By: Carolyn Bowen Hopper

Carolyn Bowen Hopper — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:38:19 +0000

I grew up in small oil field camps. Most of the places I lived were miles from towns and certainly far from cities. My father, Loren Bowen, worked for Texas New Mexico Pipeline Company. This was the pipeline division of Texaco. I have lived as a small child in Loco Hills, NM. You won’t find anyplace more remote than that. I can remember going on an Easter Egg hunt and you always looked under the bush or in the hole before you reached for the eggs because a rattlesnake might be there. Then I lived in McCamey, TX and remember going swimming in a deep tank full of cold water and mossy sides. Another camp was outside of Eunice, NM. This camp was built in a horseshoe shape and all the children played outside, even if it was cold. I began school here and then we moved to Jal, NM. These two towns were football rivals so it really didn’t help to move to the other’s town. The Jal camp was a U-shape with a cattle guard at each entrance. We would often sit there and try to guess the color of the next car. When we rode horses, we would often jump the guards. Doesn’t sound very exiciting now! When it snowed, they would take the hood off a car and use it as a sled to pull the kids on around the camp road. There was always someone with which to play. You also made your own fun. My mother’s wash water was pumped into the back yard and that became the moat for a castle or running river between two mud mountains. There was one phone in the camp that could be used in an emergency. The Jal High School Band was small and if you could qualify, you could play and travel with the high school band when you were in the 7th grade. I moved back to Eunice my freshman year (yes, the rivals, again) and have wonderful memories there and in Jal. I made lifelong friends there(probably like prisoner bonding)!

By: Annette Rankin

Annette Rankin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:56:31 +0000

I didn’t have the privilege of residing in a camp but on an Amerada lease behind the El Paso Natural Gas Plant #2 in Jal, New Mexico. The camp at least had a community building where the kids had dances. I had to spend the night with a friend who lived there in order to be able to go to the dance because my mother didn’t approve of dancing. Whenever possible I spent nights with my friend because I envied them the companionship of fellow camp dwellers. It definitely was lonely on a one house lease location and those EPNG Jal Camp Brats as they call themselves are still very close.

Comments on: Life in the Oil Camps

By: Carolyn Bowen Hopper

By: Annette Rankin