Crude Blessings: The Amazing Life Story of Glenn Patterson American Oilman is the rags-to-riches story of Glenn Patterson’s road to survival and success in the volatile and unpredictable “modern age of petroleum.” Born on the family ranch in Blackwell, Texas, Glenn became one of America’s energy industry pioneers. His core values, work ethic and dedication to his family and employees are a valuable example for the American spirit of perseverance, hard work, and fair play.

Much more than one son's homage to his dad, Crude Blessings is a compelling narrative about a family patriarch who embodied the best qualities of the Greatest Generation, which inspired and powered the success of America. Timely because of the increasing polarization in our country, Glenn Patterson's story and values were examples of the Christian ethos of decency, integrity, faith, and trust throughout his life in his business and family.

Building his business on a foundation of “always doing the right thing,” Glenn was revered by colleagues, customers and competitors alike. During the most disruptive period any industry had ever faced, his company, Patterson Drilling became one of the largest oil and gas-drilling companies in the country. The legacy of embedding strong family values in a small business is described in this new book through a first–hand account of the sector’s fierce challenges during the last two decades of the 20th century. Glenn’s journey became spiritual as well, when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease at too early an age, which led to struggles with his own mortality and his relationship with God.

Excerpt

It’s a day I’ll never forget.

Saturday morning, early spring. 1986. I was almost 12. Dad shook me awake around 6 a.m.—nothing strange about that. Saturday was a workday; so was Sunday sometimes. He’d been putting us to work on various weekends since elementary school. I worked in the yard, tore down motors, cut up pipe, scrap iron. Hoed weeds, painted. Sandblasted and painted drilling rigs in 100-degree heat or hotter. I did almost everything. My older brother, Robert, had it worse. He actually had to roughneck on the drilling rigs, like a full-grown man. I was still too young for that.

It wasn’t easy being the son of a boss—the kid of the legendary founder of Patterson Drilling, Glenn Patterson, who stood 6’4”, like LBJ or Abraham Lincoln. He showed no favoritism when it came to work. Quite the opposite, in fact. If there was some rookie job, some shit detail, it was sure to land in your lap. Glenn Patterson had no intention of raising a pair of spoiled brats.

So we piled into the truck without complaining. My dad’s best friend from high school, Donnie Newman, was in the truck behind us. It was a long drive through pitch black, leaving the asphalt onto a series of unpaved caliche roads. Dad used the time to think. He was worried. I didn’t know all the ins and outs at age 12, but times were bad.

The bottom had fallen out of the oil market. No one was drilling anymore, and Patterson Drilling, the company my father had built from scratch with his brother-in-law, Cloyce Talbott, was flirting with going belly up; they were nearing default on a bank loan. Dad had one last crazy idea to save himself and, thereby, the company—a last-ditch way of drumming up some cash to make an interest-only payment to the bank that he and Cloyce had both resorted to. They had to come up with a few thousand bucks every month. That was our mission that morning as we drove past acres and acres of aban- doned oil fields. The price of crude was just too low to keep ’em running—nothing but scrap metal now, which most men would call worthless. But not Glenn Patterson. He saw acres and acres of scrap metal, abandoned flow lines of pipe that no one wanted, and he thought, even scrap metal has a value. It’s something he had learned from his dad. You could cut up metal pipe and repurpose it for fencing and other construction needs. Every oil field has miles and miles of metal pipe used to pump water and oil in and out of the well and transport it throughout the fields. So Dad bought the scrap metal rights from an oil company that had abandoned its lines, and we parked, still in darkness, at one such field. My dad figured that if we could cut a bunch of 2 3/8” pipe into 30-foot lengths and pile it onto the trucks, we might get 50 cents a foot for it. And if eight biceps worked that pipe from dawn to dusk, we could drag away quite a haul. The key was efficiency. Fastest way to cut that pipe was using an acetylene torch, and that was Donnie’s job. I had learned how to use a cutting torch, and so had Robert, but Donnie was way faster at it. He would slice through those joints in nine seconds flat.

Only problem was that the pipe was red-hot when Donnie dropped it to the ground and moved to the next joint; any nearby brush or grass would instantly catch fire. My job was to rotate the pipe with wrenches as Donnie cut it and to put out these mini fires before they got out of control. I had a shovel and a bucket of sand. So I was running one step behind Donnie as he was slicing through the pipe. Robert and my dad were behind me, grabbing the cut pipe after it cooled and hauling it to the trailers we were towing. The system was working pretty well, but the pipe was not cooling down fast enough. Nearby shrubs kept sprouting up in flame, and I’d have to run back and deal with them. It had been a very dry year, and there was a breeze that morning; the fires started to multiply. I couldn’t keep up with them. Pretty soon, one area was out of control and getting worse. I turned to call my dad, but he was already there, assaying the situation—realizing there was little choice. Flames were spreading fast across the dry grass. Glenn ran to the truck and grabbed the radio to report the emergency to the authorities. Then we picked up our gear and parked the trucks upwind. It took a long time for the fire trucks to locate us. We were in the middle of nowhere. Seemed like hours in my panicked 12-year-old mind. The area that was now aflame looked a thousand times larger than the few acres it probably was. It felt like we had torched the whole state of Texas. The day was a bust. I had nightmares about it.

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About the Author

T.M. “Roe” Patterson is a 23-year industry veteran in the oil and gas services business. Moving to his dad’s family business Basic Energy in 2006, he was named Top Public Company CEO by the Fort Worth Business Press in 2014. Holding a Bachelor of Science degree from Texas Tech University, he and his wife Tonya have two children and live in Fort Worth. He is active supporter of The American Heart Association, North Texas Alzheimer’s Association and speaks frequently across the country on the practical approach to leadership that his father embraced. Crude Blessings is his first book.