, in fact, that he picked the site of what would become in...

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