Curtis G Hamill from Kerrville, Texas: “I drilled the first oil
gusher in history (1901)”
America’s first discovery of oil had
been in Pennsylvania in 1859, but the gusher on Spindletop Hill, coming as the
automobile industry was in its infancy, completely changed the US petroleum
industry, not to mention the economy of southeast Texas. At one point, that single oilfield produced
more oil in a day than the rest of the oil wells of the world combined. Hamill and two brothers worked under the
leadership of Anthony Lucas, for whom the gusher is usually named. The eruption of oil on January 10, 1901 took
nine days to get under control.
Willie Ruff from New Haven, Connecticut, and Dwike Mitchell from
New York City: “We’re the only Americans ever permitted to play jazz in Russia”
Earlier in the year, the Mitchell-Ruff
Duo accompanied the Yale Russian Chorus (Ruff taught at Yale) on a summer visit
to the Soviet Union. While there, they
gave an impromptu jazz concert at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow,
despite Soviet objections to the bourgeois decadence of jazz. Three years later, Benny Goodman and His
Orchestra would give first officially sanctioned jazz concert in the
country. Mitchell and Ruff, who perform
here, would perform together for 56 years.
Special Guest Arthur Treacher is
sitting on a giant block of ice, into which has been frozen the panelists’
paychecks. They must go to work chopping
the ice on this hot, muggy late summer evening to get their checks. The studio audience is treated to iced tea because
of their efforts.
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