The Madam And The Millionaires: Oil, Sex And Religion In Tulsa's Early Years 6c5c6b

The Madam and the Millionaires

Oil, Sex and Religion in Tulsa’s Early Years

Leo Schneider

Copyright © 2017 by Leo Schneider.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017906539 ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-5434-1925-2 Softcover 978-1-5434-1924-5 eBook 978-1-5434-1923-8

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Rev. date: 05/08/2017

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION

I PAULINE LAMBERT

II THE OIL BUSINESS

III TULSA IN 1920

IV HENRY VERNON FOSTER

V CHANGES IN HEAVEN

VI THE COMMITTEE IS FORMED

VII CHARLES PAGE

VIII HARRY F. SINCLAIR

IX JOSHUA (JOSH) COSDEN

X EARNEST MARLAND

XI THE RACE RIOT

XII RICHARD LLOYD JONES

XIII O. B. MANN

XIV AMY COMSTOCK

XV W. G. SKELLY

XVI J. PAUL GETTY

XVII THE PHILLIPS BOYS

XVIII THE NATIVES BECOME RESTLESS

XIX THE “TRIAL” OF PAULINE LAMBERT

XX THE END OF THE BEGINNING

XXI CONCLUSION

DEDICATION

This book could not have been written without the of my wife, Molly, and the help of friends (you know who you are!) who provided some anecdotal material.

I

PAULINE LAMBERT

Buddy was standing at the foot of the stairs, scared. Not scared like sitting around a camp-fire telling ghost stories, but scared like when last season he’d seen his best friend Tom tackled helmet-to-helmet and laying unconscious on the football field. Now, like then, his sphincter muscle tightened up and he had a funny feeling in his stomach. Buddy had left his snickering friends behind in their car, walked across the street, ignored the number 326 which was the address of the ground-level shop and opened the door on 326-1/2 East First. All he saw was a stairway leading up. At the top there was a glow from a light, but he couldn’t tell where the light was coming from. Climbing the stairs he thought back on how it had come to this: After spring practice he was talking with some of his senior friends about their sexual experiences. On a dare, they bought Buddy downtown that Friday night and now he was going upstairs to “get laid”. The higher he walked the stronger the light got, until he saw the transom the light was coming through, and then he saw the lamp shining through the open door. Up two more steps, and just as he spotted the person in the room, the step gave under his weight, a red light came on, a buzzer went off, Billy jumped and a harsh female voice called “What are you looking for?” The woman was in front of the lamp so he saw her only in silhouette—in his first clear impression, the symmetry of her being framed in the door with the light behind her—was like a giant spider in the middle of her web. Buddy had taken his girl friend to the movie last weekend—it was the first re-release of “Gone with the Wind” since its debut in 1939. Bud had been too young for the original, so he had been looking forward to the re-release and it had made a strong impression on him. For some reason he had especially ed Mammy berating Scarlett for going to Atlanta with the firm intention of meeting with Ashley Wilkes who was betrothed to Melanie.

“You be settin’ there waitin’ for him—jus’ like a big spidah.” “A big spider”— that was the thought that jumped into Buddy’s mind as he spotted Pauline Lambert, long-standing proprietress of the May Rooms, later to be known as the oldest business operating in Tulsa—a big spider just waiting for him. Pauline Lambert first appeared in the Tennessee census of 1900 under her birth name of Clarey Gillion, ten years old, fourth child and first daughter of William and Mildard Gillion. We don’t know what life on the Opior County farm was like, but it was probably precarious. We do know that by the 1910 census William Gillian (census enumerators were notorious for their bad penmanship and spelling), subsequently blessed with four more daughters and possibly realizing all those girls weren’t going to be much help in getting in a cotton crop, had traded in his farm for a camera and was in the photography business in Henryetta, Oklahoma.

Clarey (now Clara) had a life no better or worse than her siblings, other than being first in line for all the clothes soon to be handed down and also first in line for all the household chores. Dropping out of school at nine years old, and a child of the Great Awakening, she ed the Methodist Church and even taught Sunday School. She was ready for something better so when George Stenhouse, an itinerant Scottish miner, showed up they married on March 6, 1911. Not interested in oil, the Stenhouses stayed in Henryetta for the coal, whose primitive mining conditions included being exposed to breathing coal-laden air. Some stories are that he contracted the black lung disease, but in the 1920 Census Record, George was still alive living with Clara and their two boys in Henryetta. The Henryetta City Directories have Clara Stenhouse living in Henryetta in 1920 and 1924, George having taken off for California and a new family. In the 1930 Census she was married to Jimmie W. Palmer, still living in Henryetta with her two sons, George Jr. (1912) and John E. Stenhouse (1915). Jimmie himself was born in Henryetta around statehood to David and Eliza. David was from Arkansas and Eliza was from Oklahoma and had Creek Indian blood. Jimmie began working as an “oil broker”, which in those days probably meant brokering oil leases rather than oil. Since so much of the land was owned by Creek Indians his Indian heritage would have been advantageous in his brokering business. Sometime after 1930 (when her sons were able to fend for themselves), Jimmie and Clara moved to Tulsa, first showing up in 1936 at 5-1/2

West First (K.C. Hotel #2); Clara had taken the surname Lambert, which she would use until 1979. Mr. Lambert has left no trace; it’s like he never existed, if he did. Through 1941 Mrs. Lambert, sometimes with Jimmie, sometimes not, appeared in the City Directory in the 300 block of East First, sometimes as manager or proprietress of the K Rooms, Dixie Rooms or May Rooms— incorporated into a single address 326-1/2 East First. At the time the allincluding building had been built, it was common to give the ground-floor addresses the whole numbers; for example, 322, 324, 326. The second-floor premises were given their own individual outside entrances and matching halfnumbers, e.g. 322-1/2, 324-1/2,326-1/2 and so on. Over the years the downstairs premises came to be occupied by retail businesses and the upstairs by living quarters. The upstairs apartments were separated only by flimsy plaster-and-lath interior walls, making it easy to knock a door through them and connect the ading apartments. Under Clara Palmer these doors connected as many as five rooming houses into a single proprietorship. (Presumably by this time Clara Palmer had learned it was easier to rent rooms with women in them, and turned them into a “bawdy house”). The second floor was surrounded by a kind of veranda, partly for exterior maintenance and partly so the residents could escape the summer heat by going outside onto their balconies. Mrs. Palmer had converted this space to her own use by sealing all exterior doors (except hers) so she had exclusive use of this porch which ran outside all individual rooms, allowing her to preserve some control by walking around to observe the goingson in the rooms. By 1941, Jimmie’s appearances were intermittent; in 1944 he was living at 2221/2 N. Main and apparently out of Pauline’s life, but still with a Tulsa presence. From the mid-30s to the mid-50’s, Jimmie was arrested a number of times, usually for alcohol-related offenses, with gambling and bogus checks thrown in. In the same approximate time-span Pauline Lambert accumulated an unknown number of charges adjudicated in the Tulsa Police court and a dozen or so Court of Common Pleas charges—bawdy house, house of ill repute, vagrancy—(all euphemisms for brothel-operating). One might ask whether Jimmie took up drinking because his wife was running whore houses or whether Jimmie’s drinking expenses necessitated Clara’s opening a brothel to herself. According to Tulsa World reports (February 15, 1978), Pauline ran afoul of Federal law enforcement at least three times, maybe more. Preceding the 1978 conviction for pandering ($10 to $1000 fine, 2 to 10 years probation) that brought Pauline down and put her out of business, there was a nolo contendere

conviction in 1969 for using the telephone to bring prostitutes to Tulsa ($1500, 2 years probation) and a 1952 conviction for income tax evasion (3000, 5 years probation). The income tax evasion charge is interesting. According to the head of Tulsa’s vice squad in the late 50’s, Mrs. Lambert collected the money from the johns, kept her share, and then paid her girls. For a 6 to 8 girl house, each turning halfa-dozen tricks, a lot of cash could be generated. Coincidentally (or not), a West Tulsa resident in that same era re Mrs. Lambert as the woman who visited her relatives next door with “sacks of money”. That next door house was occupied by George Stenhouse, Pauline Lambert’s son.

II

THE OIL BUSINESS

The oil business got off to a bad start. When Colonel Edwin Drake (an honorary title, applied to a man whose only uniform had been that of a railroad conductor) arrived in Titusville, Pennsylvania to drill for oil, it was on a slim chance. Although oil had been found in wells before, it was in wells that were drilled for either for fresh or salt water; so such oil as was produced was a contaminant, to be avoided rather than desired. Drake’s well would be the first ever completed that was drilled specifically to produce oil. Oil in the second half of the 19th century was use mostly for medicinal purposes, often sold in medicine shows as “snake oil”. It was coming into use for illumination, replacing the whale oil that was becoming scarce and expensive. Drake’s well-drilling apparatus (what would come to be known as a “rig”) was a steam-powered contraption put together by “Uncle Billy” Smith—a big wheel with rope rolled around it and a heavy bit attached at the end. When the bit was released it would fall and bite into the earth. It was a slow and arduous process, helped along by pouring water into the hole for lubrication and to make the earth softer. At about 60 feet Drake’s hole penetrated a water-bearing sand, filling the hole with water and preventing further progress. Colonel Drake ordered pipe lowered into the borehole to seal off the intruding water, inadvertently inventing the technique of “casing” the hole, a technique used universally today. After drilling only ten more feet, a small amount of oil came into the well bore, soon increasing to 25 barrels per day. Drake collected this oil and sold it for 40 dollars a barrel, setting off what became the first oil boom. Those who could assembled rigs like Uncle Billy’s and those couldn’t went back to the old-fashioned “spring-pole” method, bending a resilient sapling tree to “kick down” the bit and allow the bent tree to lift it back for another kick. It was slow, but worth it for a thousand-dollar-a-day pay-off for something which could be found, literally, in one’s own backyard. With Drake’s discovery and the ensuing rush, the first of the oil “boom-towns” blossomed along Oil Creek in Pennsylvania. Blossom is the wrong word; does a

toadstool blossom? Or a stinkweed? Do bars and whore-houses make a landscape pretty? Within a year the forty-dollar barrel of oil was worth only ten cents, requiring the producers to make more and more oil to realize as much income as possible. Lack of a ready market meant the surplus production had to be stored, usually in shallow pits and dammed-up ravines, leading to oil percolating into the soil, evaporating into the air and ultimately, flowing down the creek when the dams broke. More oil from the many wells resulted in less money for all as the meager demand was engulfed by an ever-increasing supply that depleted the wells prematurely, bringing ruin to all the eager entrepreneurs. That was the bad start which was to plague oil producers until, well, until now. One man who had driven his buggy out to Titusville (now re-named Oil Creek) stood among a cluster of ramshackle huts, stagnant pools of oily water and derricks as the men around him worked feverishly to add even more oil to the surplus. He did not participate in the boasting of past fortunes made, did not sell nor offer to buy leases on future fortunes, nor go to the derricks and peer down the wells to try to understand the mechanics of drilling. He simply watched and ed one of the story-books he had learned to read from as a boy:

A wise old owl sat on an oak: The more he saw the less he spoke: The less he spoke the more he heard: Why can’t we be like that old bird?

What he was seeing and what he was hearing was that getting the oil out of the ground was not the road to riches that he wanted to be on. Getting the oil out of the ground seemed to be the easy part; the hard part came when the producers became desperate to sell it, pay off their loans, get a better rig and go drill the next discovery. Selling to the consumer was where the money was— transportation, refining and distribution. That’s the end of the business that John D. Rockefeller went for. As he himself put it: “The dear people, if they had produced less oil than was wanted, would have got their full price; no combination in the world could have prevented that, if they had produced less oil

than the world required.”

As more consumers saw the advantages of this new energy, more entrepreneurs drilled into shallow oil seeps to bring new supplies to market. The oil trade led them south and west where more and more ambitious men learned the business —young men learned the hard and dangerous work of operating the rigs and building the tanks and older men learned to buy leases early, sort out the good ones for themselves and sell the not-so-good for a quick profit. By 1895 the oil craze had swept out of Pennsylvania into West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Kansas, hop-scotching down into Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. In its wake came the giants of the industry—“wildcatters” those who went looking for oil where it had not been found before, “producers” who managed the fields after they were in production, “leasehounds”, “pipeliners”, “tankeys”, and other specialists, often lumped together as “oil field trash”.

The first wildcatters were Easterners who had one foot in the oil fields but the other foot in the financial world. To be successful one needed continuous in case one well, or another or even the tenth didn’t find oil. Their rush southwest encountered an obstacle near the southeast corner of Kansas. Finding their next logical move blocked by Indian Territory, some sidled off straight through Arkansas and into Texas. Other pioneers settled in at Independence to watch what would happen in Washington, where the fate of the Native Americans was being settled. The Federal government was under pressure from the forces of Eminent Domain, the policy of opening the country to land developers, railroads and farmers. Never mind that it was already occupied by the Indians; the frontier spirit was in full cry: it seemed everybody wanted the whole country to be occupied, and they wanted it now. To that end some prominent oil men, Guffey and Galey, Benedum and Trees, Barnsdall, Cudahy and McBride showed up around Neodesha to await developments “on the Osage”. In English common law, ownership of a wild animal rests with the person who killed (or captured) that animal, no matter where the animal had originated. This “rule of capture” was extended to the ownership of ground water, so that

whoever drilled a well on his property owned all the water produced, even though it might be proved that such water originated under another’s property. Once established for ground water, it was no stretch to extend the same principle to oil and gas production. Even though many believed that oil existed as a subsurface “pool”, ownership of that oil rested not necessarily with the land wherein the oil resided, but with whichever adjacent landowner might drill a well and suck the oil across the property line. Under these conditions, most early wells were drilled on small tracts; neighboring properties were forced into drilling “off-setting” wells or lose their oil. The result is easy to imagine: More wells were drilled, production increased, reservoirs were damaged, prices collapsed and bankruptcy followed for operators without residual capital. As demand caught up with supply, a new generation of speculators bought rigs on borrowed money, new fields were discovered, over-produced and the cycle continued. Canny businessmen, personified by John D. Rockefeller, saw that the key was not producing oil, but selling it to consumers. By building integrated companies —drilling, production, pipelines, refineries and service stations—they stabilized the oil market in the 1920s at a near-constant price of two dollars per barrel. That price was protected until the 1970s when the rise of the national oil companies— Libya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, et. al.—set the world on new boom-orbust merry-go-rounds. In early-day drilling, the first targets were oil seeps, clues that such surface indications indicated underground oil further down. Lacking seepages, explorers’ second choice was “closeology”, on the theory that a lease “close enough” to a seep would be able to tap into the same field. Still later, drillers would rely on “creekology” based on their observations that much oil was discovered along creek-beds, especially creeks that seemed to run in the “wrong” direction. This practice was confirmed by the later discovery of anticlines, where upward bulges in the earth’s surface were caused by sub-surface protuberances which often contained oil. Finding and drilling anticlines remained the go-to technology for years until oil-finders developed ever-better techniques for locating oil accumulations.

III

TULSA IN 1920

In 1920 Tulsa was, by any measure, a raw town. The St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad, S.L.S.F. or simply the “Frisco” had come to town in 1882. It really didn’t come to town, because there was no town for it to come to. Running southwest through Indian Territory the railroad contractors began laying track out of Vinita intending to come as far south as the Arkansas River, and establish a depot, with plans to bridge that river when the time was right. Following the railroaders’ practice of sticking to a route along the most level grade, avoiding hills, valleys and streams, it ran through a low valley (at a com heading of more-or-less 210 degrees) between the watersheds of Sweetwater Creek and Dog Creek until reaching the point near present-day North Lewis and East Pine where the depot was to be located. This point was in the Cherokee Nation about half-a-mile north of the Creek Nation and about a mile-and-a-half east of the Osage Nation. For considerations unknown, the railroaders were induced to extend the line another mile-and-a-half, just into Creek country and just south of the Osage. (The point where the three nations meet is memorialized by a plaque in Owen Park which locates the precise spot as being “…780 feet due east…”, near the intersection of Easton and the Martin Luther King Freeway). The surveyors had decreed the best to place to cross the Arkansas River was one where the river was still on its easterly course, before it took a sudden bend to the south. The crossing location would be about two miles southwest of the now-located depot and should be approached at a route of about the same 210 degrees. In other words the route needed to curve to the west for a short distance then curve back to the southwest to get lined up with the bridge crossing. It was along that two-mile western run the line would terminate (temporarily) in a depot and a rail yard where cattle could be loaded up for their trip back to the East. The spot they picked was destined to become Tulsa. Until 1901 Tulsa was little more than that—some railroad sidings and some corrals where cattle could be penned up while waiting for the next train north,

until oil was discovered in Red Fork and a trickle of engers began to fill up the empty trains coming west. The trickle became a stream in 1905 when Glenn Pool, the nation’s largest oil field was discovered, then a flood as more oil was found. By 1910 Tulsa was inhabited by wealthy men intent on becoming wealthier, drillers and roustabouts intent on making some money and an array of mercantile establishments—civil and criminal—intent on taking it away from them. In itself that did not make Tulsa unique; the same forces were in effect in all cities, except the older cities which had had enough time to establish systems of control: laws, courts, law enforcement, schools, public transportation and utilities. Tulsa had to do it all, and do it fast in order to keep up with its explosive growth. One of Tulsa’s first social problems was how to house yet separate its working force which, while mostly white, had a significant black portion. The railroad provided the handy dividing line: whites south of the tracks, blacks to the north. Another problem was how to accommodate some of Tulsa’s seedier providers, the ones who provided boot-leg whiskey, “Choc” beer, drugs and women. The division between the “customers” for these services (who lived mostly south) and the suppliers (mostly north) followed the pattern—where these groups came together, there would be the dividing line. And so it developed—the first street south of the railroad—First Street—became the de facto dividing line between black providers and white customers, between Good and Bad. This division did not go unnoticed. As discussed in her thesis “Down on First Street”, Shelly Lamons describes the three-sided struggle: The employers who felt their work-force needed a safety-valve, the reformers/law enforcers who didn’t want liquor, drugs and women and the owners/operators who provided the forbidden fruits. This struggle played out in continuing political battles; the political party out of control would campaign, often winning, on reform, only to be overwhelmed by the owners and customers who did not want reform. Next election time, the “ins” and “outs” would trade positions, campaigning and winning on reform, but still unable to deliver. One segment of the owner/operators faction were the madams and prostitutes who were grouped along First Street, and depended on both societies. Although some houses were segregated, most madams had both white “soiled doves” and black “Senegambian nymphs” and served men of both races. This uneasy

arrangement was in place until the virtual eve of the Tulsa Race Riot of May 30June 1, 1921

On April 21,22,23,26, 1921, Federal Agent “T.F.G.” reported that vice conditions “…were extremely bad. Gambling, bootlegging and prostitution very much in evidence.” He went on to report there were 14 open houses, three of which were colored. He also listed the addresses, five of which were on East First Street.

Federal Report on Vice Conditions in Tulsa (1921)

Federal Agent T.F.G. also mentioned other areas of the city where prostitution was offered, but apparently did not visit them. (Coincidentally, the 1920 Census Report mentions “J. Roland” as an occupant of one of the houses. This may or may not be ‘Diamond Dick’ Rowland, mentioned as the assailant who touched off the race riot.) This was the history of prostitution when Tulsa’s most famous madam, Pauline Lambert took over the May Rooms in the 300 block of E. First. For a time Mrs. Lambert attempted to capitalize on the phenomenon of “opposites attracting” by fitting some bedrooms with black satin sheets. She believed that if black women on white sheets attracted some men, maybe white women on black sheets would have a similar effect. As a practical matter it failed when the laundry-women got the sheets mixed up, and they all came out gray, on which women of any color were almost camouflaged. The Pearl Hotel operated by Charlotte Bradford in competition with Pauline Lambert approached the black/white trade differently. For a time she operated her house exclusively with black girls and offered cut-rate prices to men younger than twenty-one. Her experiment failed as the black girls, constantly irked by the youths’ complaints, told them to “stop coming around wid dem ‘cigarette dicks’ and talking about ‘loose pussy’”.

IV

HENRY VERNON FOSTER

The hunt for oil had reached the border between Kansas and Indian Territory and stalled. Stalled but not stopped. The Eastern immigrants included not only the oil finders but also the money men. One of these financiers lived on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Westerly, Rhode Island, almost as far from the Osage as an American could be. Henry Foster had come to Independence in 1884 for the normal and wellestablished frontier opportunities. He opened the Citizens Bank to direct eastern capital into western markets, initially cattle. He bought herds brought up from Texas and pastured them on land leased from the Osage Indians. This venture brought him into s, both amicable and antagonistic, with two other important Westerners who would be important in his new venture, leasing land for oil exploration. The most important of these s was James Big Heart, Assistant Chief of the Osages and a keen student of historical white-Indian relations. He had observed that Eastern tribes (e.g. Shawnee and Delaware) had been compelled to trade their lands and move many times while his own Osages had been so inconvenienced only once. Big Heart was aware of the developing pattern of whites shifting ownership from the tribes to individual tribe-, making it easier to buy land from these individual owners. While whites seeking land preferred dealing with individuals, whites wanting leases (such as Foster) found it easier to negotiate a single lease from the tribe itself rather than from multiple individuals. Big Heart was in negotiations with Washington to continue tribal ownership of Osage land. The U.S. government prevailed, distributing the surface area to individuals, but Big Heart succeeded in keeping mineral rights for the tribe. He was ed by Foster who had already obtained signatures for an oil lease and was awaiting government approval. Foster had been introduced to Big Heart by John Florer, the long-time (30-year)

agent of the Osages, who adroitly managed the Indians’ business affairs so that their best interests were served while simultaneously serving his own, putting these three men into a very delicate situation. Foster wanted to gain an oil lease at the best price and the least effort, but as an outsider he needed an agent. Florer could be that agent, but he was already the agent for the Osages; he could help Foster, but only if it was in the best interests of his Indian clients. And if in the doing, Florer’s own interests are served too, well that would be all right, as long as no trust was broken—bent maybe, but not broken. James Big Heart was the least conflicted of the three; his interests and the tribe’s interests coincided. He had heard the stories of tribal conflicts suffered by his now-neighbors the Cherokees and the Creeks, each of whom had suffered still-lasting splits in which mixed-blood leaders had opted for selling tribal lands against the wishes of the full-bloods, and had been assassinated for their troubles. Big Heart was a rising leader of full-bloods who could see that as the mixed-bloods gained strength they would control the tribe and push for individual ownership. Unsure of how his negotiations with the Interior Secretary would go, he was anxious to secure a lease now that would benefit the nation as a whole. At this crucial time, 1901, the Foster family suffered a family tragedy, the death of Henry Foster, legal owner of the Osage oil lease. By a slick legal maneuver in which Henry’s brother Edwin was named lessee “in lieu of” Henry; the lease stayed in the family, organized as the Phenix Oil Company The lease was for all mineral rights, surface and right-of-way, including “timber, stone, water, gas and other materials” and was to last for ten years beginning April 8, 1896. Although a generous lease for its time and for years to come, it did contain some strict conditions that could result in cancellation: royalty payments not paid within 30 days of due date, waste or failure to take proper care of the land, drilling in land under cultivation. Furthermore, prospecting had to begin within six months and “paying quantities” of products must be discovered within 18 months or the lease would terminate.

These were problems to be faced in the future and seemed almost trivial compared to problems Edwin had to solve now. Money must be raised, drilling must start, and the Osage venture had to be staffed, all without diverting attention from the Foster ventures in Wisconsin and Florida which could not be neglected. The management of the Foster enterprises was stretched thin at best, but with Edwin taking on Henry’s responsibilities, the load increased. He didn’t

have the time to fight off rivals for the Osage lease, raise money to begin operations and supervise on-going drilling operations. For assistance he enlisted Henry Vernon Foster, Henry’s son, to divert some of his attention from Wisconsin Land Improvement Company to the Osage Nation. Such added responsibilities did not necessarily appeal to young Henry (called Vernon by the family). Vernon was 25 years old, out of school four years and a bachelor with many friends in Wisconsin and Chicago. Moving to the wilds of Indian Territory with new responsibilities while maintaining his old ones was rather more than the young man wished for. Nevertheless, being a product of a strong, Quaker family where sacrifices were not to be shirked, Vernon was prepared to step in and do his part. His part suddenly got bigger when Edwin died in 1902. Following so quickly on the heels of his father’s death in 1901, the stability of the older generation had suddenly been removed, too suddenly to plan for an orderly succession. What had started as a part-time, fill-in role for Vernon escalated into a full-time intricate operation that would have swamped even an older and more experienced businessman. The financial responsibilities of Phenix were overwhelming for such a small, thinly-capitalized organization. In a series of straight-forward stock swaps, the Phenix Oil Company, the Foster family’s vehicle that owned the Osage lease had been subsumed into the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company which was developing the lease far too slowly to satisfy the lease conditions; The Osages total royalty in the second quarter of 1903 was only $1442. The unique feature of the Osage lease was that there was a single mineral owner, the Osage Nation, and it was so big (just under a million-and-a-half acres) that no single lease-holder could hope to drill enough wells to meet the lease conditions. When young Henry Vernon arrived in Bartlesville the Osage tribe was still smarting over its paltry royalty payment recently received; it was not nearly enough to satisfy the tribe into renewing the lease The young Foster’s difficulty was that he had to develop enough production and royalty for the Osage nation that he could be in a position to win a ten-year extension before the existing lease expired in 1906. Experienced operators all agreed that the time available was too short to locate drilling sites, marshal rigs and crews, sell the oil and get money into the bank in time to satisfy the owners. Surprisingly, young Foster did not seem alarmed; he engaged surveying crews and went out onto the Osage for weeks returning to plot the results onto lease

maps. Before the lease expired he posted these maps which showed sub-leases available. The maps showed the eastern portion of the lease, neatly divided into three tiers of 116 rectangles each, labeled with Lot Numbers. Half these lots, every other one, were being offered to sub-lessees on generous . Seeing the chance they had been awaiting for at least eight years, drillers began showing up, g leases and drilling wells, producing wells. It was then the true genius of Vernon’s scheme became apparent; not only did all this new oil increase the flow of royalty money into the Osage coffers thereby fulfilling the lease , but all these producing leases were offset on two sides by lots retained by ITIO and not offered for sub-lease. All exploration and explorations costs were effectively paid by competitors! All ITIO had to do was drill offsets to the good wells and avoid the bad wells. These were so well received many were drilled and producing “paying quantities” soon enough to meet the contract requirements, convincing the Osages to renew the lease. By the end of 1904, Osage royalties had risen from 400 to 20,000 dollars per month, guaranteeing required performance and lease renewal. Foster’s genius was not only that he divided the lease into sub-leases large enough (1/2 mile by 3-¾ mile) that they could be profitable, but also that he offered only alternate plots for sub-lease. The brilliance was that these sub-leases were big enough so there was no compulsion for the sub-lessee to drill multiple off-setting wells and secondly that he leased only alternate tracts, reserving the intervening tracts to himself. For example, if a company leased Lot 50 and discovered oil, Foster could rely on “closeology” and drill Lots 49 and 51 to capture his share of the underground wealth with virtually zero explorations costs This full-fledged development turned the Osage from a single boom-town filled with land-agents and lease-brokers into dozens of boom-towns populated with rig-builders, drillers, tool-dressers and roustabouts and all their hangers-on: saloon-keepers, boot-leggers, drug-dealers and whores. Just how smart (or maybe lucky) was Vernon’s managing the Osage blanket lease would not be apparent for another twenty years, until after newer oil fields had been over-drilled and over-produced leading to low prices, bankruptcies, despoiled landscapes ruined reservoirs while the Osage leases were still in flush production.

* * *

(Several Decades Later)

V

CHANGES IN HEAVEN

Heaven was all abuzz. There hadn’t been a heavenly convocation of all the orders of angelic beings since God the Father had assigned his Son to go to earth and open the gates of Heaven a little bit wider—open not only to the Hebrews but to Gentiles. At that time the whole hierarchy—Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Cherubim and Seraphim—were called to bear witness to the magnanimity of the gesture; the Son was going down to earth to be born and die so that more could share the glories of Heaven. This event had altered the history of the world so dramatically that it literally became the dividing line of history-the division between Before Christ and Anno Domini. Two thousand years later the Father was speaking again; the older experienced hands, ing how He tended to get carried away had brought some cotton to protect their ear-drums. “You all the last time we met together. It was on the occasion of my dearly-beloved Son going to earth to leave an example of how to qualify for ission to Heaven. Although not completely successful, we consider it a work in progress and are here today to talk about some tweaks we’re considering for the system. “In the beginning, St. Peter was tasked with keeping the records and greeting each arrival with “The Book” which he had been keeping on everybody. Based

on each appellant’s record he would be either itted or rejected, as appropriate. But with the increasing population of the earth and, let’s just say it, Peter’s not as young as he was and with his eyes going bad, he’s got a little behind. The waiting room is filling up and people are saying our backlog is getting as bad as the Veterans’ Hospitals. (Polite laughter.) “We won’t be needing all of you, but as we get into it, each Order will be asked for their inputs according to their specialties. I expect there’ll be a lot of routine announcements for the Angels to make, saving the major announcements for the Archangels. As always there’ll be the odd bit of miracles for the Virtues to handle and the Powers will be on hand to cast out evil as required. For the most part, there’s going to be a lot going on so just try to not get in the way and We apologize in advance for moving anybody out of his office.

* * *

(Four Weeks Later)

Heaven was experiencing a heavenly thunderstorm characterized with lots of thunder and lightning, but not much rain. Two Archangels were sitting on a park bench taking in the pyrotechnics. “Sounds like the Big Guys are still working the bugs out of the new issions policy.” said Gabriel. “Yeah” replied Michael. “Not too surprising though. After all, the present system is two thousand years old; little wonder it’s not going altogether smoothly. “You think the ‘Keys to the Kingdom’ thing is a sticking point?” “No doubt. You know how turf-protective St. Peter has been always been about being the one who kept all the records and meets new arrivals at the gates, sorting the wheat from the chaff. Which was okay back when he took on the job; there were only a few thousand applicants a day showin’ up, but now we’re up to

millions every week (not counting wars), and with him getting older and slower, the backlog is really piling up. “You think all this fulmination (pointing to the fire and brimstone now mixing with the thunder and lightning) shows they’re getting closer or further away from a deal?” “One of the Thrones, (who should know since he specializes in Good vs. Evil), was telling me yesterday that now all the cards on the table: God the Father has always been the law and order Guy, while God the Son has always been willing to cut folks some slack. You know, the Good Cop/Bad Cop thing. Which only confuses Peter who was brought up under the old ‘an eye for an eye’ guideline; this ambivalence is eating his lunch. So Son has offered a compromise—Peter will continue to keep both The Book of Good and Evil (where he writes down all of men’s good and bad deeds) and the Keys to the Kingdom (which suits Dad), if Peter agrees to accept some help. A committee will be appointed to review the Book, interview the applicant and present a summary which Pete can either accept or reject—thumbs up or thumbs down.” “Sounds good. But I bet that Book is getting pretty big.” “Big’s not the real problem; the real problem is organization, or more correctly lack of organization. Imagine what it looks like after all these years—one day he writes ‘Today so-and-so beat his wife’ and the next day he writes ‘Today he apologized real nice’ and that’s been going on for two thousand years. At least he’s finished with that flimsy papyrus and is working through the parchment. And his hand-writing has not been getting better, nor his ing where he put things! Left to his own he’ll never work off this backlog. But even so, how much can a committee help? How are they going to come in cold and be any more efficient going forward? These are the questions that were being asked three weeks ago before they accepted the proposed solution. And as you must have heard, the two Mary’s, who never did exactly hit it off, are heading for a full-scale mother-in-law/daughter-in-law tiff. The Son is proposing, at Mary (the-not-so-good) Magdalene’s insistence, that a woman be on the screening committee and Mary (the Virgin) is not buying it. That’s where the thunder and lightning is coming from.”

* * *

(Three weeks later)

Gabriel is giving Michael an up-date. “They’ve got an agreement. A tentative agreement. Peter still has the Keys and a committee of only two (more than two would make it as slow as the U.S. Senate); they use Peter’s book for background, but the real recommendation will come from a personal interview between each candidate and the two committee-persons. Note I said “persons”, not “men”. The Son has agreed to have a woman on the committee, which seems reasonable since half the applicants will be women. The way it’s shaping up is that the written record will be available to both committee-persons to use (or not use) as each chooses, followed by a personal interview and individual recommendations which go to Peter for his final say, Up or Down. The back-log, accumulating since the Crusades is between eight and ten trillion souls. Rather than doing this on real time they’re going to put it on fast-forward, so that inside the committee-room, time is telescoped into warp speed. The immediate problem is to find two committee-persons who can work together well enough to process the applicants.”

(Four weeks later. Meteors, comets, lightning and asteroids blaze across the sky) Gabriel is speaking. “Mary Magdalen is playing hard ball. Using her experience, she maintains that most of women’s troubles are ‘caused by men’ (her code for ’sexual in nature‘) and is filibustering to name not just any woman, but a “fallen woman” to the committee. The Son is agreeing just to keep peace in the family, but the Father is adamantly opposed; in a surprise move, the Holy Ghost broke the tie in Magdalen’s favor. But only on an interim basis and using a very small sample. The Father is shooting off all his fireworks in frustration and indignation.

“As the test case they’ve decided on Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the first quarter of the 20th century. It’s got all the elements—a transient, displaced population, a limited supply of ‘good’ women, wealth disparity, racial mix; the thought is, if this system works here, it can work anywhere. “Magdalen has chosen Pauline Lambert as her committee member. She ran a “house” in downtown Tulsa, had clients from all classes, all colors, but is a family woman, an ex-Sunday School teacher and a grandma. She’s the quintessential ‘whore with a heart of gold’. The Father and St. Peter are hardpressed to come up with their choice; it will be a man, strait-laced but a square shooter; the hardest thing is that they’ve both got to have some give. If he and Ms. Lambert can’t work together and all candidates go forward with split recommendations the experiment will fail, gridlock will continue and the waiting room will overflow. St. Peter’s job will be the same as it is now. “So who’s gonna’ be the guy? Are they thinking to bring Solomon out of retirement?” asked Gabriel. “If not, there are a lot of heavy-duty thinkers available: Aristophanes, Plato, Thomas Aquinas…” “I don’t think so; there’s some real thinking-out-of-the-box going on here—it won’t be a guy from the Middle Ages, but a 21st century dude may be too current. The thinking is, use a contemporary, maybe even someone who showed he could work with Ms. Lambert during their time on earth.

VI

THE COMMITTEE IS FORMED

The “Trips”, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, were having their first meeting as the Executive Committee to lay out the ground rules: God the Father was at the head of the table, The Son was (naturally) at His right hand and the Holy Ghost was… well, one couldn’t be sure. He might be floating around or He might be missing, because He is after all, a ghost. St. Peter, as the Keeper of the Keys was present, as were Pauline Lambert and Henry Vernon Foster, a blue-blooded Yankee from Rhode Island who had come west to Wisconsin and then the Osage Nation to pioneer oil development in Oklahoma. A straight-shooter known for keeping his word, he had died early so even though he knew about the newer generation that put Tulsa on the map, he knew few of them personally. All in all, he was considered a sound addition to the committee that was to relieve the congestion at the entrance to Heaven. Jesus was speaking “In the hope of easing what could be a long and arduous process, we have called this meeting to set out some operating procedures. By way of introductions, I am Jesus, you know the Father here and St. Peter. And you are?” turning to Mrs. Lambert. “I’m known as Pauline Lambert, but I was born Clara Gillion, lived much of my life as Clara Palmer and I’m wondering what I’m doing here.” “And my name is Henry Vernon (call me H.V.), Foster, and like Mrs. Lambert, I also wonder why we’re all here.” As chairman, Jesus continued. “Fair enough. In the last few years, as the earth’s population has grown, we have found that the original system for ittance has become overloaded. Peter here has done yeoman’s work keeping the records but has become overwhelmed by the numbers. We decided to appoint a committee, a small committee, to streamline the process. Mr. Foster and Mrs. Lambert, you are being asked to be the committee. We will be using some modern technology

to speed things up—already we have digitized Peter’s book, scanned it into computers and activated a search engine to call up the applicants’ records and print them out. Pauline and Vernon will work in a room which is fitted to compress time so that it es very quickly compared to real time outside the room. In only ten “earth” minutes you will accomplish eight hours of productive work; in an ordinary work-day you will do two months worth of work. One week in the room will make a year’s worth of work allowing you to review the applicants more quickly. “The actual reviews will consist of reading the printouts, interviewing the applicants and resolving any obvious discrepancies between the written record and the oral interview. It is not a judicial hearing so they need not answer, but you are free to draw your own conclusions about their refusal to answer. Noticing her hand, he asked “You have a question, Mrs. Lambert?” “What about witnesses, for both prosecution and defense? “No witnesses, or any attorneys either; these persons are expected to make their own cases, for good or ill.” “So there’ll be nothing like depositions.” “No witnesses, neither in person nor deposed.” Reflecting, he continued, “You seem familiar with court proceedings, Mrs. Lambert.” “Well, I’ve had some days in a courtroom.” “Moving on. Once you’re both satisfied you have all the information you need, you may excuse the applicant, confer between yourselves and fill out the report to St. Peter. Each of you will mark ‘it’ or ‘Reject’, put it into the OUT basket and move on to the next. Your opinion is only a recommendation, Peter will make the final determination and you will probably never know if your recommendation was accepted or not. However, we certainly don’t want you to feel that your contributions will not be valued. “Any more questions, Mrs. Lambert? Mr. Foster? Thank you, the first batch of records will be on your desks tomorrow.” At 8:00 next morning St. Peter brought a two-inch stack of accordion-pleated

computer printout and the two Committee began flipping through first with disbelief, then consternation, then alarm. “There’s nothing on them!” Pauline wailed. “Well, almost nothing”, agreed Vernon, “for most, only some scant biographical information and some major life events. For others there is enough information to take up several pages.” “How are we supposed to make decisions on such scant information?” she asked St. Peter. “What did you expect?” the Keeper asked. “You didn’t think I wrote down every step they took, did you?” “As a matter of fact, we did. After all, isn’t that your job, to keep the record on everybody?” “Not the whole record, just the bad stuff that might keep them out of Heaven. They don’t get Brownie points for the good stuff that they’re supposed to be doing.” “But even so, could that many people have led such good lives? In my business, I heard plenty of things on men, things that might have, or not, showed up in a newspaper but certainly never got out to the public, but if it had been known and showed up in your record, probably would have disqualified them.” “Talk’s one thing, so’s thinking, but I just dealt with doing. The Boss knows what people are thinking, but He didn’t give me that power, so I figure He was telling me I was supposed to deal with what I could see and not hold their bad thoughts against them.” “Even so, this sounds completely different that what I thought this job entailed. I’d feel much more comfortable clearing this up with management” said Vernon.

Jesus listened carefully to what Peter, Pauline and Vernon were saying. “What you’re telling me is not new; it’s been discussed for millennia, ever since

Man got his free will, the ability to make choices, act on his decisions and bear the responsibility. My Father was more of a hard-liner, who believed that once Man knew the rules, if he decided not to follow them, he deserved what he got. That’s pretty much the way the Old Testament was written. And that’s why I went to Earth; in effect to give them a second chance, as is written in the New Testament. For the Hebrews, an afterlife was not dogma. They sort of thought ‘We don’t know so we must make our lives count’. Heaven, as such was exclusive; in Anno Domini it became more inclusive. “Up until five thousand years ago or so, Man was not so far advanced; he didn’t have much in the way of organization, record-keeping, long-term planning. I guess what we’d call not much civilization. Somewhere along the way societies had developed—thinkers who figured out the world didn’t just happen, someone had to be in charge, and religion was invented to keep Man and his God on good . Religion needs to be sustained, and holy men invented themselves to take care of sustaining religion. Unfortunately, sustainability and priesthoods took on lives of their own and they found it useful to be able to offer something to their followers, specifically life-after-death, for the worthy, the chosen few. That’s how exclusivity came about, when priesthoods had to promise something that nobody else could, the promise of life eternal. Again unfortunately, that worked contrary to what My time on earth was about—including, not excluding. “So, relative to your question, what do we do about those who have little or no information—do we let them in or keep them out when we don’t have much information on how they behaved, even less on how they talked and how they thought? Clearly if Heaven is to be inclusive, by definition it must include as many as possible. And it is Our wish to err on the side of opening the Gates of Heaven a little wider. But I can understand how difficult this must be for you; not knowing what is in men’s’ hearts and relying only on Peter’s Good Book, you really don’t have anything new to bring to the table. Can you think of anything we can do to make your job easier?” Henry Vernon spoke up. “Mrs. Lambert mentioned earlier that newspapers can be a source.” “Good idea! Not only newspapers, but reliable print sources; our Information Technology is light-years ahead of Google’s being able to digitize the libraries of the world. We can digitize all the written material in the world, set up data bases, translations and retrieval systems to give you access to everything that’s ever

been written about our candidates. We can make it available to the applicants themselves so they can present their cases more effectively. I’ll get that started right away! “I’m pleased you brought this to my attention; it shows you are taking this assignment seriously.” With this clarification Ms. Lambert and Mr. Foster went back to their screening. In the interest of maintaining rigor, both agreed that the written material would be supplemented by an interview technique in which each applicant would make a personal appearance before the Committee where they would be judged on their answers, their demeanor and by their overall believability. With an average interview time of ten to twenty minutes (earth time) and ing for the time-telescoping feature, it was no trick to do 1200 in the morning, take a lunch break and do another 1200 by quitting time. Since their start time was January 1, 1900, they were soon interviewing applicants who had arrived at the Pearly Gates during the lifetimes of Lambert and Foster. One morning Foster asked, “Pauline (they were on a first-name basis by now), do you feel like taking on some of the more unusual cases today? You know, not just the ones with biographical data, but some that we some real information on.” “Yes, that would be a welcome change. Sometimes these are so boring I find myself nodding off. I wouldn’t mind getting into some of these cases I might know something about, maybe even some of the people.” She could imagine opening the interview with “You look familiar to me and I generally have a good memory for faces; did you ever visit my place of business?” Being a good judge of character, she would play close attention to their initial reaction to this question. (“Can she really I was there that night? If I say ‘No’ and she knows better, it’ll go bad against me, but if I say ‘Yes’ that might go against me too, so will telling the truth go for me or against me.”) Foster’s strong points were business, the law and dealing fairly with those who might be at a disadvantage. He planned on a line of questioning associated with commercial matters and if he would ask “Did you ever cheat the Government by

obtaining an illegal lease?” it would place the applicant on the horns of a dilemma. (“Foster was living in Bartlesville when I got that Osage Indian drunk and got his name on his brother’s lease; will he that?”) Between the two questioners they had the Seven Deadly Sins covered—Lambert mostly took care of Lust, Pride and Wrath, while Foster handled Greed, Gluttony and Envy. Lazy people were rare in frontier oil towns, so Sloth seldom came up.

VII

CHARLES PAGE

Charles was born into a working-class family in Stevens Point, Wisconsin (parttime home of Vernon Foster) in 1860. We have no knowledge they were acquainted, for they never lived there at the same time. But it is likely they knew of each other, although again, even while they were in Oklahoma simultaneously, no common record for them was found. Charles worked hard, at a variety of jobs, including as a Pinkerton detective. A big, strapping fellow, it is easy to imagine his tracking down wrong-doers and taking them into custody. Unlike many Easterners, he came to Oklahoma without experience in oil, but he had quiet manners, an imposing physical presence and a willingness to learn. His interests lay mostly to the west of Tulsa, one of the more well-known and successful being the so-called Tommy Atkins case. There was a quarter-section of land in the Cushing Field listed in the name of Tommy Atkins, the minor son of Minnie Atkins, who had filed for an infant’s allotment on his behalf. The Gypsy Oil Company (a predecessor of Gulf Oil) discovered oil on his land, but when he could not be found, interested parties contended that there was no Tommy Atkins, that Minnie had “borrowed” a nephew and ed him off as hers to gain an extra allotment of land. Gypsy tried to locate his mother and settle the claim. But she could not be found either! In the meantime two million dollars worth of oil had been produced and the royalties kept accruing to the benefit of Tommy if he was alive, or his heir, if he was dead. So much money had attracted as many as five “Tommys” and three “Tommy’s mothers” making the case even more complicated. The complication was that if none of the “Tommys” or “Tommy’s mothers” were proved genuine, the allotment would be declared fraudulent, would revert to the Creek Nation and would become eligible for resale. One of these “mothers” was the Minnie who Charles Page (reprising his

Pinkerton skills) had tracked through Mexico and into California where he found her cooking for a cowboy outfit and got her to agree to come back to Oklahoma if he should need her. The courts, finding themselves wrapped in a hopeless muddle and certain that many similar claims were sure to follow, ruled that Tommy’s enrollment, conducted by the Dawes Commission, was valid and thus set the precedent that any future case was to be decided on the same basis: if the enrollments was by the Dawes Commission it was valid. Page, who had taken over Tommy’s lease from Gypsy, won the case and the income from that lease turned out to be the basis for much of Page’s subsequent wealth. Charles’s mother had instilled in him the virtues of helping people in need, especially children. He was always looking to build a home for orphans, help single mothers and find jobs for needy men. From his downtown Tulsa office near the railroad Depot, he saw dozens of men arrive on the train, without money, without food, without a job, without a place to stay. Through his close friendship with Brinton F. Breeding (always called “Captain” for his Salvation Army service) he arranged for needy persons to get the help they needed. One of Page’s businesses, downtown where he could keep an eye on it, was a rooming house on First Street. For twenty years, First Street rooming houses were viewed with a jaundiced eye, for it was well known that many such houses let rooms “with” or “without”, meaning with or without a woman. During one of Page’s struggles to win leases for landowners, a rumor arose that one owner would be willing to sign if Charles could arrange female companionship for the night. For one reason or another, he did sign. Or so the story goes. “So, Mr. Page, you know why we’re here?” “I have an idea, but I’m not completely sure. Can you fill me in… Mrs?” “Pauline Lambert, and this is Mr. Foster. You might have met him; he had some of the first leases… in fact, the first lease on the Osage. St. Peter has got behind in screening applicants to Heaven, so we’ve been asked to pitch in, give him a hand. What we do is talk to you a little, ask some questions and then make recommendations to St. Peter, who makes the final determination.” “Will anybody else be involved?’ “No, just us three here, then St. Peter.”

“O.K., but I’ll have to say it sounds a little rushed, especially for me and others like me—to have our whole life reviewed and judgment ed in a few minutes.” “It’s not just a few minutes, Mr. Page”, Vernon Foster injected, “, you had your whole life to get ready for just this moment.” “But I never had time to think about it like I’m having to now. But, I understand. Go ahead.” “I’m going to start the questions as I usually do, Mr. Page. Do you know me? Have you ever visited my establishment, The May Rooms?” “Not that I can recall, Mrs. Lambert. But you must it was a long time back, and I was quite busy in the streets of Tulsa before I moved to Sand Springs. I have heard of the May Rooms, and while soliciting contributions for my children’s home, I often visited many businesses, but didn’t always buy any goods there… nor services…” he finished haltingly. “I rather think I didn’t” he continued. “My associate, Captain Breeding was perhaps the most upstanding, God-fearing man I ever knew. Not only did I not want to disappoint him, but I was a little afraid of him. No, I believe that I wouldn’t have been a customer of yours.” It was Foster’s turn. “Mr. Page, I know something of leasing, especially of leases from our Indian friends, who are often child-like and easily influenced. Can you give us some information on the Tommy Atkins lease? Was there any improper conduct involved?” “Not by me, and I’ll stake my reputation on it. In fact, I guess I’m staking more than my reputation on it today. There were some corners cut, but on my honor, I swear it was mostly done by the Gypsy. But I knew the courts were going to be looking at it close, so I was bound and determined to make sure everything we did would stand up.” “What about other leases? You may not know, but you have been accused of providing women to landowners to get their leases. Did you ever send owners to Mrs. Lambert’s, or similar establishments?” “I know that stories like that went around. Partly it came from the fact that I had

a good friend who ran a rooming house on Archer in about 1921, 1922. I asked Cap to find men who had come into Tulsa broke, hungry who needed something to eat, a place to stay. Cap sent a lot to the Fox Rooms and later, after I bought my own rooms at 118 Archer, he would send them to my place. I can’t vouch for all women who might have been occupying rooms in any of those places at any of those times, but I can vouch that Cap would never have done anything like you’re saying. “Another thing, men at my rooming house might have wives, or women they claimed as wives, who might have been in the business. I can’t say that some landowners might not have been in my rooms with some of these women, but as quick as we found out about it, they were out.” “That satisfies me, Mr. Page. Do you have any more questions, Pauline?” “No, that’s good. Thank you Mr. Page.” After he had left, and Vernon and Pauline were chalking up their recommendations. Mrs. Palmer spoke up. “You know, Vernon, I know what he’s talking about. Back in those days, the line between an honest-to-God rooming house and a cat-house was pretty thin. One time during the war, it must have been 1942 or 1943, I know it was in the springtime because the Verdigris River was flooded and trains to Chicago and Kansas City couldn’t get through. Anyway, the hotels were full and a couple of men got stuck in Tulsa with no place to stay. When I saw it was two men and they asked for one room I was suspicious, but then they told me it was only because they knew rooms were scarce and they didn’t want to take up two and keep someone else out on the street. Anyway, you know I told you I have a good memory for names and faces; one of their names was Richard Feynman (I because I kept trying to spell it F-i-n-e-m-a-n and he kept saying F-e-y-n-m-a-n). You know I was in the sex business and while I don’t approve of men-on-men, I’ve got no room to be a prude, other than keeping my girls employed. I walked around the porch later and looked at them through the curtain and saw that everything was on the upand-up. Next morning when the maid was cleaning up she brought me some papers from their room, with lots of numbers on it, arithmetic-looking stuff. Later, I read in the paper that they worked in New Mexico building the atomic bomb. Maybe I could have built one myself, but by that time I had thrown the paper with all its figures away. So I know Charlie Page could be telling the truth about his rooming house being mistaken for a cat-house.

“In fact when I started in, it was as a renter of rooms, but I soon learned it was easier to rent a room with a girl in it than without. I tried to operate both ways but I soon figured out renting girls pays better. Better for the girls too. Some girls liked to finish up the night with some man they’d taken a shine to, let him spend the night. Some guys saw that as a good deal—instead of spending four dollars for a girl, then ten dollars for a place to sleep, they’d spend twenty dollars for all night, which they thought would mean having sex all night long. But about the best any of them could manage was only twice which for two pokes and one room would have been worth eighteen dollars, a la carte. But, if they could make it a third time twenty dollars would be a good value for money; they would collect the unrealized gain. Foster was puzzled; “What do you mean, “unrealized gain”? “Oh, that’s an ostensible gain that doesn’t became realized until the position is closed for a profit. It’s an ing term.” “Mrs. Lambert, you never cease to amaze me.”

While reviewing the biographies for applicants to be reviewed, Vernon asked “Have you read about Harry Sinclair and Josh Cosden? I briefly knew these men in the early days and even then thought their careers were remarkably similar. When you get to them tell me if you agree.” Fifteen minutes Pauline agreed; “They’re almost the same! Both born in the East, moved to within twenty miles of each other, then came to Tulsa, built ading mansions and almost ading buildings, then went to New York City, where they owned private rail cars, race-horses and came to grief, but in different ways.” “That’s what I thought! What about getting them in here together and interview them at the same time? I’m not sure this job necessarily involving entertaining ourselves, but I don’t see it would do any harm, and I for one would like to know how these guys tick so that they ended up so nearly the same. “So let’s schedule them for tomorrow and see how the “gold dust twins” get along.

VIII

HARRY F. SINCLAIR

It took more than oil to make an oil boom. It took oil finders to find a likely drilling site, lease brokers to get permission to drill, lumber to build a rig, workers to run the rig, groceries to feed the drillers, doctors to mend them and pharmacists to compound the prescriptions. John and Phoebe Sinclair came to Independence, Kansas, in 1886 when their adopted son Harry was just ten. He grew up there and intending to follow his father’s profession, went to Lawrence to attend the School of Pharmacy at the University of Kansas. He returned to find a different Independence than he had left four years before. The demand for oil-drilling rigs had stripped the local lumber supply, creating a demand that Harry filled with lumber brought in from other states. But selling lumber wasn’t enough to satisfy his ambition; building on his acquaintances, he began to trade in leases. At first, he couldn’t lose; every lease he picked became a producer. He would sell those leases and look for new sites, always successful. Until he wasn’t. He would up the good fields to buy the dry holes. As his luck faded, so did his bankroll, until he was broke. Back where he started. One day he got wind of a new prospect, went to the landowner, and negotiated an agreement— if he could get two thousand to pay for the lease. He hurried back to town, to the banks he’d borrowed from and repaid, to his friends who had prospered when he’d let them in on his deals, even to his widowed mother. No one had the money, or wouldn’t give it if they did. Desperate, he took his shotgun out onto the plains where he’d had hunted rabbits since he was a boy. ing the insurance policy he’d bought when he was flush—a $2000 policy against accidents—he walked back to his car, pointed the gun at his foot, and… Harry never itted to the story of the lease he bought with his big toe, but he might have itted to himself that his slight limp might have been worth it.

The insurance money paid for the lease, the field produced a gusher, the gusher produced a boom and the boom produced another handsome profit for Harry. He was on his way again, the richest man in Kansas before he was thirty. In 1904 he married his home-town girl-friend Elizabeth Farrell just before the Glenn Pool blew in and Tulsa became the new boom town. Not just a drilling boom town, doomed to first blossom, then wither when all the good leases were taken, no more wells were needed and flush gushers were reduced to pumping wells, but a boom town that dealt in leases, financing, well supplies, labor and entertainment. The Hotel Tulsa, built in 1912 called itself the finest hotel between Kansas City and Denver. Its lobby was a trading floor like the New York Stock Exchange, where deals worth thousands of dollars were commonplace. This was where the action was and this is where Harry Sinclair would be. He caught the train every morning at Independence (just a coach, his own private car would come later), walked the three blocks from the depot to the Hotel Tulsa for the day, then back to the station for the afternoon train back to Independence. One day at 3:30, in the midst of a heated bidding war for a prized lease, he picked up his hat and walked out. An eager seller ran after him, calling “Mr. Sinclair, do you want this lease, or not?” “Oh, I don’t know. But if I do, I wouldn’t give more than twenty-five dollars”, and kept on his way to the depot. What a master stroke! Without spending a penny, he had effectively frozen the price at twenty-five dollars an acre, more than anyone else would be willing to pay that day. After a good night’s think, the lease would still be available next morning, but at a price of “Well, I’ve thought about it overnight and decided it’s not worth even twenty-five” establishing a new negotiating point. With so much money being spent, but no local bank strong enough to supply the capital, it was becoming obvious that a new bank, big enough to service the oil industry was needed. The leading bank in town, the Exchange Bank, was being weakened by defaults on some of its bigger loans and closed its doors in bankruptcy. Sinclair took the initiative, gathered his associates Eugene F. Blaise, Charles J. Wrightsman, and William Connelly, bought and re-capitalized the bank, providing capital to continue financing developments and cementing Tulsa’s position not only as a producing center, but as a financial powerhouse.

Sinclair’s successes multiplied. He bought prime real estate at Tulsa’s most prestigious site, the Council Oak, where the Creek tribe had assembled on their arrival from Alabama, re-kindled their ceremonial fire and re-established their ancestral heritage. Building one of Tulsa’s grandest homes at 1730 South Cheyenne in 1913, he and his wife Elizabeth moved in, setting the new social center of Tulsa. By 1916 Sinclair, a big, bluff man with large, wide-set eyes but who was said never to have laughed had consolidated several small companies into Sinclair Oil, later acquiring Cudahy Oil for its refining capacity. In 1919 he built the Sinclair Building whose two-story lobby, solid oak floors and crystal chandeliers established it as one of the grander examples of Beaux Art architecture. In 1916, when his companies were producing 80,000 barrels per day, he sold his home at 1730 South Cheyenne to brother Earl and moved to New York City with Elizabeth and their two children (Virginia and Harry Jr.) to escape the “small town ideas” of Tulsa. He soon took up “big town ideas” in baseball by challenging the establishment in forming the Federal League and regretfully betting 90,000 dollars on the Chicago “Black” Sox in 1919. Other activities included buying a racing stable and especially by establishing himself with the Harding istration, including Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall, (“fall” being the operative word in this case). Sinclair’s “fall” during the decade of the 1920s resulted from the Teapot Dome scandal (bringing mention in “Downton Abbey”), involving payments to Fall and obtaining leases to Naval Oil Reserves in Wyoming. Beset by charges of bribery, contempt of court and contempt of Congress, Sinclair spent his time, his energy and his money fighting the charges. He evaded all charges except contempt of Congress (“You can’t convict a million dollars”), but the effort and the Great Depression bankrupted him, causing him to sell his homes, his private Pullman car and his string of racehorses. He continued in the oil business, soon rebuilt his fortunes and remained active until his death in 1956. He lived to celebrate his Golden Wedding Anniversary with his wife who had stayed with him through all his ups and downs. In addition to his wife, he was survived by his daughter Virginia (married to one of the “marrying M’Davinis”, a family of fortune-hunters from Europe) and his son Harry, Jr.

IX

JOSHUA (JOSH) COSDEN

Born on a Maryland farm, Josh Cosden’s first real job was as a drug-store clerk. Maybe that’s where he met the man who taught Josh about refining crude oil; no one quite knows, but when he and wife, Ottille (Loevensprung), arrived in Bigheart, Osage Nation, that’s what they were determined to do. A modest producing well in Bigheart, isolated from a pipeline, had no market for its oil until Josh threw together a boiler, a still and connecting pipework, hauled the oil, sometimes as little as 2 ½ barrels a day, cross-country in a dilapidated tankwagon and loaded it into the still. Just the two of them, on a 24-hour basis, kept their little “teapot” operation going and even making a little money until one spring day, April 12, 1911, a tornado came up (as often happens) and knocked their little ramshackle outfit to flinders. Undaunted, they gathered up the pieces and put them back together. Somewhat later, June 4, 1913, the vapors from the still ran down-hill to the boiler, caught fire and burned them out (as also happens). In 1917 he sold his Big Heart Refinery to Stone & Webster of Boston, and moved Ottille to Tulsa. Confident that he was onto something, he caught the train to Baltimore, lined up backers and some money, went back to Tulsa ready to put his money into another refinery. Nearby fields were producing thousands of barrels a day with no significant refineries to turn it into consumer products. He bought 80 acres across the river in West Tulsa, built a high-capacity modern refinery and he was on his way. At one time he had written a check in the Hotel Tulsa lobby for fifteen million dollars! He built a high-rise office building downtown and a fine house at 1700 South Carson Avenue, in the fashionable part of town (“Millionaire’s Row”). A few years later he built a mansion about 100 yards south on a little rise that provided some fine views—west he could see his new refinery across the river; east was Harry Sinclair’s mansion and just across the street was where the Roeser’s lived. “Charlie” Roeser was among those elites who made and lost fortunes in the Tulsa boom; in his case he made three and lost two. His wife

Eleanor “Nell” Neves had been called the most beautiful woman in Oklahoma. Strains grew in both families, leading to divorces and the marriage of Cosden and the former Mrs. Roeser. The resulting scandal was more than Tulsa society and the newly-weds could tolerate; they moved to New York City in 1920. A visitor walking through the neighborhood today can see little trace of the 1920’s drama. A heroic-sized statue one block west turns out to be a chain-saw sculpture of Abraham Lincoln hewed from a massive tree; a sign advertising “Cosden Gas and Lubricating Oil” nailed to an out-building is barely visible through the trees at 1606 South Carson. In New York Cosden began to play the stock market, especially commodities. He made a handsome profit in cotton only to lose it all in wheat. He owned a private rail car and a string of race horses, palatial mansions in New York City, Long Island, Newport and Palm Beach. In 1926 under cover of “pressing Venezuelan oil interests” he sold his homes, Pullman car, horse strings and moved to Texas. Between 1927 and 1930 West Texas oil brought back his fortune but in March 1930 ill health diverted his attention and his fortunes suffered. In 1931 “Game Josh” beat his way back once more until going into receivership in1935 and loss of control in 1938 brought him down for the last time. Final bankruptcy settlement was made just days before he boarded the train for Fort Worth, but he suffered a heart attack and died on November 17, 1940 in Willcox, Arizona. His legacy continues. His West Texas production justified a return to his roots, a giant refinery at Big Spring, Texas, and a local distribution/marketing system. Being controlled from the home office in New York sparked the joke about a contest in the New York office in which first prize was “one week in Big Spring”; second prize “two weeks in Big Spring”. His life was so exciting it was the basis for a 1920 Cosmopolitan short story, “A Lady Comes to Burkburnett” made into the movie “Boom Town”. In the movie, set in the Burkburnett Field, Texas about 1918, Clark Gable was “Big John” McMasters and Spencer Tracy was “Square John” Sand, who alternated between being partners and being rivals. Their principal rivalry was for the affections of “The Lady” played by Claudette Colbert, first won by Gable then lost when Gable took up with Hedy Lamarr. Tracy may have hoped to replace Gable, but instead was instrumental in bringing husband and wife back together. A secondary story line was that originally both wildcatters favored wide-open production, but Gable was the first to accept the idea of proration and

conservation, eventually convincing Tracy to do the same, bringing the movie to a happy ending. Vernon opened the interview with “Gentlemen, you probably know why you’re here; we’re interviewing applicants to help relieve the clog-up at the Gates. Bringing you in together is a little bit unusual and you don’t have to agree. From our viewpoint, it will help Mrs. Lambert and I understand how the conditions of your lives influenced your actions and might help us arrive at an equitable recommendation. Mrs. Lambert normally opens the questioning. Mrs. Lambert?” “Thank you, Vernon, and you too, Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Cosden. Looking directly at them Pauline asked, “Since you both have spent some time in Tulsa, and probably know of my business ‘The May Rooms’, I usually open the interview by asking if either of you have been there.” Sinclair answered first, “I know of the May Rooms; many of my foremen knew of it and have spoken of how well they were treated while they were there; not by you personally, but by your girls.” In his turn, Josh also replied. “Yes, I know your May Rooms, and I have been there. On more than one occasion I have rewarded my employees or tried to recruit employees by bringing them in. I always paid. As for myself there were times when I actually took a girl for myself; not often but sometimes.” “A question for both of you” Pauline continued. “‘Boom Town’ was said to have been based on Mr. Cosden’s career, but I could see both Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable playing either of you. Did the story include real-life events from either of you? And which of you was played by Clark?” “Especially the way the movie showed Gable as the first to propose conservation while Tracy favored uncontrolled production” Foster added. Josh laughed, and as Sinclair showed a faint smile, Cosden went on “Well, I believe that as a conservationist I was a little ahead of Harry, so that would make me ‘Square John’, as played by Tracy. Not amused, and not wanting to be identified with Clark Gable as an early believer in conservation, less a square shooter and by inference as a ladies’ man, Sinclair reed “In the film it was Gable who had both a wife and a girl friend

while Spencer Tracy was the more steadfast of the two. I think that Josh fits Clark’s character better than I do.” Vernon Foster had another question. “There was a scene where Tracy and Gable were t owners of a company and decided they couldn’t work together and agreed to flip a coin for ownership. Does that sound like either of you? Cosden was the first to answer. “Sounds like me, but it wasn’t. I’ve always thought I was lucky and I wouldn’t mind taking a 50-50 chance on the flip of a coin. As usual, Sinclair disagreed. “That not the kind of thing I’d normally do; if I couldn’t make an argument to improve my odds above 50-50, I couldn’t have stayed in business. That said, I actually did split up a lease on the toss of a coin, but there was no luck involved. I had a partner in a Creek County lease and we didn’t agree on how to develop it; he wanted to drill on the north side and I wanted to start on the south. Flipping a coin was just a quick way to dissolve the partnership; if he won he’d drill on the north and if I won, I’d drill the south, both of getting what we wanted.” Mr. Foster had a question: “I have some experience in leasing, and recognize it as a sharp business. How much restraint did you exercise to not cross the line between sharp dealing and dishonest dealing?” “Perhaps I should take that one first” said Harry. “It is obvious you know of my difficulties during the decade of the 20s; I cannot dodge them, nor do I want to try. True, the business was cutthroat then, and I was eager to succeed. I said at the time I had violated no laws and was in fact exonerated at that time and throughout the next thirty years was never accused of misdealing.” Cosden answered in his turn “Refining crude was always my principal business, not leasing. Harry and I participated in some t developments, Burbank being the most prominent example. So I did engage in leasing and without making any extravagant claims as to my honesty, I can say that the business was largely selfregulated; dishonest practices were usually found out and exposed. I depended too much on others for my financing to risk claims of blatant dishonesty.” Mrs. Lambert continued on another subject. “It may surprise you to know that a whorehouse profits from publicity, even bad publicity, and I got a lot of publicity from stories that daughters of oil millionaires worked at my place. You both had

daughters and your daughters had friends; so what do you know about that? And , I may know more about it than you do.” “Mrs. Lambert, I resent the implication and refuse to consider it, no matter what the consequences may be for me” blustered Harry Sinclair. Josh Cosden, perhaps feeling he was on shakier ground, was more cautious. “My daughter went back East for school and spent much of her summers with family there, but obviously she was here often on holidays and vacation. And she did have friends here. And there were times she was much more… adventurous, than I wanted, but I must and will say, her mother had her well in hand and had any such thing happened she, and ultimately I, would have known of it.” “Speaking of adventures, Mr. Cosden, how is it that you married your next-door neighbor so quickly after your divorce?” Mrs. Palmer wanted to know. “Thanks a fair question, Mrs. Palmer. And one I have answered more than a few times, I can assure you. Charlie Roeser and I were business associates, even friends, and Otille and I were neighbors to the Roesers. I never discussed it with my second wife, but my impression is that their marriage was unsettled before we knew each other. And I am not proud to say the same is true for my first marriage, in part because of what I told you earlier; I was with other women before my divorce. I owe very much to my first wife; we struggled together during our first years in Oklahoma and our troubles began before I met Eleanor. Both divorces had been final for some time before Nell and I began to see each other socially.” Mrs. Lambert looked him straight in the eye and answered, “Mr. Cosden, that’s the biggest crock I have ever heard. I don’t know when you and Nell Roeser first became acquainted, but I’ll bet it was before you moved right across the street from them and before you built your building with an eight-room penthouse and furnished it with a twenty-five thousand dollar piano-organ combination. Do you play, Mr. Cosden?” “No” he answered,. “How about your wife; did she play?” “No” again.

“Did you ever hear the instrument being played?’ “Of course; many times.” “And by whom?” “Many of my friends visited my wife and me often entertaining us by playing, sometimes as a piano and sometimes as an organ.” “Did Mrs. Roeser play?” “She was an accomplished musician and played for us on several occasions.” “Us? Your wife was always present?” “I don’t recall. She was present many times.” “And Mr. Roeser; was he always present?’ “Not always, but often.” “As often as Mrs. Cosden?” “About the same. May I ask why you’re asking me these questions?” “According to newspaper reports, Mr. Roeser ‘pursued’ you across the country because he suspected you and his wife. Do you need to ask what he suspected?” “No, I suppose not. But my wife and Mrs. Roeser were friends, and often traveled together to the East Coast.” “This same news story reported that on these shopping trips Mrs. Roeser purchased clothing items and gave them to your wife—clothing items that were said to ‘make her as homely as possible’ until one time she returned the favor ’by presenting Eleanor with a garment equally unflattering’ at which time ‘the war was on’”. “I can imagine two women becoming embroiled in such a situation.” Mrs. Lambert continued with “Another story reports that when Mrs. Roeser obtained her divorce your wife realized the jig was up and began planning for

her future.” “But that future was delayed; we stayed married for another five years.” “Until your children were grown; you and Mrs. Roeser married the next year.” “That is true.” “Mr. Cosden, did you ever regret your divorce? Considering the tribulations of your early married life, living up on the Osage in a shack while nursing your refinery through a tornado and a fire, did you ever think your first wife deserved better now that you were rich?” “I do think such things. In fact, after both our second marriages ended, and my situation—health, financial and domestic—deteriorated, our children encouraged us to reconcile our differences, which we did. I readily it that Otille was a great comfort to me then.” With a nod, Pauline indicated she had no more questions, so Vernon excused both men with, “Thank you both very much. I’m sure St. Peter will see you soon.” As soon as they left, Pauline spoke to Mr. Foster. “Neither of them wanted to talk about it and maybe they didn’t know anything, but I do. That Sinclair girl, Virginia, was a heller. One night she came by with her boyfriend. Said she wanted to spend the night in a whorehouse. Since it’s my business to please the public I gave them a room and they stayed about an hour, left without saying a word. I don’t know what happened there, but my maid said ‘Not much’. I bet it was just for show. But anyway, word got around—you know how girls want to do what everybody else is doing—and Virginia’s friends began showing up, her cousin, that Skelly girl and some others. I don’t know about young Otille Cosden; I think her mother kept her on a short leash”.

X

EARNEST MARLAND

Another Easterner, Earnest Marland was reared in Pennsylvania where his early business life included leasing coal lands. In doing so, he taught himself geology and learned to locate and trace coal seams, finding where they out-cropped and following them to where they might present viable mining properties. He became a self-schooled geologist, which talent served him well when he arrived in Oklahoma. Although there was, and is, coal in Oklahoma, that was not what Earnest was looking for. Coal is hard to find, hard to get, hard to ship and requires concentrated industries to make use of it. The oil that Marland was in search of could be anywhere, available in copious quantities and was easy to transport back to the industries which need it. His nephew, Franklin Kenney was stationed in Fort Sill with the U.S. Army and during the course of his service had become acquainted with the Miller Brothers, owners of the 101 Ranch and operators of the 101 Ranch Wild West Show. In 1907 Kenney visited the brothers on their ranch directly across the Arkansas River from the Osage Nation. The entire Osage reservation was tied up in the “blanket lease” negotiated and istered by the Foster family, but the million-and-a-half acres were more than could be easily digested. The eastern section had been sub-divided and partially leased in 1904, just in time to avoid default and win a ten-year extension. But it was common knowledge that the Foster Lease would end in 1916, making not only the eastern bloc but the entire reservation available to new lessees. Marland came to the 101 Ranch to meet the Millers and discuss how they could qualify for leases in the area, both on Osage and Ponca lands. Marland seemed to be one of those men who just had a knack for finding oil. In hindsight we can see that partly it was just inevitable; there was so much oil the odds of drilling a hole anywhere had a pretty good statistical probability of

success. And partly it was because Marland was a self-taught geologist, although we know now that the techniques he was using relied more on luck than on science. And lastly it was because some of his earlier finds were gas, which ten years earlier would have been counted a failure but now the market for selling gas to nearby towns had improved enough to keep Earnest in the game of looking for oil. But however he did it, you can’t argue with success; Marland did find oil. His early success was west of the river on Ponca land, which is now Kay County, but he soon won some “Million Dollar Leases” at the Osage auctions in Pawhuska and drilled the Burbank, a huge success. Marland had a good long run. He built the Marland Oil Company, with a loyal organization, a bona fide geological staff, a mansion in town and a mansion out of town. He was instrumental in finding the Oklahoma City Field, participated in the Seminole field and parlayed his business and personal success into political success, becoming governor. But a worm had gotten into the apple; in his drive for continued expansion he had let control slip to J.P. Morgan and as he became unable to service his debts, the bankers took over. Soon his company was taken over and the proud Marland triangles became painted over with Continental’s insignias. How E.W. lost the Marland Oil Company in the 1920s qualifies as a case study in how a closely-held, cash-poor company loses to a widely-held, cash-rich company. The Marland Company made its bones by drilling wells and producing oil; it came late to the necessities of turning that oil into gasoline and selling it to consumers. When it began to take on the building of pipelines and refineries it could not finance them through cash flow, but needed to borrow money. J. P. Morgan and Company was happy to loan that money, “if you’ll just sign this paper and give us some seats on your board”. Already convinced that their expansion plans were sound, E.W. had few qualms about these concessions. But as market forces—lower oil prices, decreased demand, competition, construction delays—changed, his ability to re-pay the loans changed. He ceded more control in exchange for more loans, which he still could not pay and so the cycle continued. Ultimately Morgan and Company took over policy direction of the Marland Company In 1916 Earnest and his wife Mary Virginia had taken her sister’s children into their home to raise and later adopt. After his wife died E.W. reversed the adoption of the niece, Lyde and they married, leaving a queasy feeling in the stomachs of some Oklahomans.

He opted to leave the governor’s mansion after one term and run for senator, but unsuccessfully. His fortunes ebbed and he was forced to sell his mansion and died in 1941. When he appeared before the Committee, Pauline Lambert got straight to the point. “What’s this business about you marrying your daughter?” “She wasn’t my daughter when I married her. And she wasn’t my daughter until she was sixteen, when I adopted her. There was no blood relationship; she was the daughter of my wife’s sister, in other words my wife’s niece by blood, my niece only by marriage. There was no blood relationship.” “But how did you come to marry her? Wasn’t having her as a daughter enough?” “I married her because I loved her more as a woman than as a daughter. She loved me as a man, not as a father. I’ve had to answer these questions for thirteen years on earth, why must I still be asked?” Vernon Foster intervened. “You don’t have to answer, Mr. Marland. We serve as a Committee to make recommendations to St. Peter to help break the log jam of applicants. The final determination will be by St. Peter; if we can determine some underlying reasons it might help your cause.” “Why do I need help? I committed no crime, no sin. Why is this even an issue?” “We’re not saying it’s an issue. We’re saying it provides more information. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” Turning to Pauline he asked “Do you have more questions, Mrs. Lambert?” Having none, Earnest Marland was excused and the two looked at each other. “I’m quite at a loss, Pauline. I have no experience in such things. According to the record, his business dealings were exemplary; his employees were treated the best in the industry and I see no grounds for exclusion. But I leave it to you and your insight.” “I hearing about this when it was going on; I didn’t know what to make of it then, and I still don’t. We know it’s not illegal and so far as I can see

it’s not immoral; far as I’m concerned he’s clean as a hound’s tooth and my recommendation will be to let him in.”

XI

THE RACE RIOT

A different issue about explanations… is the distinction between the search for proximate explanations and the search for ultimate explanations. To understand the distinction, consider a couple consulting a psychotherapist after 20 years of marriage and now intending to get divorced. To the therapist’s question, “What suddenly brings you to see me and seek divorce after 20 years of marriage?” the husband replies: “It’s because she hit me hard in the face with a heavy glass bottle: I can’t live with a woman who did that.” The wife acknowledges that she did indeed him with a glass bottle, and that that’s the “cause” (i.e., the proximate cause) of their break-up. But the therapist knows that bottle attacks are rare in happy marriages and invite an inquiry about their own cause. The wife responds “I couldn’t stand anymore all his affairs with other women, that’s why I hit him—his affairs are the real [i.e., the ultimate] cause of our break-up.” The husband acknowledges his affairs, but again the therapist wonders why this husband, unlike husbands in happy marriages, has been having affairs. The husband responds, “My wife is a cold, selfish person, and I found that I wanted a loving relationship like any normal person—that’s what I’ve been seeking in my affairs, and that’s the fundamental cause of our break-up.”

In long-term therapy the therapist would explore further the wife’s childhood upbringing that caused the wife to become cold and selfish (if that really is true). However, even this brief version of the story suffices to show that most causes and effects really consist of chains of causes, some more proximate and others more ultimate.

Jared Diamond

The World Until Yesterday

What he (the author) found was that our understanding of history is an everevolving experience limited only by the constraints of our own imagination and desires.

William M. O’Brien Who Speaks for Us? “About the Author”

It’s not possible to talk about Tulsa in the 1920s without considering the Race Riot. Much has been written and repeating it here would not be useful. What is useful is to think about what Jared Diamond would call the causes (proximate and ultimate) of the riot and to consider that our understanding of its history is different today than it was in 1921. For those who have not yet formed an opinion, it is better that you get it from original sources, not just a re-hash. Some of the s are so divergent as you read them you may come to the conclusion that there were two separate Race Riots: one experienced by the black residents (the more-publicized version) and another experienced by the whites (represented by Who Speaks for Us). To the black residents it was a coordinated effort by white leadership to punish black residents living in the area immediately north of the Frisco railroad. To the whites, it was an uprising fomented by militant black leaders under Communist influence. A commonly-accepted version is: In the morning of May 30, 1921, a 19-year old African-American named Dick Rowland (or Roland) who worked as a boot-black at Ingram Billiards, got on an elevator on an upper floor of the Drexel Building. The elevator operator was a 17-year old white girl, Sara Page. When the elevator reached the ground floor, the girl screamed, attracting the attention of people in the lobby, and the young man fled. The girl “gave the impression that she had been attacked”. When the police arrived she repeated her story, naming Dick Rowland. The officers went to his home some 8 to 10 blocks north, but Dick was not there. Next day they returned, arrested him, brought him to the city jail where he was booked and put in a cell. Sometime shortly thereafter (May 31) the Tulsa Tribune published its First (State) Edition, designated with an asterisk * which did not contain a story about the arrest. Now the story gets fuzzy; the more inflammatory version is that the Second Edition ** contained a front-page story “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator” which describes the assault and goes on to say that the behavior of the Negroes has become too outrageous to ignore. An inside editorial states that there will be a lynching. No known copies of Second Edition ** exist and copies of Third Edition ***are torn, so existence or non-existence of the story and

editorial cannot be proved. A less inflammatory version is that since complete copies are not available, existence of the story/editorial cannot be proven. At any rate, (some say) when the police interviewed Sara, she disclaimed her original story which would have freed Dick immediately except that since he had been formally charged he could not be released without a judge, who would not be available until next morning. In the meantime, some of the black population had become alarmed by the talk of lynching, armed themselves, got into cars and drove to the courthouse where they were prepared to stay the night and protect Dick Rowland. The police had moved the prisoner to the top floor, disabled the elevator and barricaded the cell so they could protect him from the mob. The blacks, not completely convinced by the police, returned to the Greenwood district for more arms and reinforcements and came back to the courthouse where a white mob was demonstrating for Dick Rowland to be turned over to them. In the ensuing confrontation, a white attempted to disarm a black and was killed, setting off a mixed gun battle. The blacks retreated to Greenwood where they warned the residents to either abandon the area or prepare to fight. At six the next morning, two to three thousand white men were assembled along Archer Street (which marked the boundary between black and white Tulsa). A siren sounded, the whites advanced, knocking on doors, warning the occupants to leave, entering, looting the contents, spreading accelerants and firing the buildings. Some black men stayed behind to resist, keeping up sporadic firing from vantage points, including the steeple of Mount Zion Baptist Church (later named as an arms storehouse). In answer to an appeal from Mayor T. D. Evans, Governor Jack Walton dispatched the National Guard unit which arrived mid-morning. During the firefight, the Guard brought a World War I surplus machine gun up to Standpipe Hill where it was set up and opened fire. According to which story you believe it either fired a few short bursts which soon dispersed the gunmen or it was so dilapidated it could only fire one round before being dismantled, cleared, and reassembled to fire another round. Also, one or more airplanes were reported to be flying over the area, “dropping incendiary devices” although others have questioned how much value could be gained from such incendiaries as could be carried in the cockpit of a small airplane.

All during the day, while the shooting was going in and around Greenwood Avenue, non-combatant African-Americans, mostly women, children and older men, were rounded up and escorted to places of confinement where food, water and shelter were provided. By the end of the day the fighting was over, the National Guard was in control, most Negroes were in custody or were hiding in the woods on the north side of Tulsa. When the Red Cross arrived its began arranging for food, water, shelter, medical care and funerary services. Many whites went to the places of confinement, Convention Hall and McNulty Park, to secure the release of black employees, friends and acquaintances. Within a month and after some normality was restored, the City Council drafted ordinances affecting the Greenwood area—one to annex it as an industrial zone and another to modify the building codes to require stricter controls over rebuilding homes. Both were ed but were later overturned by the courts. The Ku Klux Klan enrolled thousands of Tulsans, made plans to build Beno (Be No Nigger, Be No Catholic, Be No Jew) Hall. By Christmas-time replacement homes and businesses were being built, a large Christmas tree was raised (furnished, lighted and decorated by Charles Page) and celebrated with Christmas candy, gifts for the adults and singing. A week later, New Years Day, the Red Cross packed up and left Tulsa to its questions, some still unanswered:

1. According to the Jared Diamond definition, what was the “proximate” cause of the riot? Was it the newspaper story of the white girl’s rape or the shooting of the white man at the courthouse? Or was there even a story? If not, why were all the newspapers either destroyed or defaced? 2. Was there a plot to annex Greenwood for an industrial park as the ordinance attempted? Were the stricter building codes intended to prevent the black’s rebuilding? 3. What “ultimate” causes might Diamond find? Being kidnapped, transported to a foreign country being held captive for three hundred years, until emancipation only to be re-enslaved

by a whole new set of laws? 4. Fighting in World War I, becoming a land-owner in a new “Promised Land” with black businesses and black neighbors only to be relegated to second-class citizenship by the very Constitution of Oklahoma? It is interesting that from Richard Lloyd Jones’ early editorials in the Tulsa Tribune about “Niggertown” and “Little Africa” on through the grand jury’s report and up until O’Brien’s Who Speaks for Us, the white story mentions the few “bad niggers” hiding amongst the good, law-abiding, happy and contented black residents, but never mention the possibility of a few “bad whites” hiding among the tolerant, law-abiding white citizens as being responsible for the destruction. Are they sharing the blame or sharing the benefits?

XII

RICHARD LLOYD JONES

Richard Lloyd Jones was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on April 14, 1873, to Jenkin Lloyd and Susan (Barber) Jones. His family had deep associations with the Unitarian church, but while a young man Richard had disagreements with his family about religion and education and left home to be a sheep herder. Apparently he soon saw the error in pursuing that line of work, returned home, entered the University of Chicago where he was earned an LL.B in 1897 and an LL.M in 1898. His early jobs (not counting sheep-herding) included stints as a reporter/editor at the Stamford Telegram, Washington Times, Cosmopolitan, and Collier’s before landing at the Wisconsin State Journal. Along the way he managed some moonlighting as an actor, suffered a political break with Senator LaFollette and entered marriage (1907) to Georgia Hayden with whom he had three children before they moved to Tulsa in 1919 to continue in the newspaper business. He became acquainted with Charles Page, a wealthy oil producer who owned one of the two Tulsa newspapers, the Tulsa Democrat. Although Page didn’t particularly want to own a newspaper, couldn’t give it the time it needed and regretted its tying up needed capital, he was too much a deal-maker to let it go cheap. Jones on the other hand was just as much a dealer, wanted a newspaper and knew how to make it pay, but was reluctant to give Page his price. Finally, he said “Charlie, you have a newspaper and don’t want it while I want a newspaper and don’t have one. Let’s settle this.” Once the deal was made the paper’s name was promptly changed from Democrat to Tribune and its policies changed to match the State Journal— conservative, Republican, moralistic, reforming yet “sensationalist”. Continuing the crusade of Page, who had ambitions to provide Tulsa’s water, Jones ed developing Shell Creek Lake while the Tulsa World ed bringing water from Spavinaw Creek. Mostly because Shell Creek did not have the capacity to supply the increasing water needs of a growing Tulsa, Spavinaw won out with an ambitious and

successful plan to use gravity flow to bring water the ninety miles into Mohawk Lake. Jones’ arrival in Tulsa was almost simultaneous with the arrival of the revived Ku Klux Klan, whom he editorialized by writing “The Ku Klux Klan has promised to the American way in the American way” which included driving out Negroes, Jews and Catholics for their origins and beliefs; whippings and tar-andfeathers were istered for moral transgressions. He routinely demonstrated his attitude by referring to the Greenwood area as “Little Africa” and “Niggertown”. Just before Christmas, 1920, in words that sounded like they should be written in a script font used in an 18th Century German Bible, in another editorial Jones wrote:

“…Every unemployed man in town should be questioned, and if the answer should be unsatisfactory, should be ordered out of town. At least 1000 reputable and trustworthy citizens should be sworn as deputy police and given firearms with the orders to shoot to kill anyone found in the act of holdup or robbery. Bad men are better off dead. Let’s get rid of them.”

Some five months later the Tulsa Race Riot broke out, sparked by a story in Jones’s Tribune “Police Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator” and possibly fueled by an editorial “To Lynch Negro Tonight”. Jones defended the riot by writing “…the voice of conscience was never silenced without retribution” and by contrasting blacks “who are kind and courteous” with “a black man who is a beast”. And on June 4, 1921 a Tribune editorial declared “A bad nigger is about the lowest thing that walks on two feet”. Only months later, Jones became embroiled in a dispute with some Tulsa contractors over how the contractors and the City of Tulsa istered some paving contracts and published a series of accusatory editorials. The contractors, anxious to find some way to neutralize Jones, hired private detectives to investigate Jones’ activities. One of the first activities scrutinized was Jones’s relationship with Amy Comstock, a business associate whom he had brought to Tulsa with him when he and his family moved from Wisconsin. Mr. Jones was known to maintain an office in Room 500 at the Hotel Tulsa where he would

conduct newspaper business after regular working hours. This business involved writing editorials, conducting interviews and similar efforts requiring secretarial duties, provided by Miss Comstock. The private detectives, under the direction of John A. Gustafson (who had lost his job as Police Chief as a result of the Tulsa Riot) arranged to rent Room 502 which aded Jones’ at the Hotel Tulsa. According to John A. Woodard, over the course of the next few weeks Gustafson managed to observe and record Jones and Miss Comstock in “performances… so shocking and perhaps revolting… exultantly and exuberantly” and witnessed by “certain men”. It is presumed this evidence would be used to blackmail Jones into modifying his political and reformist views. During his long tenure as editor and publisher, Jones maintained his demeanor as reformer and moralizer (briefly interrupted during the Comstock scandal), including a Saturday feature called the “Saturday Sermonette” in the Tribune. He continued his family’s long association with the Unitarian movement, organizing Tulsa’s All Souls Unitarian congregation and becoming a financial er. Despite Jones’s being ive of Frank Lloyd Wright (his architect cousin) through his (Wright’s) financial and marital tribulations, even commissioning Wright to design a home for Jones in Tulsa (1931), Jones’s holier-than-thou attitude made him a target of his cousin’s criticism. They corresponded frequently and in a series of what are described as “affectionate abuses”, Jones called Wright “self-centered, unsympathetic and arrogant”, while Wright responded by characterizing Jones as “a hypocrite” and “a Puritan and publican of the worst stripe”. In a sense it might be said that Wright had the last word; the home he designed for Jones, “Westhope” was plagued with troubles—plumbing, leaky roof and excessive dampness.

XIII

O. B. MANN

O. B.’s grandfather had been a white slave-owner named Porter, who lived in Texas. When his wife died he took the most handsome of his female slaves and proceeded to build a family of half-breeds, including O.B.’s mother. After emancipation she migrated to Tulsa, following the dream of prosperity induced by the discovery of oil. At some time she married Pleasant Mann who after statehood owned a successful grocery that included a meat locker, canned goods, vegetables and live chickens—killed and plucked at the customers’ request. When he died the widow turned the store over to O. B. and his brother McKinley. O.B. was big, strong and unapproachable—maybe even mean. He was the youngest of nine children and the only one who had inherited his grandpa’s green eyes and huge frame. “Only” six-feet-four, he instilled fear in Greenwood that day he chased down the unwise thief who stole from the family grocery store and beat him almost to death before being pulled off. Every week he would take the proceeds from the store, tie them into a pillowcase that he put in his saddlebags and ride his fine brown mare south on Greenwood Avenue across the tracks into white Tulsa to the bank where he made his deposits. Shortly after the United States entered World War I, O.B. and other inductees were sent to a camp in Kansas, then to where they carried out their menial duties uncomplainingly in an atmosphere largely free of the subservience they were accustomed to at home. On returning they expected the same degree of gratitude and deference the white veterans enjoyed, but it didn’t come. Instead, they were even more shunned, at least partly because their expectations of better treatment disquieted the whites, sparking racial conflicts across the country. On Memorial Day, May 30, the day before the riot Mann and his fellow black veterans marched down Tulsa’s streets to the jeers and taunts of whites. Those

jeers were still fresh in his memory the next evening when he read the newspaper and learned that Dick Rowland was in danger of being lynched. Going to the Dreamland Theater he called for the lights by yelling “Turn up the lights! The whites are fixing to hang a Negro downtown, and I say they aren’t. If you’re with me, come on!” Within a few minutes a few dozen blacks and a few hundred whites were at the courthouse where Rowland was being held. After several hours of escalating confrontation, a frail, old white man saw O.B’s pistol and demanded “Nigger, what are you going to do with that pistol?” “I’ll use it if I need to!” “Give it to me!” “Like hell I will!” The white lunged for the gun, there was a struggle, then a shot, and within seconds a hundred shots. Twenty people lay dead or wounded, the Negroes fled back to Greenwood, the whites re-grouped, but everyone knew what was happening—the fat was in the fire. Next morning the siren sounded at 5:08, armed whites by the hundreds crossed Archer to be met by armed blacks shooting back. O.B. went to Mount Zion, the new church consecrated only a few weeks earlier whose belfry tower provided an elevated site with clear firing lanes to the south towards the advancing whites and to the west, towards a skirmish line of whites coming down Standpipe Hill. Coolly picking his targets, firing and reloading, O. B. ed for several casualties, but there were too many coming. Under cover of a white flag and one man shouting toward the church, “Enough blood’s been shed. Let’s talk.” some whites slipped up on the blind side and set fire to the church, trapping the defenders inside. Making a desperate dash outside, O. B. and about thirty others fought their way through and eventually escaped to the woods north of town. O. B. lived off the land until he returned to Greenwood for the Christmas celebration and learned that too many people had seen him on May 31 and June 1, ed what he’d said and what he’d done. “Better head for Canada” his brother warned. “After what I’ve been through, I’m not about to start running now.”

“Suit yourself; but if you stay in Tulsa, you’re as good as hung.” O.B. couldn’t argue with that logic. Hopping a north-bound freight to Kansas City, then Chicago, finally to Toronto, Canada he waited until the coast was clear, then back-tracked until he was back in Tulsa, back in Greenwood. But he was never the same. He’d hated whites all his life, had held his own against them before and after the war, and especially during the riot. He was a hero, the stories about him were growing with each telling, but that didn’t console him. He was eaten up with hate and maybe that hate finally turned into a cancer which continued to eat on him until the 1940s, when he finally died.

XIV

AMY COMSTOCK

Amy Comstock had worked at the Wisconsin State Journal for Richard Lloyd Jones until he moved to Tulsa to take over as publisher of the Tulsa Tribune in 1920. Miss Comstock followed soon after and was re-established in her former position as private secretary and assistant to Mr. Jones. It was also known, or at least suspected, that the business relationship between Jones and Miss Comstock sometimes involved “monkey business.” Jones was known to maintain Suite 500 at the Hotel Tulsa which he used as a supplementary office where he could meet and entertain business associates, work and stay overnight when necessary. The private detectives rented an ading room, brought in a tape recorder, bribed a maid to hide the microphone in Suite 500, stationed themselves at a keyhole and waited. In very short order, Mr. Jones and Miss Comstock came to the room after work hours where they worked on some writing (which the two of them discussed), spoke of the difficulties he was having with the contractors and soon began to hug, kiss and exchange expressions of mutual love and affection. They then moved out of view, but sounds of mattress springs squeaking and moans from Miss Comstock continued. Observations over the next few weeks included similar activities that were witnessed and recorded, including what one witness described as Jones “… pushing her skirt up over her head and putting his head between her legs” after which she had the look “…of an old cat, tired but happy.” When the results of the spying were made public, Jones denied them both in person and in print; he and Miss Comstock disappeared from the public, reappearing after a few weeks. When the book (booklet, actually) by John A. Woodard was published in 1935, the copies were quickly bought up and removed from circulation, with only a scattered few surviving.

* * *

Lambert and Foster were looking at their schedule for the day. Pauline had a suggestion. “Vernon, interviewing more one person at a time worked well with Sinclair and Cosden, since they were acquainted and had something in common. Do you think it would work on Jones, Mann and Comstock. They were in Tulsa at the time of the riot, and while not acquainted, certainly have similar experiences.” “I believe it would be a very good idea, Pauline.”

* * *

A more mismatched trio could hardly be imagined by the two Committeemen— Vernon Foster and Pauline Lambert simultaneously interviewing Richard Lloyd Jones, O.B. Mann and Amy Comstock. “We two have been selected to interview applicants wanting to enter Heaven, helping St. Peter to eliminate the clog-up. There are no lawyers, no Fifth Amendment pleas, no appeals. We make individual recommendations that are just that- recommendations; the final decision to it or not it will be as it always has been, by St. Peter. The reason you are here as a group is that you were associated on earth and may have information having some influence on our recommendations. Will you introduce yourselves please, ladies first?” “I’m Amy Compton, private secretary to Mr. Jones here” “And I am Richard Lloyd Jones, late publisher of the Tulsa Tribune, and I question your jurisdictional authority.” “You may question it if you wish and testify or not as you wish, but up here there

is no Constitutional protection against self-incrimination. Your unwillingness to testify may be taken as non-cooperation.” responded Foster. Jones grumbled and sat down. “My name is O.B. Mann”, said the black man. “And I just want to say if going to Heaven means havin’ to associate with the likes of these two, I’m not even sure I want to get in.” “Be that as it may, Mr. Mann, this interview will continue and you can make your case with St. Peter at the proper time.” Mrs. Lambert silenced him. “Now we will begin.” “The events of Memorial Day, 1921, are well known; evidence shows that you two (looking at Jones and Mann), may have some primary responsibility for the riot.” “Mr. Jones, what can you tell us about your newspaper’s publications on May 1?” “The day after a black boy assaulted a white girl in the elevator; is that when you’re asking about?” “It is, and again, what did your newspaper publish?” “Just the truth, and I’m sure you have the paper and you know what the truth is.” “What of your editorial inside the paper?” “I never wrote an editorial and I never saw one. What did it say? Can you show it to me?” “Whether we can show it to you is not the question. The question is ‘What did it say?’” “It didn’t say anything, because there wasn’t one.” “Mr. Mann, you were there that day, what did the editorial say?” “I didn’t see it because I didn’t look for it, and I didn’t look for it because I knew

what it would say. That man there, he never let up talking about Greenwood and the people who lived there, and his talk about militants.” “Do you consider yourself a militant? Did you have military training?” “Yes, both; I trained, was sent to and fought there. When me and us others got back what we’d done over there didn’t count for nuthin’. We was still nuthin’ but niggers to them. If being a militant means being to fight over here for the same rights that we fought for over there, then I’m a militant.” “Did you fire the first shot?” “Some say it come out of my gun, so I guess it might have, but I didn’t fire it. We wuz fightin’ over the gun and it went off. It coulda’ been me that got shot, but it was that old white man.” “Do you think that had anything to do with the riot?” “Course it did, but it would have happened anyway. Once that newspaper came out and the story inside, about ‘To Lynch Negro Tonight’, it was bound to happen.” “So you saw the story?’ “Did I say I saw the story? No, I never said I saw it, ’cuz I never looked for it. But others saw it and told us we’d better get to that courthouse and get that boy out of there before that mob got ’im, like they got that white man the year before.” “Do you have anything more to add?” Foster asked both men, who shook their heads no. “The next questions deal with the relationship between Miss Comstock and Mr. Jones” Mrs. Lambert began. “What was it?” “What was what?” Jones blustered. “What was your relationship with that girl?” “Miss Comstock was my associate, my personal secretary and my confidante.”

“And exactly what did you confide to her?… Or in her?” she finished lasciviously. “Please, Mrs. Lambert, we must maintain some decorum.” chided Vernon Foster. “You’re right, and I apologize to all of you. What we’re trying to find out here is whether those who become before this Committee are eligible to enter Heaven. There is credible evidence, and both of you know about it, that states that the two of you engaged in a long-standing, adulterous relationship. It’s not our business to say if that should keep you out, in the long run that’s between you and your God. But part of the reason St. Peter got behind is he doesn’t have access to thoughts. He is limited to facts and it’s our job to help find them. Now, to re-phrase the question, what was your relationship?” “So you’re telling me the only one who can incriminate me is myself? In that case, I say Woodard’s book is a pack of lies, and Amy and I had a simple business relationship.” Miss Comstock was an educated, enlightened young woman listening with increasing dread. If she agreed with Jones’ story, the two of them would win or lose together. If she denied his version, he would lose, but what about her? Could she convince these two people that she was a blameless innocent betrayed by the evil man? Relating to Goethe’s Faust, will she be the Gretchen to Jones’s Faust? Is she willing to condemn his soul to save her own? Completely undone, she collapsed into hopeless sobs. Seeing this, the gentlemanly Foster came to the rescue. “It’s obvious we cannot continue today. Miss Comstock, compose yourself and we will re-convene tomorrow. Mr. Jones, we will see you tomorrow also. Mr. Mann, you are excused. “Before we adjourn, I have a question for you, Mr. Jones” Pauline interjected “Why do you talk like that?” “Like what?” “Like you’re reading out of the Old Testament, like you’re some hell-andbrimstone prophet.”

“I wasn’t aware that I was speaking differently than anyone else” he protested. Alone, Mr. Foster protested. “Pauline, were you too hard on her?” “Maybe, Vernon, but I’m guessing I’ve had more experience with the harder side of life than you. From what you’ve said, I think most of your experience with women-folk is with your wife and two girls, all of who had gentle upbringing, surrounded by good examples and protected by chivalrous men like you. They never had to defend themselves against lustful men, nor for that matter maybe an upstanding, religious man such as Mr. Jones never had to defend himself against a scheming woman such as Miss Comstock may be. In short, while I don’t know where the truth is, I have been acquainted with similar circumstances, of girls being in places they shouldn’t be, with men they shouldn’t be with. “To begin with, of all the girls who’ve worked with me, the great majority, probably 85% went into the business of their own free will, to make more money or to get out of a bad home situation. Another 5% are victims of ‘white slavers’. Only maybe 10% were girls who just like to f***. How do we know Amy didn’t start up with Jones and come to Tulsa with him just to keep her good job? “As for that business of ‘looking like a contented cat’, I know more than you want to know about deviant sex acts. In fact, one of my few convictions was when I was tricked into telling which sex act was to be performed and for how much money. But anyway, men are about a hundred times more likely to ask for kinky sex than a woman. The May Rooms had a kind of an outdoor balcony that ran all around the rooms with peep-holes so I could look into the rooms. Mostly that was so we could make sure our girls weren’t getting beat up, but I had some customers who wanted to look more than to do, so we let them use the peepholes too. Anyway, at one time we had three different clients who wanted something different. One of them, (we called him Mr. Turkey Feather) always brought a feather-duster in with him and after he’d found a girl who’d do what he wanted he’d ask for her every time. He’d get naked, crawl around on all fours with Nell riding on his back tickling his balls with the feather-duster until he got his jollies. “The second one brought bananas that he’d peel and use as a dildo, then he’d eat the banana; we called him ‘Banana-man’. The third one we named ‘Hersheyman’ who brought Hershey bars and used them in the same way.

“Where I’m going with this is I don’t know how I can judgment on these people if I can’t get into their heads and learn what they’re thinking.”

On the next-morning opening, Vernon Foster resumed the questioning “Miss Comstock, on yesterday we had not learned about your relationship with Mr. Jones. Would you care to tell us now?” “Mr. Jones and I met when I went to work for the Journal in Madison, Wisconsin. I became his secretary and when he went to Tulsa he asked me if I’d him on the Tribune. By that time I was in love with him and said ‘yes’. He said he loved me too and we began having sexual relations. I was unhappy about it but I was his employee and wanted to keep my job. Also he gave me some encouragement that he might leave his wife and marry me. I’m not sure I can say more than that.” “Cannot say more, or will not say more?” Mr. Foster asked. “I guess both.” “No more questions. Mrs. Lambert?” “None from me” she replied and began to sing Kitty Wells’ 1950s hit song:

“Too many times, it’s married men who think they’re still single, That has caused many a poor girl to go wrong”

XV

W. G. SKELLY

Of all the easterners who came to Tulsa in the first years of the oil boom, a preponderant number came from Pennsylvania and were the speculator, promoter, lease-hound variety—the white collar bunch. W. G. (Bill) Skelly was from Pennsylvania, but he was definitely not white-collar. He got his start working for his dad who was a teamster in and around the Bradford Field, the first million-barrel field in the United States. Bill himself, born in 1878, got his early training as a tool dresser. Tool dressing was one of the more skilled trades in drilling, specifically cable tool drilling. A cable tool rig did its business with weighted bits attached to the end of a wire rope. The rocking motion of the “walking beam” raised the bit, then released it, letting it fall into the hole and literally punch its way into the underlying rocks. From time to time the drilling would stop and a bailer would be lowered into the hole to “bail out” the pulverized rocks. To be most effective the bit must not only heavy but be relatively sharp; not only did the steel pulverize the rocks but the rocks dulled the steel. A tool dresser utilized many skills of the blacksmith; as the dull bits were brought to him he heated them in his forge until the steel was malleable, then hammered it against an anvil until he had restored a cutting edge. The skills required included heating it the right temperature for working, then quenching it so it kept its temper and did not become brittle. This is what brought Bill Skelly into the Mid Continent oil fields, first in Kansas but soon (1919) to Tulsa where the largesse of the Burbank Field made Skelly only one of its many millionaires. By 1923 he become a civic leader, largely responsible for bringing Spavinaw’s water to Tulsa and for organizing the first International Oil Exposition which solidified Tulsa’s reputation as “Oil Capital of the World” until its discontinuation in 1975. He and his wife Gertrude built a palatial mansion at 21st and Madison for them

and their two daughters, where he entertained many industry greats including the Liedtke brothers Hugh and William Jr. Skelly, interested in aviation, bought and re-habilitated the Mid-Continent Aircraft Company factory, added pilot training to supplement the manufacturing and re-named it the Spartan School of Aeronautics. J. Paul Getty was also a visitor and it was probably here that Getty agreed to buy the manufacturing branch of the business. (Decades later when both principals were dead, Getty Oil brought it to full circle by buying Skelly Oil, the oil side of the business.) W.G. Skelly remained in Tulsa the rest of his life, leaving such memorials as Skelly Drive, Skelly Stadium and Skellytown, Texas.

* * *

Fred and Pauline read the Skelly biography and didn’t see much need for a personal interview. “He looks clean as a hounds tooth to me” Mr. Foster said. “How about you?” “Yeah, me too. Except for one thing; I’d like to ask him something about the International Petroleum Exposition.” “Well, he’s here waiting. Shall we call him in?” When Bill Skelly was seated he was told the same as the others had been—The Committee would ask him some questions, then make individual recommendations to St. Peter who would make the final decision. Pauline Lambert would have the first question. “For the first International Petroleum Exposition, did you make the arrangements for entertaining the ones who came?” Skelly looked puzzled. “We had committees to handle different aspects; one for publicity, one for exhibits, one to provide food, and so forth. As for entertaining, do you mean at the Exposition or after-hours entertaining?”

“I mean after-hours.” “I don’t that we organized after-hours entertainment. We printed brochures telling about hotels, restaurants and night-clubs, but we didn’t sponsor anything or take people out. Maybe some individuals would take out potential clients, but the Exposition itself did not.” “Did you know anything about the whore-house that was started up for the Exposition?” Skelly look changed from puzzlement to shock. “No such thing was done by the Exposition. I should know, because I organized the whole thing. I can’t say that no private business provided women or took men to any particular house, but you should know about that better than I, since you were in that business.” “Well, that’s why I’m asking, because I was in that business and I know for a fact that there was a house that opened up just about then, and that’s what I’m asking you about.” “I didn’t know anything about it at the time, but I know it was not sanctioned by the Exposition. I do there was talk then about such an establishment, but so far as I know it was only talk.” Pauline changed tack. “Mr. Skelly, you know my business, don’t you?’ “Yes, but by reputation only”. “So you never visited there?” “No.” “Did you ever hear rumors that daughters of rich oil men worked there?” “Yes, I heard them, but never in enough detail for me to believe them.” “You had daughters didn’t you? “Yes, two, Carolyn and Ann”. “Did you ever wonder about them?”

“You mean being in your house?!” incredulously, “I certainly did not!” “Or any of her friends?” “Obviously I can’t answer for her friends; I hardly ever saw one and I certainly say it never happened, but I can say I don’t believe it did.” “That’s all I have. What about you, Vernon?” “No. You’re excused, Mr. Skelly and thank you.” After he left, Foster asked Mrs. Lambert “What was that about, Pauline? I think you were after something.” “After the first IPE, there was talk downtown, on First Street, about how Circuit Girls had come in and how much money they took out of the city.” “Wait, wait, wait, Pauline. What’s a Circuit Girl? And what money had they taken out?” “Circuit girls are free-lance whores who travel around what we call the circuit, mostly following things like fairs from Dallas to Oklahoma City to Tulsa, Kansas City and so on. Where there’s a lot of men they come in, make their money and move on. Some city fathers worried that they were taking too much money with them when they left, so they wanted to establish a house and use local girls. You know, to keep the money in town. The increased business was more than we could handle down on First Street and to be honest, I think they wanted little higher class girls to cater to the businessmen coming in for the Petroleum Exposition. Maybe Mr. Skelly didn’t know anything about it but I do; they rented a vacant hotel out east of town and set up rooms in the top three stories. They recruited girls who wanted to make a little extra money—school teachers on the second floor, office girls on the third and nurses on the fourth. The customers could walk in, get a drink and browse from floor-to-floor, making their choices. “By all s it was a business success and as far as I could tell, it didn’t hurt me; my place wasn’t going to attract many high-powered businessmen to downtown. It worked out so well for the girls that they decided to keep it up at least for the rest of the summer. But then the owners began to get complaints from some of their girls that the teachers on the second floor were getting all the

customers and not leaving any for them. Some of the investors went out to see what was happening and found that the first floor reception room was busy and there seemed to be a lot of men coming and going, so they asked a few of them which floor they preferred. As the rumors had predicted, the great majority answered the second floor. When asked why, they all gave pretty much the same answer: ‘The nurses and office workers are all right, but you know how a school teacher is; if you don’t get it right the first time, they make you do it over!’ “About the other thing, him visiting there or his girls working there, you know I always ask that; I always like to see how a person reacts when they’re rattled.” Pauline, in a talkative mood, continued. “I’ve mentioned before that few of my girls—well, none of my girls—but some few girls in the business were forced in or held against their will. I know there’s a lot of talk about white slavers and girls that are addicted to dope or liquor who might need a steady income to feed their habit, but those are very few. Most of them do it because they need the money; they come to the big city without any money or friends or a place to stay and it’s not long after they can’t get a job waitressing, working in a laundry or as a seamstress that an acquaintance of theirs suggests turning a trick to get enough for a meal and maybe a place to spend the night. Once they’re in, it’s hard to get out; after whoring all night it’s not easy to get up in the morning, make yourself presentable and walk around slinging hash or standing over laundry tubs. Most girls are pretty averagelooking; there are a few real knock-outs, but my experience is that they don’t make out that much better than the average-lookers. First of all they scare off a lot of johns, guys who might have been rejected by just ordinary women; they aren’t anxious for more rejection which might happen with beautiful girls. From my position as operator of a house, I don’t much care for the knock-outs; they might be picky, turn some guy down, piss him off, then he goes to another girl and takes it out on her, besides making her feel like second choice. All in all, the beauties and the other girls fight like cats. “But I will say, some beauty queens do well—not at houses like mine, but freelancing in the fine hotels. They get paid better so they can afford to be choosy; I’ve heard them say they don’t do it with a guy unless she likes him; it’s kinda’ like going out on a date except for making money. One I heard about was being pestered by a guy she didn’t like; tried to get rid of him but he wouldn’t take the hint. Finally he asked her ‘Will you go to bed with me for five-hundred dollars?’

Since at that time her rate was about a hundred, she figured ‘Why not?’ Then he said ‘How about five dollars?’ Her pride hurt she answered ‘Of course not! What do you think I am?’ ’That’s already been established’ was his come-back ‘Now we’re just negotiating on the price’.” “She might have been the same one who was eating at the Mayo one evening when she was spotted by a man and wife also having supper. ‘What a beautiful girl’ said the wife. ‘What do you suppose she’s doing here by herself?’ ‘She’s working; she’s a hooker’ her husband said. ‘Oh, surely not! She’s too pretty for that.’ ‘O.K.’ he said ‘whatever you say’. Back in their room the wife wouldn’t give up. She kept asking ‘How can you say something like that about her’, ’She must be here with a theatre company’, or ‘She’s stranded because her train is running late.’ Finally he said ‘Look, we can settle this right now. I’ll call downstairs while you wait in the closet.’ Picking up the phone he called downstairs, asked for the head waiter, learned the girl was still in the restaurant and asked the waiter to send her up to his room number. A couple minutes later came a knock on the door, the husband opened and the girl asked ‘Did you send for me?’ He invited her in saying ‘We need to talk about this, how much is this going to cost me?’ ‘One hundred dollars.’ ‘That’s a little more than I usually spend, how about ten?’ ‘No, I don’t work for less than a hundred.’ Apologizing, he showed her to the door with ‘No offense intended’. ‘None taken’ she replied. The wife, who had witnessed the encounter through the louvers of the closet door told her husband ‘You were right. I would never have believed it!’

Next morning the very same girl had finished her breakfast and was leaving as the couple entered and took seats at a table. Walking behind the husband she bent down and whispered in his ear. “See what you get for ten dollars?’

XVI

J. PAUL GETTY

Jean Paul Getty’s career was in many ways the most remarkable as well as one of the longest-running in the American oil business. His father George came to Oklahoma before it was Oklahoma—Indian Territory in 1903—to buy a lease and establish production and the Getty name. When George followed the business to California, J. Paul stayed behind to establish his own reputation. It has been suggested that part of J.P.’s unstable relationship with his parents may have been that they were emotionally ill-prepared for J. Paul’s birth so soon after losing their first-born, a ten-year old daughter. As a boy he never had any birthday parties, or Christmas trees or any boyhood friends to play games with, to teach him how to win and how to lose. His parents were emotionally uninvolved with him and each other, living separately for a time. His father became deathly sick with typhoid but refused to see anything but a practitioner of Christian Science, to which belief he converted after his recovery. J. Paul, being criticized later for his sexual exploits, onished his father that his marriage too was unstable and he had come very close to a divorce. At eleven he managed to buy 100 shares of Minnehoma stock thus becoming, in his father’s own words “one of my bosses”. Maybe partly because of his stock ownership, he became interested at this age in his father’s business and in the so-called “Henty’s books”, a series of youth fiction that focused on “work, save and learn”. But according to his diary, J. P. expressed very little interest in his mother. The Gettys, George, Sarah and J. Paul, moved to California in 1906 where Paul soon began his higher education; USC he considered too flippant and switched to U of California at Berkeley without notable improvement. He traveled to the east and from there to England where he enrolled at Oxford. Tensions with his parents erupted over J.P. s exorbitant expenses resulting in his returning home without a diploma. It is unclear whether it was withheld for non-payment of fees or incomplete work; the question remained unresolved, but some years later a

“certificate of completion” was issued. It was during this time that George’s handsome cousin died after being cared for by Sarah. She was so undone by his death that she suffered a stroke and became deaf, lame and speech-disabled. At age 19 George threatened to seize J. Paul’s Minnehoma stock which by then had accumulated to 15,000 shares. The young Getty declared “war” on his father, a truce being reached on condition that George would pay J.P. one hundred dollars a month to buy cheap leases for Minnehoma in Oklahoma. The price limit required J.P. to shop carefully for leases, avoiding those pursued by better-established companies. As an experienced oil-field operator and tooldresser, he was well-suited to field work. His first big success was in Stone Bluff, an area picked over by some more experienced operators. Exactly how that happened is a matter of some dispute, depending on whose story one wishes to believe. J. Paul’s version is that he managed to find a likely property in a “hot” area that was still not leased and had “put one over” on his rivals. A second version appearing in The Tulsa World is that production on the Nancy Taylor lease was something of a surprise in an uninteresting area and not such a coup as Getty implied. The third is a local story that Paul was pursuing leases in Muskogee and had occasion to ride the train back and forth from Tulsa to Muskogee, ing through Stone Bluff on the journey. Going in both directions, he noticed that the train would always change speeds at about the same place as it went up and then down the slight grade. Getty deduced the bulge in the earth’s surface there indicated the presence of an anticline—an underground feature that often indicated the presence of accumulated oil. (If it was indeed an anticline it forms an interesting bookend to a later incident also involving an anticline.) Whichever of the three is true, subsequent drilling resulted in production which he sold to Josh Cosden and reed his parents in California. In 1916, Getty Oil Company, baby brother to Minnehoma and George F. Getty, Inc. was formed, allowing Jean Paul to retire as a millionaire. By this time some serious rifts were apparent in the Getty family—for openers, the father was rock-solid honest, repeating that his word which cannot be broken is better than a contract which “can be broken by my lawyers”. The son, as had already exhibited to many observers, was greedy, who only made money so he could make more money. Emotional ties to his mother, no matter how firmly expostulated, were seldom exhibited.

Another element was soon to be added to this volatile mixture; an Elsie Ekstrom sued Jean Paul for child , only the first of a lifetime of sexual escapades. Now 30 years old, his propensity for teen-aged girls became apparent. He met, married, then divorced Jeanine Demont, leaving a son, George Franklin II. He fled to Mexico where he met sisters Allene and Belene Ashby. He married Allene (while carrying on with Belene) before his first divorce was final. He moved to Paris, then Vienna where he met and married Adolphine “Fini” Heimle. George Getty died shortly thereafter so Jean Paul returned home to learn that the bulk of his father’s estate had been left to Sarah, and which was soon to form the basis of the famous Sarah Getty Trust. During the Great Depression Getty began to supplement his own petroleum by buying troubled companies with large reserves; Pacific Western and Tide Water became his principal targets, attracting the attention and competition of established majors, especially Standard of New Jersey, battles which would continue for years. In the middle of these, his marriages continued (in 1932 he divorced “Fini” in August and married Ann Rork in December.) and his mother formed the Sarah Getty Trust which would provide an impregnable nest egg to protect Getty and his children from his own reckless investments. Shortly after World War II broke out, J. Paul returned to Tulsa bought Spartan from W. B. Skelly, trained pilots and manufactured planes throughout the war and travel trailers shortly after the war was ended. More important to this are the acquaintances he made while in Tulsa. In the course of his Spartan negotiations Getty became acquainted with Skelly’s next-door neighbors the Liedtkes, including the father who had been the youngest delegate to the Oklahoma constitutional convention and his two sons, Hugh and William Jr. J. Paul in fact was a guest at Hugh’s engagement party. He also introduced the staid Tulsans to the titillating escapades of Joan Barry, a nubile young starlet who was ed between Getty and Charles Chaplin in a series of well-publicized installments. To skip ahead in the story, Hugh Liedtke socialized with George Getty II, partnered with George H.W. Bush in Midland to build Zapata Petroleum, and then bought Pennzoil, the company that ultimately bought Getty Oil Company from Gordon Getty, the third generation of the oil Gettys.

What the Old Man (J. Paul Getty) did between the time he left Tulsa in 1947 and when Liedtke bought Getty Oil Company from Gordon in 1983-84 is a whole ’nother story, or stories. One of these is Getty’s impact on the art scene, beginning with his interest in French furniture and ending with the establishment of the Sarah Getty Art Foundation, housed in a replica of an Italian villa and filled with a private collection ranked just behind the Metropolitan Museum (New York) and the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), both over one hundred years old. Another is the story of Getty’s fascination with Hitler and Nazism, kindled when J. Paul was in in the late 1930s. His pursuit of domestic oil reserves is embodied in his acquisition of Pacific Western and Tide Water over a period between 1930 and 1937 during which time his net worth increased by about fifteen million dollars. Perhaps the last and capstone achievement was his foray into the Middle East, which until Getty’s arrival was perceived as the domain of the major international companies, the so-called “seven sisters.” The stage for the sisters domination of oil production had been set at the end of World War I, continued until World War II and was considered complete by the 1960s. These seven sisters stood alone, far above the second string, the so-called independent oil producers. No single independent or group of independents had the resources to compete with the likes of British Petroleum, Shell Oil, Standard Oil and their cadre of subsidiaries. At least not until 1949 when J. Paul Getty managed to win the rights for a lease in the heretofore off-limits territory called the Neutral Zone. There are actually two Neutral Zones, both bordering Saudi Arabia—the SaudiIraqi N.Z. shared with Iraq and the Saudi-Kuwaiti N.Z. shared with Kuwait. Both came into existence under similar circumstances when the sharing countries could not agree on their borders. Not being able to agree on ownership they came to a typical Middle Eastern solution—they belonged to neither and they belonged to both. That worked out well enough when ownership was limited to a thousand acres of very sparse seasonal grazing and a lot of sand. When oil was added into the mix, ownership became very important and was settled by some arbitrary lines added to some maps. The north half of the SaudiKuwaiti NZ caught J. Paul Getty’s attention because it was within a few miles of the Burgham Field, at the time one of the biggest in the world. Getty, in the belief that the productivity zone that produced the Burgham extended further south, gained the lease by one of his most unconventional acts of his life. A man

who had always been totally in charge, done what only he wanted to do and never delegated responsibility, selected a hitherto unknown geologist from his Pacific Western subsidiary and dispatched him to the Emir of Kuwait with authority to negotiate for the lease. Paul Walton did so with aplomb, perseverance, diligence and fortitude, prevailing over all odds not only to gain the lease but to fly over it in an airplane and locate, from the air, an anticline which he said contained an oilfield. This is the second anticline (after the one at Stone Bluff, Oklahoma) to figure so largely in J. Paul Getty’s life. The climax of the story is that geologists who arrived later on the scene rejected Walton’s choice and drilled five dry holes over five years at a cost of thirty million dollars before returning to the anticline and drilling the discovery well. The anti-climax is that Paul Walton contracted amoebic dysentery during the four-month ordeal in Kuwait, returned home and went straight into a hospital, spent his own money recuperating for three years until being ushered into Getty’s presence who thanked him for his labors and awarded him a 1200 dollar bonus, for leasing and locating a nine billion barrel oil field. Another example of Getty making money just so he could make more money.

* * *

In time J. Paul Getty appeared before the committee to be evaluated on his appeal for approval into Heaven. Pauline Lambert opened the interview. “Mr. Getty, when we read your biographical information we were struck with how much information you provided; at about five pages, it’s the longest we’ve seen. The average biography runs about four paragraphs, say a short page. Even more interesting, some of the topics mentioned have such few details we asked our Information Technology group to scan this new information into our memories while we were sleeping. Now that we have these details, including those in your books, we can proceed with the interview. “We see you lived in Tulsa at two different times and probably traveled there in your business. I presume you know me and the business I was in; I always ask the men whether you have ever visited my establishment.” “No, I have not. If you know of my life you should know that I never found it

necessary to pay for women.” “That’s one of the things I wanted to ask about. When you were making your conquests did you ever wonder if the women loved you or did they love your money?” “Yes, I did wonder about that, so at times I would introduce myself as ‘Mr. Paul’ and not reveal my business and I must say the results were very much the same.” “I can see how that could be true for the casual relationships, but for the longer term ones, ones where the women did know who you were, do you think they stayed with you for the lifestyle and for the hope of future gifts?” “Always possible, but why do you suspect me more than any other man?” “Only because the codicils of your will seem to show a pattern of putting women into your will and then taking them out.” Mr. Getty not replying, Pauline went on. “Since you’ve opened the subject of women in your life, I presume that in your reading you’ve become familiar with the Ten Commandments.” “Of course.” “You may have heard that in Mr. Foster’s business experiences he learned of sins of possessiveness and in mine I learned about sins of the flesh. In this assignment, we have pretty much continued in those roles. My specialty is the Deadly Sins of Lust, Pride and Wrath, while Vernon handles Greed, Gluttony and Envy. Converting these into the Ten Commandments, I handle Sabbath day, adultery, wife coveting, honoring your parents and Vernon takes care of stealing and covetousness of goods. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but it seems like you might fit in there somewhere.” “So you’re telling me I’m condemned from the start.” Vernon Foster spoke up. “We’re trying not to, but you will it your record speaks for itself. The way this works is that St. Peter goes strictly by the written record, but he’s over-loaded so Mrs. Lambert and I have been commissioned to relieve his load by interviewing applicants for motivation, state of mind, tendencies, that kind of thing. Our recommendations go to him but we don’t

know what he does with them; in your case I’d guess that we can’t hurt you, but it’s possible we could help you. But these interviews are optional; you can opt out if you wish.” Getty was terse. “Carry on.” “Mr. Getty,” Foster began “Can you tell me the circumstances of your mother setting up her trust?” “Her stated goal was to take care of me, my children and grandchildren.” “Did she not expect you would do that?” “I think she believed that my investments were too risky, I might lose all my money and my children would be left with nothing.” “But you did not agree with her.” “No, I did not. And I must say that my judgment has been proved right. My investments were safe and I could have taken care of my heirs.” “And did you? All the changes you made to your will seemed to indicate you were ambivalent about your inheritance, and how it was to be distributed.” “At times I would become displeased and change my will, yes.” Pauline chimed in. “Was part of that to keep all your old girlfriends around? Were you paying for their love?” Getty still failed to respond. Foster wanted to explore Getty’s business ethics more fully. “Mr. Getty, why and how did you go about acquiring Pacific Western and Tide Water?” “Both these companies were listed on the stock market at prices that ebbed and flowed but which always reflected what willing buyers and willing sellers believed to be fair. Your family has always been in the stock market; surely you see no evidence of my taking unfair advantage in what I did.” This time it was Foster who did not immediately respond, but took another tack.

“Speaking of Pacific Western, do you Paul Weston?” “Yes, he was a geologist in the Rocky Mountain Division who was of some help to me in Kuwait.” “Of some help!?” Wasn’t he crucial in winning the concession, then carrying out early exploration to locate the best drilling location and at the expense of his health?” “Yes, he was of substantial help. And he was rewarded according to his contract . In fact, I gave him a bonus.” “How much money did you earn out of the Wafra Field and how much was Walton’s bonus? Mr. Getty, you are guilty of greed.” Changing direction again, Mrs. Lambert asked “What about your going into the art business; what was that about, more greed, or covetousness, or envy?” “Mrs. Lambert, your questions are hostile and seem to imply guilt where none has been proven nor even charged. I collected art for its own sake and for my own enjoyment and make provision for it to be shared with the people of Los Angeles and the world. Surely you can find no fault in that?” It was Pauline’s turn to avoid answering. She and Vernon Foster conferred briefly before dismissing Getty. “Mr. Getty, you may return to the anteroom; we will make our recommendations to St. Peter, who will call you when he is ready. Thank you for your time.”

XVII

THE PHILLIPS BOYS

To the people of Oklahoma, when one speaks of the “Phillips Boys”, most will think of Frank and Waite and a few will include L. E. (Lee Eldas) because these were in the oil business; only the most punctilious will that there were actually three others—Ed, Fred and Wiate. Wiate, who was Waite’s identical twin, died young, when the two were on a teen-age lark, seeing the country when Wiate died of acute appendicitis, cutting short their young adventure. Who can say what the “Phillips Boys” would have done if another had survived to complement the “book-ends” (Frank and Waite) who were two of the most successful oil men of the 20th century? Their parents, Lewis Franklin and Lewcinda had been born in Iowa and moved to Nebraska shortly before Frank was born and before the grasshopper plague of 1874 struck their farm. “Taking the grasshoppers as God’s message”, Lewis packed up and returned his family to Iowa. Frank is often described as being a barber before he went into the oil business. If using the word “barber” as in “just a barber”, it is mildly dismissive and unjustly so, for Frank was definitely much more than “just a barber”. After the first time he saw a barber dressed in striped pants, Frank decided he wanted to become a barber and wear striped pants every day, not just on Sundays. He got his chance at fourteen when a local barber let Frank have a chair in his shop and began to teach the ambitious young man how to clip hair and shave chins. Within a few years he had three shops and literally owned the barber business in Crestor, Iowa. Such a personable and successful young man would have been considered a good catch for most of the young women in Crestor, but not quite good enough for the local banker, John, father of Jane. But after meeting Frank, becoming acquainted with his good business sense and introducing him to the banking business his objections were overcome and the young couple married in 1897.

With no disrespect to Jane, it is plausible that Frank was interested not only in Jane, but also in putting his skills of working hard, saving money and pleasing customers to work in his father-in-law’s business. While retaining ownership of his tonsorial parlors, Frank stuck his toe into the banking waters. He followed these leads into Bartlesville in 1904 which was in the middle of an oil boom resulting from the Foster “blanket lease” of the Osage nation. Enthralled by the possibilities and the relatively modest entry price he bought a lease, took a leave from his bank job, hired a drilling rig and set up on his newly-acquired site and brought in a gusher on September 6, 1905. On his fifth try. In an early demonstration of Frank’s persistence (he was not easily discouraged once he got a hunch that there was oil under his feet), the “Anna Anderson No. 1” came in at a modest but satisfactory 250 barrels per day, enough for him to repay his loans and have enough left over to continue his drilling program. At some point L.E. entered into the family business of oil exploration and production but with some reluctance; L.E. was more satisfied with the safe and sure banking business and had less taste for the roller-coaster ride of drilling for oil. Sometime later baby brother Waite, an entrepreneur like Frank came in; the three of them, usually together, sometimes individually, quickly accumulated fortunes. The other family , father, brothers and sisters were also enjoying successful lives and apparently felt no jealousy or resentment over their brothers’ wealth. Frank’s interests soon grew beyond simply drilling wells and producing wells; he could see further than most and began to build a more integrated company. Partly because of World War I he could see the possibilities that automobiles and airplanes presented. Expanding into pipelines (to move crude to new markets), refineries (to turn crude oil into gasoline) and service stations (to deliver gasoline to consumers), and a New York office (to be near the money) he left little brother, the one who preferred drilling and production, behind. Waite was not the only one left behind in Frank’s drive for success and power. At some point a pert young woman, Fern Butler described as having a “fiery temper, intelligent (and) china blue eyes” applied for a job at Phillips Petroleum Company and after getting a personal approval from Frank was hired as a secretary. With a “stunning figure, small waist and hips, shapely legs and firm bust-line” she must have personified Oscar & Hammerstein’s description “narrow as an arrow, but broad where a broad should be broad”. Thus began a relationship that would continue until and beyond Frank’s death twenty-five

years later. In such a small company town like Bartlesville, this secret was not secret for long. There can be no doubt Jane learned of it early on. The exact arrangement is not known, but Fern was transferred to the New York office where Frank spent almost half his time, he and Jane stayed married, and the talk continued. Waite, content with his role, incorporated his own company in 1922 and went on leasing land, drilling wells and producing oil. When he had earned enough money (1925) he systematically liquidated his holdings, began buying real estate and building buildings. He used the proceeds to buy a huge ranch in New Mexico (Philmont), prime real estate in Tulsa, a mansion (Philbrook) and office buildings (Philtower and Philcade). Like many an old war-horse, Waite, out to pasture, was unhappy and soon ready to get back in harness. In 1927 he and Frank re-united, at least for a while. But like two horses, when they’re both on the same trail, one has to be ahead. For the Phillips boys, it had to be Frank, so Waite bowed out again. Frank Phillips’s successes expanded to encom natural gas, liquefied petroleum gases (LPG), petrochemicals and most significantly, the Ekofisk complex in the Norwegian North Sea. Frank himself successfully side-stepped the “Wolves of Wall Street”, avoiding the fate of E. W. Marland. As mentioned earlier, Marland, wanting to expand faster than his own cash flow could take him, borrowed from J.P. Morgan. Unable to repay the loans, he mortgaged more and more of his company until Morgan had it all. Besides his corporate debts Marland owed personal debts. Down to his house and its furnishings, he let it be known that even those were for sale; Phillips sent his museum curator to Ponca City to help out his old friend. How E. W. Marland lost his company to the financiers and Frank Phillips didn’t would make companion case studies—bookends that could be arranged on a shelf with Philips at one end, eminently successful, Marland at the other abjectly unsuccessful and countless other companies in the middle of the spectrum. Part of the reason is that Phillips had been a banker before being an oilman and for much of his career he vacillated between the two occupations. Once he told his brother “Hell, L.E., we’re not oilmen, we’re bankers!” and began divesting himself of his oil properties. Shortly thereafter, he recanted “Hell, L.E., we’re not bankers, we’re oilmen” and reversed course. As an oilman, he knew the vagaries implicit in rolling the dice and as a banker he knew the necessity of controlling the Board of Directors. Early he opened a New York office where he

could visit the money-men, get to know them, curry their favors, and beat them at their game of honeyed talk and back-room dealings. Always maintaining a balance of careful expansion, borrowing only when necessary (but not too much), he grew his facilities, kept his loans paid and stayed in charge. Like always, Lady Luck played a part; Phillips made his crucial move immediately after World War I when he could foresee the burgeoning gasoline market; Marland’s decision came in the middle 20s, after supplies, facilities and markets were already pretty well divided up. Frank Phillips and Bill Skelly were friends—or at least frenemies. They had wrestled in the dirt under the Million Dollar Elm on the Osage Court House grounds while competing for leases. After a night of drinking they scuffled again in the lobby of the Mayo Hotel for an unknown reason—maybe a lease, maybe a deal gone sour, maybe just for the hell of it, two old buffalo bulls competing for turf. The successes of the Phillips’s did not devolve onto Frank’s only son, John, who came to epitomize the spoiled, pampered child of rich, distracted parents. His father tried to involve John in the family business, going so far as to reverse the normal process by starting John at the top and letting him work himself down. He became alcoholic, married and divorced, embarrassing himself and his parents many times. L.E. continued as a Phillips executive whose duties slowly diminished as L.E. became older and more set in his ways. He degenerated into a nit-picker in charge of the steno pool, whose main duty came to be skulking around coffee shops during business hours looking for girls who were taking un-authorized coffee breaks. His health, always precarious caused his early retirement. He died on April 16, 1944 at 67 years. Frank lived on until 76 and died on August 23, 1950. Waite gave Philbrook to the city of Tulsa, Philmont to the Boy Scouts and then gave them the Philtower to generate enough cash to run the ranch. He died on January 27, 1964 at 81 years old.

Frank, L.E. and Waite were ushered into the conference room where Pauline and Vernon waited. “Good morning” Vernon greeted them. “I’m Henry Foster and this is Pauline

Lambert. Do you know why we’ve asked you in today?” Perhaps significantly, Frank answered for all of them. “We’ve heard some rumors while we’ve been waiting. Seems like you’re looking us over to see if we’re fit to go to Heaven.” “Close, but not exactly. St. Peter is still in charge of ittance, but as you might have noticed from the waiting room, he’s gotten a little bit behind. Mrs. Lambert and I have been asked to do some preliminary screening to help speed him up a little. These hearings have no resemblance to a court of law. No attorneys, no witnesses, no judgments. To supplement St. Peter’s Book of Judgment we examine contemporary newspapers, court reports, printed materials for a fuller description of person’s lives. The first thing I should ask if you would prefer to be interviewed in a group or individually.” Again it was Frank who spoke for all. “A group sounds O.K. to me. What are the advantages and disadvantages?” “For us, there’s a small time advantage in processing groups rather than individuals. Since our product will be individual recommendations to St. Peter, the more we can evaluate motivation and intent the more accurate our judgment may be. For you, whether your brothers’ opinions will be helpful or not is for each of you to determine.” Again, Frank spoke first. “That puts a little different light on it. I’m the oldest, so naturally I’ve always kinda’ taken the lead. In business dealings I might have been a little too forceful, so I’d like for my brothers to speak for themselves. Whatever they decide, I’ll go along with. What about you, L.E?” “I’m all right with it. It’s true Frank usually led the way, but he never steered me wrong, nor took advantage of me. At least not that I knew of.” Everybody turned to Waite, because he was the one whose activities had most competed against Frank’s. “This is interesting. There’ve been times when Frank and I’ve gone in together and split up later and others when we’ve taken opposite sides originally and got together afterwards. All in all though, I think we came out pretty even and any advantages were fairly won and not meanspirited.” “Good. Now Pauline, who lived in Tulsa in your era, usually leads off the

questioning.” “This time, Vernon, why don’t you start off. You had business dealings with these men.” “All right. Frank, we both negotiated leases with Indian land-owners, and know some oil companies occasionally took unfair advantage of them. Do you have personal knowledge of any such circumstances?” This question put the elder Phillips on guard. He did have such personal knowledge, but he also knew that “unfair advantage” was always in the eye of the beholder. Even if leases were signed with full consent and full knowledge of existing facts, if later circumstances changed the facts, the land-owner could become unhappy with the results, and believe and proclaim he had been used unfairly. “Now, H.V. (using the name usually reserved for friends), we both knew such things happened in the early days, but by the time I was in business the Osage leases were auctioned off in Pawhuska. You and I both spent time under the shade of the Million Dollar Elm.” Watching Foster’s eyes, Phillips (an excellent negotiator) saw that this flattering and dissembling answer would not be good enough. Both men knew it was only the big, new leases that were sold at auction; the bulk of sales—renewals, smaller plots, leases reversed in court—was negotiated directly between landowner and company. Frank knew he would have to do better. He continued. “However there were some leases that had been contested in court and reversed that were settled by my landmen. Much as I wished I could, I just didn’t have time to review all of them.” Turning to the next brother, Vernon asked “L.E., you were more of a banker than an oilman weren’t you?” “I’d probably agree. I made more money in oil, but I had more fun in banking. I liked the one-on-one, getting acquainted, maybe being seen more as helpful, in banking.” “Were you ever accused or sanctioned for usury, conflict of interest, lawsuits, foreclosures, anything like that?” , our access to printed materials is

almost unlimited.” “Surely you know Mr. Foster, such unpleasant events are unavoidable in banking. If this was a courthouse, you wouldn’t even be allowed to ask such a question. I consider it inappropriate and insulting!” “Thank you, but we did warn you this is not a courthouse. Our job is to learn how people think. Their reaction to impertinent accusations is part of that.” Continuing, he addressed Waite. “Because there are three Mr. Phillips’s, may I call you Waite?” Acknowledging the affirmative nod, he asked about the New Mexico ranch. “How big is it and how much did it cost?” “The original ranch was about 127,000 acres and cost about 1-3/4 million dollars. Later we added another 175,000 acres for four million dollars.” “The first was pretty cheap compared to the addition.” “The grass was pretty sparse without a lot of water. It was pretty slim pickin’s for cows at first. After we’d made some improvements, drilled some water wells, the neighboring properties began to take on some added value, all of which caused the prices to go up.” “How much of the land did you give to the Boy Scouts?” “Just a fraction to start with, but ended it up being about half. In the beginning, like I said, it was pretty sparse and not too good for camping. By the time we had some water, some good trees and access roads it would accommodate more boys so we gave them more land.” “How much income tax were you paying at the time?” “I don’t for sure, but it wasn’t much. You know, don’t you, that my wife and I had been donating about half our income long before we had the ranch. And the ranch didn’t make us any money, so between donating half our oil money and half our ranch (at the purchase price) it couldn’t have been much, between zero and ten percent. I wish my ant were up here, he usually answers these questions for me.”

“How much did Frank pay?” “Oh, don’t ask me! He’s right here, ask him yourself.” “That won’t be necessary. You’ve answered all my questions. All of you have. Mrs. Lambert, do you have anything?” “Yes. This is for the three of you—have I met any of you before? Either in my business or socially? More wary now, Frank waited for L.E. to answer. “Not that I know of, Mrs. Lambert, but I never spent much time in Tulsa.” Waite went next. “What business were you in, Mrs. Lambert?” “I was the owner-operator of the May Rooms.” “I thought I ed the name. I read the Tulsa newspapers and you are sometimes mentioned.” “But have you ever been there yourself?” “No, I have not.” “How about you?” she asked Frank. “I often entertained in Tulsa, and I have had occasion to direct my associates to establishments such as yours, but I have never personally visited.” “Now that we’re on the subject, will you tell us about Fern Butler? “I thought you’d ask me about that. She worked for me, we later became friends, then more than friends.” “You it you were intimate with her.” “Of course, I have to it it. I can’t deny it. Everyone who knew me knew about Fern, even my wife. But the relationship was completely consensual. I never coerced her or threatened her job. She could break it off she wanted, leave Bartlesville, or leave Oklahoma.”

“In fact, she did leave Oklahoma for New York, where she remained your employee and your lover.” “Yes she did. But with her skills and her s she could have had good a job with any company in New York.” “But with the same ‘fringe benefits?’” “The ‘fringe benefits’ were not part of her status as a valued employee. They were part of her status as a beloved woman.” “That suits me. Any woman who’s valued as an employee is within her rights to love anybody she wants to. And he’s entitled to love her. No more questions.” “Nor for me either. You’re excused” With these words Vernon Foster concluded the interview. When the three Phillips boys were out of the room, Pauline and Vernon looked at each other in mutual surprise. The more impulsive Pauline spoke first. “That was a good idea gone badly! Who would have thought an interview with three brothers would have turned into an interview with the big brother doing all the talking!” “I couldn’t believe that our idea of having three siblings talk about one another could have failed so completely. I didn’t have any brothers myself but I my cousins dissecting each other in private no matter how much they stuck together in private. Even the Jones interview between such bitter opponents and the Cosden vs. Sinclair standoff provided more enlightening fireworks.” “Now that I think of it I shouldn’t have been surprised. I came from a family of eight and even though we fought like cats and dogs, whenever an outsider got involved we stuck together. If one of us told an outright lie, we others would swear to it being the truth.” “I believe you’re right. Well, we’re living and learning” Foster concluded. “On to the next one.”

XVIII

THE NATIVES BECOME RESTLESS

From what Gabriel and Michael had been hearing, the work of the Committee was going well. A significant backlog had been cleared, Mrs. Lambert and Mr. Foster had established such a pattern and efficiency in the hearings this pilot program was likely to be replicated into many more Committees and eliminate the congestion in the waiting room for all eternity. (Note the distinction “had been hearing” not “are hearing”). Some applicants have been complaining to St. Peter they had not been given a proper hearing, specifically that Pauline Lambert appeared prejudiced in her questioning. St. Peter was not able to satisfy these complaints completely since the rule had been established that Foster and Lambert were to submit individual recommendations and only St. Peter had seen them; he knew their recommendations only and not how they had been reached. For this new system which had not yet been de-bugged, Peter could see these plaintiffs would require a higher ruling. Under the old system, Peter’s word was the only word; either the Gates were opened or the floor was opened; there was no appeal. Now, undoubtedly because the complainers felt the Committee was comprised of contemporaries without jurisdiction because they themselves were not residents of Heaven, and because some recent applicants were just more litigious, they were simply resisting judgment. In either case it was a matter for the Executives.

* * *

The Holy Trinity and the Two Mary s were meeting in executive session with Vernon Foster and Pauline Lambert. Jesus Christ, Acting Chairman, was speaking:

“Ms. Lambert and Mr. Foster, we’re here to congratulate you on your achievement; you’ve processed (looking at his notes) 11,396,778 applicants, made your judgments and forwarded your recommendations 11,395,439 and 11,392,423 respectively. We understand that without infinite wisdom it’s difficult to be 100% certain all the time, so between finding some applicants exactly on the knife-edge between being worthy or unworthy of entering Heaven and recusing yourselves for personal reasons, reaching a conclusion is not always possible. Notwithstanding, we consider this trial run a success and with some tweaking we expect to establish more Committees to clear high volume back-ups —like the great plagues of the Middle Ages, world wars, and famines. We only hope we can find committee- as good as yourselves from these eras to serve so well. Pausing for breath, He was surprised to hear Ms. Lambert say “but?”. “I beg your pardon?” “But. That’s what people say when they’re done buttering you up and before they tell you what you didn’t do. Like in ‘you’ve done a great job, and all that, but’. It’s after the ‘but’, you hear what you didn’t do so good.” “That’s very perceptive of you Ms. Lambert, and while what We said was completely sincere, you are correct that there are some things, which We characterized as ‘tweaking’ which might be appropriate. Specifically, some of your applicants, almost all of whom were highly-placed executives schooled by legal staffs, have remarked that their treatment was, and here I’m reading, ‘arbitrary, peremptory, disrespectful’ and in a few cases ‘profane’”. “In short, you’re saying they object to being judged by a woman of ‘known moral turpitude’ who since she lived in a glass house ‘shouldn’t throw stones’.” The Magdalen was quick to the defense. “But that was the whole point” she reminded. “Someone who knew the seamy side of life is more likely to understand how life sometimes forces us to do things we’d rather not and less likely to be taken in by lame excuses.” “Just a minute” Pauline interrupted “We’ve run these interviews exactly like you said. We’ve told them they don’t have to answer our questions, but there’ll be no Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination. If they don’t answer, that may be held against them. There are no character witnesses, either for or against;

they’re strictly on their own. We can ask about printed materials in the public domain: books, magazine articles, newspaper stories. Those were the rules and they seem fair to me. If the complainers don’t, I’ll agree to the same deal; ask me what you want and you can judge my answers. If I don’t answer you can draw your own conclusions as to whether it’s because I don’t know, can’t or just don’t want to answer.” St. Peter, who had been her de facto supervisor, spoke up to agree on her interpretation of her instructions. “ that before we appointed Mrs. Lambert to the Evaluation Committee, we knew of her occupation as a madam of a house of prostitution and deemed that presented no obstacle to her suitability. The Committee-person is allowed to question an applicant about their life, both public and private. She may not call witnesses against them nor can they call witnesses on their own behalf. All parties may use evidence in the public record. They can refuse to answer any question and that refusal may be interpreted as implied guilt. Foster also spoke up “Since Pauline and I are committee- together I believe I should be subject to the same scrutiny as she. While it may be true that she expresses herself differently than I, the words used to describe her treatment of the applicants is not accurate. I stand with her to protest this criticism.” None of the Executives appeared surprised by these full-throated expressions of . “Nevertheless” the Christ continued “this concept of committee is a departure from earlier policies and in the interests of product improvement deserves a full review. Fairness to the applicants is also an issue to be considered. Committee hearings are to be suspended until this issue is resolved.” Turning to Peter He ordered “Gather as many of these plaintiffs as necessary to provide a representative sample. Two days from today we will reconvene to hear these complaints.”

* * *

Now, Mr. Jones, you may have the first question.” “I am insulted to be judged by the keeper of a brothel…”

St. Peter cut him off “We have stipulated her occupation. If you can show how it affected her disposition of your case, please state it.” “When she said Miss Comstock was no better than one of her prostitutes…” Again St. Peter cut him off, turning to the angel acting as Reporter and asking her to “Read the record.” Reporter: “The record shows that Mrs. Lambert asked no questions and made only one remark to Miss Comstock “True there was no question, but the remark itself was scurrilous” Jones rebutted. “Reporter, do you have the remark” St. Peter inquired. “It wasn’t so much a remark as it was a song” and her angelic voice, far suring Kitty Wells, crooned “‘Too many times it’s married men who think they’re single, that have caused many a poor girl to go wrong.’” St. Peter tried again. “Mr. Jones, you protested your interview with Ms. Lambert and Mr. Foster. Other than what you have just said, exactly what are you protesting?” “I protest her using the contents of an unpublished, unsubstantiated book to defame me and my employee.” “I it its issibility might depend on its being published, but the criterion is that it must be in the public domain. As a newspaper publisher can you explain to us how to decide between something appearing in your newspaper as true and something appearing in a book as untrue?” Jones was so overcome he opened his mouth to respond, but after three tries, with nothing came out he simply said “No” and sat down. “Miss Comstock, do you have any comments as to your treatment while being interviewed by the Committee?” asked Peter. “No… well, yes. I just don’t think it’s fair to let someone who’s just a human like I am to have the power to say someone should go to Heaven or to hell.”

St. Peter responded “I don’t altogether disagree with you, Miss Comstock, but I, a human, was given the power to do just that (Matt. 16:19), and that power has not been delegated to the Committee. Their only power, and their responsibility, is to examine the applicants’ lives and make a recommendation to me who will make the decision. Does that make you feel better?” “Not much” she replied ruefully.

XIX

THE “TRIAL” OF PAULINE LAMBERT

After the rough treatment received at the hands of Pauline Lambert, the oil barons asked for, and received, a continuance so they could prepare better for their next grilling. Their strategy was to appear on a t and discredit Pauline so badly that her opinions and recommendations would be disregarded. Richard Jones and J. Paul Getty, who had been badly burned both in printed articles and in their efforts to disqualify Pauline on her past as a madam, would take the lead in turning the tables on her by uncovering all records and stories that would damage her credibility. This strategy was revealed in the opening question by Richard Jones, “So, Mrs. Lambert, or Palmer, or Stenhouse, how is it that you have used so many different names?” “I had my maiden name and I took the names of my husbands.” “So will you tell us these names?” “I was born a Gillion, married a Stenhouse who died, then a Palmer.” “Then why do we call you Mrs. Lambert?” “I took up with a man named Lambert, and used his name for business purposes.” “You co-habited with him outside of wedlock. Is that not what you have accused me of, and called it adultery?” “The Bible says adultery is a married person having sex outside of marriage; I was not married, you were.”

“Some press reports say that your first marriage was to a man named Lambert.” “That is incorrect. You know how newspapers are; they get things mixed up, sometimes on purpose to make it a better story.” “That same report says you had only two marriages, that produced six children, none of them still living. That conflicts with what you just told us.” “I just told you that newspapers don’t always get their stories straight.” “How many children did you have, Mrs. Whatever-your-name-is?” Appealing to St. Peter, she asked “I don’t see what my children have to do with this.” “Mrs. Lambert, this investigation is to determine whether you are qualified to judge others, and your treatment of truth is a factor. Please answer.” “I only had two children, both boys, both by Mr. Stenhouse.” “In the Tulsa City Directories, you describe yourself as “widow of George. Is that George Lambert, the man you never married or George Stenhouse who made you a widow more than 50 years ago?” “I never said there was a Lambert, let alone being named George, I just said George Stenhouse died, leaving me a widow I’m still his widow, no matter how long ago it happened.” “Another article states that you paid policemen. Is that not bribery, which you accused Mr. Sinclair of?” “I might have paid policemen, but it wasn’t for them to do something, it was for them to not do something. And it sure wasn’t enough so that I had to carry it in a suitcase. Back then it was just a cost of doing business.” J. Paul Getty had a question. “Madame, did you ever consider your establishment a public health risk and that you were putting these men in danger?” “It wasn’t me putting them in danger, it was theirselves. And I did consider it; all

of my girls regularly saw a doctor. So far as I know, no man ever caught the clap or syphilis at my house. And I took other precautions, too. Millie, one of my ‘old tomatoes’ got so old her pussy hung down like a coat sleeve. ‘Millie’ I said ‘You’ve got to quit this business before you hurt somebody with that thang.’ And she left me, but one of my policeman friends told me she was out in east Tulsa giving blow jobs. He told me she used an ironing board in her work. How she did that I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Women don’t wrestle men down to infect them; the men mostly do it to theirselves.” Getty persisted. “You asked me how I could be sure women stayed with me for myself and not for my money. Did it occur to you that after being with me, a woman could never be satisfied by another man?” Getty asked. “I’ve heard that you claimed to have an eight-and-a-half-inch cock, but I never believed it. I’ve heard of some that big, but usually on men much bigger than you; skinny as you are, I wonder if you could carry that much around.” If Getty was upset he never showed it, but went on to his next question. “The Tulsa newspapers say that high school lads would be treated to a night at your establishment as a reward for winning a championship. Did you consider this as contributing to the delinquency of minors?” “I read that, but I never knew where it came from. I suspected some of my girls might have said it to drum up more business. Kids saying ‘Everybody else is getting to do it; why can’t I.’ And I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t work that way. Seems like business would pick up a little after a big sports event—but never to having a whole team come in! I would of ed that.” “From contemporary news s, you seemed to be on cozy with the local judges. Do you agree their mentions of you have the appearance of impropriety?” “Not necessarily the appearance of impropriety. But maybe the appearance of friendship. And why not? After all, we did get to see each other on a regular basis” she said laughing. “But on the other hand, they had their reasons for saying what they said. Going back to 1952, Judge Barrow said ‘This business has been going back as far as the birth of Christ, and this court can’t stop it’. My only correction to that is that it’s been going on ‘way longer than that. Judge Armstrong said ‘some of founding fathers of our city grew up under her

tutelage’. Judge Graham says it’s sad that the city’s oldest business is a bawdy house’ and Judge Hopper might have started that story about high school teams coming here. “And not only the word of judges. s Leach, as fine a lady as ever lived, says I probably saved more marriages than any minister in Tulsa.” Josh Cosden had a question. “To change the subject, Pauline, I used electricity in my refineries to alarm for unforeseen conditions. I’ve read that your business at 326 ½ East First was wired so that you could be warned of the arrival of people, maybe law enforcement. You had wires to it customers by opening doors and used timers to manage the time your employees were with customers and other functions. Is that true?” “One of my regulars was an electrician and he offered to wire me up so I could do some things from my chair. There was so much wires running up and down the halls it didn’t look good, which was bad enough, but one stormy night the lights went off and when the electric came back on I got shocked almost out of my chair. I had it all taken out then except the alarm on the next-to-last stair, which I used to keep lawmen from slipping up the stairs on me.” “Speaking of lawmen, how did you get along with them?” “Mostly good. They was doing their job; I was doing mine. There was that time that policewoman trapped me in a charge of pandering. Pandering means asked; I didn’t ask her, she asked me, several times in fact, to hire her. I never did, but she was in there talking to me when a customer came in and she took the money out of his hand and threw it at me and some more cops came in while I was picking it up off the floor. I paid a big fine for that. If the jury had looked at her close they’d have known it was a put-up job; she wasn’t pretty enough for me to hire her. “Once I learned the ropes it was so hard for them to get a conviction they almost stopped trying. For example the law says the woman has to name the act and the price. In my house I just collected for the “straight date” and the girl negotiated anything extra after they got to the room. “One time a smart young cop caught some old guys coming out and went up and said ‘I’ll have what my daddy just had’ and the girl asked him ‘you mean a f*** for six dollars?’ and he said ‘Yes, and you’re under arrest’”.

“Besides buying raffle tickets and donations to the families of policemen killed in duty, I even helped some in enforcing the law. Like when Lester Pugh came in and ed some counterfeit twenties on me two nights in a row. Next night he came in and sent out a fake bill I locked him in and called the cops. If they’d put him away then he might not have killed that judge years later. “Kirksey Nix, Jr. came by whenever he was in town. His mama and daddy was worried about him, talked to me about trying to get him to go straight but it didn’t work. He ended up in Death Row in Louisiana Frank Phillips, who had been listening to everything, finally spoke up. “Mrs. Lambert, in your later days, in the old folk’s home in Okmulgee, did you organize some “entertainment” for the gentlemen residents?” “Lands, no” she answered, “that would have been a no-win proposition anyway. Bringing in young women for those old geezers wouldn’t work as well as bringing in young men for the lady residents!” Harry Sinclair had a question. “What about your conviction on income tax evasion?” “That was just my mistake in not keeping good records. The feds spent six hours searching my place, looking everywhere from in teacups to under the rug. Found three dollars and eight cents. ‘How are you boys going to split that up?’ I asked. “What about that story about you going out to your boy’s place in Red Fork and burying all that money in the backyard?” “What newspaper did you read that in?” “No newspaper. Just a rumor that went around.” “St. Peter, didn’t we agree that testimony was restricted to your record, printed s and personal testimony? No outside witnesses and no hearsay?” “That’s right, Mrs. Lambert. Question is stricken.” J. Paul Getty had another question. “Mrs. Lambert, you had two children by Mr. Stenhouse. Who fathered your other four children?”

“I’ve already answered that I said six children to give that woman reporter something to write about. Anyhow, if there was another man, maybe I forgot about him. We can forget about our lovers can’t we, Mr. Getty. Have you forgotten about Marguerite Tallasou?” At this mention of the long-lost love of his life, Getty went a little pale, got teary-eyed and withdrew the question. The Chairman, noting the direction the questioning was taking, spoke: “Some of the most damaging testimony presented throughout the entire sequence of reviewing applicants has been directed toward Amy Comstock, who has been so traumatized she declined to appear here today. Accordingly, the Court will review the evidence on her behalf. “The rules allow that printed matter is allowable on the presumption it is accurate, but which in common decency must allow that if such materials cannot logically be ed they must be disallowed. The evidence against Miss Comstock, as taken from In Re: Tulsa, is that she engaged in illicit sexual activities which, while reprehensible, were not adulterous since she was not married at the time. Further review of that source material fails to establish that these charges are true. Accordingly, Miss Comstock is fully vindicated with apologies for her sufferings. “For Mr. Richard Jones, such part of the evidence as depends on The Burning is also disallowed and shall not be considered in future recommendations on his judgment. Mr. Jones, hearing his name, signaled he wanted the floor. “Mrs. Lambert, since you seem to believe we, as Applicants, are able for our actions, including all printed records, now that you yourself are applying for ission to Heaven, are you ready for some questions on your actions and press remarks?” St. Peter intervened. “Mr. Jones, two things: this hearing is not to be considered as Mrs. Lambert’s petition to enter Heaven; that will come later. Second, any printed records must be judged credible to be allowed. Your questions to Mrs. Lambert are limited to her review of your application. You may continue.” “Mrs. Lambert, you have been evasive about your children. Did your son live in

the 4700 block of 33rd West Avenue?” “I don’t the hundred-block exactly, but that sounds about right.” “Did you know a Mrs. Treasure who lived near him?” “No, I did not get acquainted with any of his neighbors.” “What do you know about her saying that you carried “boxfuls of money” into his house?” “I don’t know of any such thing. Was what she was supposed to have said printed in a believable publication?” “I don’t know if it’s printed or not. But I do know you were convicted in 1969 of income tax evasion.” “Income tax evasion and so-called boxes of money don’t have any connection. The only income tax trouble I had was some guys came to my business looking for money. I already told you they found about three dollars. Do you have any real questions or do you just want to harass me?” The Chairman gaveled “Are there any other questions for Mrs. Lambert or Mr. Foster? None? Meeting adjourned.”

XX

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

St. Peter opened the meeting of the Executive Committee by calling the roll: Present: the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, St. Peter, a Throne (specialist in Good & Evil) and a recording angel—: Jesus Christ presiding. The Chairman is speaking: “Some few weeks earlier the actions of the Screening Committee were reviewed. It was noted they had performed beyond our expectations. During their thirty-three working days they processed and forwarded recommendations on about eleven million applicants, which works out to about eighty million for a full year. Since we are currently receiving new applications at about sixty million a year and our backlog is two hundred million, they could clear the back about a hundred years. “Which is far too monotonous a task to spend the next hundred years on! In fact, this gives us new appreciation for the efforts of our good St. Peter, who has been doing this for two thousand years, while attending to his other duties. But with one committee to handle new applicants, twenty additional committees could clear the back five years or so. Do I hear a motion to form twenty new committees? “Hold on a second” the Father cautioned. “Are we all agreed that subcontracting this work is a good thing? We know that when St. Peter was doing all the issions there were no complaints such as we have had under the present arrangement.” “But it wasn’t quite the same thing” spoke up St. Peter. “Back then there was no time for a complaint. If they didn’t make the cut, the floor opened up under them and they were gone. Now that they’re getting a chance, some of them are protesting. Personally, I like this new arrangement.” The Holy Ghost turned to Peter. “Like you say, it wasn’t the same thing. Before,

you looked in your book, made the call, and it was over. They didn’t know what had been written, and frankly didn’t have much time to think about it before they were gone. Now they’re hearing the evidence, they’re thinking of excuses. Personally, I believe they don’t like the idea of being judged by mortals.” In an aside to Foster and Lambert he apologized “No offense intended”. Henry Foster was quick to reply. “But we don’t judge them. We make recommendations to St. Peter who does the judging.” The Chairman agreed with HG. “We know that, but I’m not sure the applicants appreciate the difference. What do you say, Dad?” “I think We got off the track two thousand years ago when we opened Heaven up to the Gentiles.” Stung, the Son replied “I don’t think it went so good before. You had a covenant with the Israelites and gave them Ten Commandments, and I You smote them regularly to keep them in line. Then I went to earth, consolidated the Ten Commandments into ‘Love the Lord thy God’ and “Love thy neighbor as thyself’ and introducing the concept of Heaven. Opening Heaven for the first time, of course led directly to the backlog but at the same time gave mankind some hope for eternal life. All in all, I think that’s what We wanted, so I’ll say it worked pretty well.” “Letting in the Gentiles wasn’t the real problem” the Holy Ghost broke in. “So many side-religions were formed, each with a different formula for salvation. Civilized men say it comes from saying ‘I’m saved!’ and getting dunked, or from saying ‘Forgive me!’ on their death-bed or by dying in defense of their religion. Uncivilized men believed in warfare and human sacrifice to placate their gods. Every culture has a different formula; sometimes men even from the same culture won’t accept being judged by one of their own. They won’t accept anyone other than a divine being.” “He’s right” Mrs. Lambert put in. “I could see people looking down their noses at me, asking ‘Who’s she, to be judging me?’ They couldn’t get the difference between me judging and me recommending.” “What do you think?’ the Chairman asked Henry Foster. “We can’t go on like we were; Peter just couldn’t keep up with the numbers.”

Peter interrupted. “It’s not the numbers, well, not just the numbers. With the data-crunching and the pre-screening done by the committee, I think we handled the volume pretty good. My problem is I’m just human; I can see and write down what everybody does, but I can’t know what they’re thinking, and that’s where sin come from, people thinking. And by the way, just what is sin? Can adultery be committed just by a married person? What about the person he’s committing it with? And unmarried people? And divorced people remarrying? What about killing those who won’t commit to a religion? Is it a sin or a duty to do that? Is it a sin to eat pork, or any meat, or not? Are we required to obey secular laws, both good and bad? What exactly constitutes ‘honoring thy father and mother’? At what point does greed become a false god? Is there any reason we can’t just say ‘He loves his god (whichever god that is) and treats everyone like he’d like to be treated’ and let him into Heaven. While Peter paused to catch his breath, Jesus repeated “Mr. Foster, you were saying…” “I think St. Peter said it for me. It wasn’t easy for me, seeing men and women I’d known well and realizing just how little I did know them. Certainly not well enough to judge them; let alone the thousands that I didn’t know at all. Looking back, I’m surprised I could make recommendations on as many as I did.” With that, the Chairman looked around the room to be sure that everyone had given his opinions. Satisfied he announced “The Executive Committee has some more work to do. Thank you for your openness; we’ll inform you when we will re-convene.”

* * *

XXI

CONCLUSION

Reconvening, Jesus Christ announces “We have come to our decision, but before we announce it we want to re-cap what has happened in order to put our decision into some context. This won’t take long so stop me if I’m going too fast or if you have any questions.” “As man progressed from the animal state—from reflex to reason, from instinct to rationale, from non-thinking to thinking—he began to realize there were things he didn’t understand. What causes weather? Why is it cold and snowy on one day but hot and sunny another? What causes the seasons? Why are there long days when crops will grow and short days when they won’t? Why does the sun move further and further south as if to disappear before gradually coming back? Man knew he wasn’t controlling events; it must be some other being, some being with more power than he. These powerful forces (he didn’t call them “gods”, because he had no concept of a god); he just knew that sometimes good things happened and at other times bad things happened. Not at random, but with some regularity and predictability. He came to accept the concept that powerful forces were afoot, powerful forces that exerted some control which he could not.” God the Father spoke up. “We thought that it would be comforting to man to have some belief that someone was in charge. We didn’t give too much thought about whether he would attribute it to a Supreme Being, or just good luck.” Vernon Foster wanted to add something. “Although I have no direct experience with savages, I got a good Quaker education and learned about earlier civilizations that developed thousands of years ago. Some of them included the concept of God, and some did not. When I came west, I met the Osages who

were about three or four generations away from savagery. Until they received knowledge of God they believed raiding and killing were acceptable rules of conduct.” “True enough” the Father agreed. “When conflicts arose and tempers flared, individuals would have arguments, fights, and even deadly fights. Man observed that even in small, petty disagreements the stronger and smarter usually won. If the smartest, strongest man quarreling over the best seat around the campfire could kill, how much more powerful is a Being who could cause the earth to open up and spew fire, or the skies to open up and flood a settlement or the sun to burn for days and destroy a year’s crop? They observed that after throwing someone into the crater the eruption ceased, that burning corn on an altar made it rain again. They created gods of rain, gods of fire, gods of lightning, gods unnumbered.” “Not only pagans believed in sacrifice” the Father went on “As a test, I called upon Abraham to sacrifice his only son. I called back my demand just before Abraham struck. “Priesthoods, ordinary men whose talent was to convince others that they could arbitrate between gods and men, followed in the wake of gods. In return for acting as go-betweens, these priests soon learned to take their “cut” from tributes intended for the various gods. We all know how that worked out. “These early… religions, we’ll call them… made no claims of salvation, or after-life, at least not at first. There was no demand for it; no one had ever seen a person return from death excepting the rare cases of being swept away by water, falling off a cliff or being attacked by an animal. Those who managed to survive might qualify as an early versions of a “return from death”, but such miraculous escapes were not a feature of primitive religions. The Chairman looked around the room. Everyone seemed to have said what they wanted. Just to make sure, he asked them. “Does anyone have something to add?” No one answering, He went on “To conclude this hearing, I will read a summary of our agreement, and it to the Recorder to add into the permanent record:

The question being asked is “Is being good its own reward” or should obeying

the laws of God and the rules of society entitle man to eternal salvation? Getting to the point, is it enough for humans to have only a short-term goal of having a good life for as long as it lasts or should there be a long-term payout in the form of being saved to an ever-lasting life? But “being good” for a savage is far from what is expected for civilized man. In many primitive, savage cultures life itself had no value. Ritual human sacrifice was not unusual, prisoners and hostages were routinely killed, and life’s necessities were surrendered to the priests in the name of religion. “We’ve briefly sketched stages of man’s development: first, primitive man with no concept of a Supreme Being or religion and second, developing man who recognized powerful beings who affected his life. The second stage involved priesthoods who acted as arbiters between gods and men. The next step introduces the concept of a single god (mono-theism) and eternal salvation. Man is really getting a leg up in this stage; not only does he have only one god to keep happy (meaning he isn’t required to make so many sacrifices), but he has a real shot at something he never gave much thought earlier. He might be able to move from this short, hard life to a permanent good life. On the other hand, he will have to earn this eternal happiness. Now we’re getting to the point we were several weeks ago: Should the man of 50,000 years ago be held to the same standard of behavior as today’s man? Mind you, he didn’t have the same rules you have now; in fact he didn’t have any rules at all. The conditions of his life were unrecognizably different—you can go down the Ten Commandments—he wasn’t aware of any gods, he didn’t know their names, he didn’t have the tools to make graven images, there was no distinction between days of the week, killing was a necessary fact of life, there were no marriages—since lives were organized around the tribe the only ’Commandment’ he observed was the honoring of elders. “Leaving that for the moment, let’s go to the next developments, mono-theism and the promise of eternal salvation. The so-called ‘modern’ religions—one god and salvation-oriented—have other common denominators: for the most part they have written rules and they have arisen in the last 5000 years or so. Written rules are important in providing continuity, allowing religious beliefs to be handed down for generations in virtually the same form rather than relying on memory and oral history. Written language proceeded along a time-line more-orless contemporary with monotheism; it was not easy to transplant new gods into religions already established and with written traditions. With no new gods

added and old gods becoming redundant, the trend towards a single god could be strengthened. There is a reason why books, even libraries, are filled with studies on comparative religions. The ones we are interested in have their roots deep in time. Although we have just said that they began during the time of written languages, many details on religions were not included, some details are fragmentary and many have not survived. Scholars have spent hundreds of years piecing them together and they can be summarized quickly: Organized religions arose between the Fifth Century BC and the First Century AD. They worshipped no god, many gods or one god and were practiced extreme exclusivity. “This thumbnail sketch may produce more questions than answers, so I will repeat what this long-winded clarification is about; we are trying to decide whether humans of vastly different cultures who aren’t aware of ‘eternal salvation’ are entitled to it and who is qualified to make those individual judgments. It goes further than whether Mrs. Lambert and Mr. Foster are qualified to make recommendations to St. Peter, whose authority to “bind or loose on earth” simultaneously binds or looses in heaven, or even whether Peter himself is qualified or any human can be. It is so difficult to compare the moral standings of unenlightened beings with modern man. “Therefore We Three have made the decision: Any individual who lives his life within the moral code of his time may qualify for recommendation by the Committees for entry after considering such records as exist in our library and their own conclusions from the personal interview. Individual applicants may use the same sources to present their cases, but not to question authority of Committee who were appointed as good judges of human behavior, not as certifiers for entrance to Heaven. St. Peter shall follow or reject their recommendation as he sees fit, based on his judgment and entries in his Book of Life. In plain language, We have decided that entry into Heaven shall err on the side of being inclusive rather than exclusive. “We consider this pilot program a success which we will replicate for other eras. In keeping with our conclusions that applicants can be best judged by contemporaries Committee- will be from the same time periods and cultures. Recent technology in digital record-keeping and time telescoping will

be used as applicable. It is expected that these changes will continue to reduce the back-log and produce results that are more inclusion. “Thank you all for the help that you’ve given us on this project.”