Here's Gaylord looking out the front door of his house in Wamego, Kansas.  I hardly knew him when I arrived one afternoon, but when I left the next morning, we were good friends.  

His daughter is my friend, Marilyn, one of my very best friends.   A couple of weeks before, I had visited her and her husband Ira in New York City to see the Christo Gates in Central Park.    "He'd love to see you," she said.  And he did.

I'd only met Gaylord twice before: once when he visited Marilyn in Illinois, and again at her wedding in 1984.  He's 87, lives by himself, and drove me down to Main Street to the Friendly Cooker for the Wednesday night meatloaf special.  Everybody knew him there.  (He calls it "the Friendly Hooker.)

Afterwards, we talked long into the evening.  He told me stories about his oil drilling days near his farm in Lost Springs, Kansas.  I learned more about drilling for oil than I ever thought I'd know.  "Enough," I told him, "to know I never want to do that."

Here's a story I'll never forget:  He was working on a drilling crew of four guys.   One afternoon they had all gone into the "dog house" to have a cup of coffee while the rig was running along nicely.  (The dog house is the little shed beside the derrick that the crew uses to get in out of the weather.)  A local farmer came by to visit.  Their conversation was pretty much yelling at each other because of the noise of the drill engine and its drive train.  Suddenly, all four of the drillers jumped up and ran out of the dog house to check on the rig.  They fixed whatever was the matter and came back inside.  "What happened?" the farmer asked.  They told him what it was.  "But how did you know?"  he asked.   "We heard it," they told him.  The farmer looked puzzled.  "I don't know how you could hear anything with all that damn noise out there."    

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