| THE HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING |    |
| PART TWELVE - GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH CORPORATION | |
Esme Eugene Rosaire had had his education interrupted by the War. In 1918 he was commissioned a second Lieutenant in the Air Force and served in France with the Fifth Pursuit Group of the 138th Aero-Squadron. He was something of an ace, a German ace that is. Rosaire cracked up more allied planes than any other American, a total of seven. He had the good fortune to walk away from all his wrecked planes and in 1919 returned to his studies at the University of Chicago . from which institution of learning he received the B. S. degree in 1920 and an M. S. in 1921. From 1923 until 1925, Gene was employed as a physical chemist in the Development Branch of the Western Electric Company at Cicero, Illinois. J. C. Karcher was in the same Development Branch and the two men became acquainted. Dr. Karcher hired Gene Rosaire to head the Houston office of the Geophysical Research Corporation. Gene resigned from Western Electric in the autumn of 1925 and reported to the Amerada Tulsa office. After a number of weeks of consultations with Dr. Sidney Powers and other Amerada geologists, Rosaire continued his trip to Houston to become the first man in the Southern Division of the GRC. As a matter of fact, Gene was a one-man Division for over a month. Gene Rosaire uncrated the first set of refraction instruments when they arrived from Bloomfield by train in January of 1926.
The first two instrument observers to operate the refraction instruments were a Canadian physicist named Duncan from Toronto University and a Colorado physicist named Lester. Oliver Lester, Jr., was a instructor of physics at the University of Colorado; where his father was head of the Physics Department and later Dean of Graduates and Vice President of the University. Ollie, as his friends call him, was working on his Master's degree in physics. When he received the telegram from Gene Rosaire to come to work for the GRC, he tore up his thesis, which he did not like anyway, and rushed to the depot to buy a ticket to Houston. Lester had met Rosaire the previous June when he had been working on a summer job for Western Electric at Cicero.
L. P. Garrett, Chief Geologist of the Gulf Production Company was of the opinion that Everette De Golyer, "Could see a long way down the cotton-row." When Karcher and Rosaire came calling at his Houston office, Garrett listened to what they had to say because they were De Golyer's bright young lads. Garrett said that the German seismologists were finding salt domes for Gulf, so why should he change to American crews? "Because," spoke up Rosaire, "the American instruments are better." Garrett was not impressed. "Furthermore," chimed in Karcher, "we can cut your dynamite bills in half." Garrett sat up and took notice. Arrangements were made to test the new Geophysical Research Corporation equipment with a line across the Spindletop Dome.
There were six men present for the February, 1926, tests at Spindletop. On the GRC crew there were three men. J. E. Duncan as the observer, did the recording; O. C. Lester did the shooting, while Gene Rosaire acted as party chief and computer. L. P. Garrett and Waldemar F. Henniger were on the ground as representatives of Gulf. Dr. J. C. Karcher made the total an even half dozen. When the first set of records were developed they came out badly light-struck and unusable. The GRC personnel were chagrined and embarrassed. When the seismograph was examined for light-Ieaks it was discovered that a crew had fallen out of the camera. The screw was replaced; the recordings made once more, and this time the records came forth with nice salt leads. During the two experimental trials at Spindletop, the photographic film was developed at the end of the day in the bathroom of Rosaire's hotel room at the Crosby House in Beaumont. Shortly thereafter the recording truck was equipped with developing and fixing baths and the records developed by the observer in the light-proof recording truck, immediately after being taken. Among other advantages in this system was the fact that the observer had a guide by which he could increase or decrease the next dynamite charge to be shot.
Garrett asked Karcher if he was satisfied with the results from SpindIetop. "A continuous wave transmitter will give a better time-break," said Karcher, "so I have already wired McDermott in Bloomfield that we are junking the spark transmitter as soon as he can build a C. W. transmitter to replace it." Garrett then indicated that he was recommending the placement under contract of not one but of two or possibly three GRC crews. However, he first wanted another salt dome shot, West Columbia, about 150 miles distant on the other side of Houston. The crew consisting of, Rosaire, Duncan and Lester moved from Beaumont to Bay City, in Matagorda County, Texas, from which the nearby West Columbia dome had a number of seismic lines taken across it.
Karcher and Rosaire were busy expanding the GRC payroll. For the next three years a talent hunt was on for outstanding young sciene graduates, in robust health, who could contend with the rough life of a doodlebug while being trained as instrument observers. The next two observers were not physicists at all, they had their degrees in civil engineering; Sam Stuart and C. T. "Boots" MacAllister. Gene Rosaire and Boots MacAllister were fellow members of the Illinois National Guard at Springfield, Illinois; while Sam Stuart and Rosaire had flown airplanes together. Other early observers were A. E. "Al" Smith, Jimmie Jett, John Pfau, George Titterington, Carol Rosaire, John Flude, Claude Harrington, William Kendall, Frank Borman, M. D. Andrus, George Lack, John Crowell, Walter Bibb, Kenneth Berg, Maurice Ewing, Austin Stanton and Roy Lay. The first full-time shooter was a Virginia Military Institute graduate named Jack Murray. Other early shooters included Blondie Durrett, a Mr. Auxsono, a Mr. McNew and Ford Howell. The first six computers were Homer Rutherford of Rice Institute; Robert "Little Snakes" La Touche of Trinity College, Dublin; Francis Campbell of Haverford; Alfred Wolf of Pennsylvania; T. I. "Pop" Harkins of Louisiana State and C. V. A. Pittman of Haverford.
The Gulf Production Company finally decided that the number of GRC parties needed was two. The Geophysical Research Corporation promised to have Party #1 operating in the field in March and Party #2 in April. Sam Stuart, M. D. Andrus and Carol Rosaire were sent back to Bloomfield, New Jersey, to help the Laboratory personnel assemble the instruments; fit them into trucks and drive the trucks to Houston. When in April Party #2 was ready to go into production in the field, Eugene McDermott said goodbye to his companions in Bloomfield and took charge as Party Chief #2.
Party #1 had the following personnel: Eugene Rosaire, party chief; Sam Stuart, chief observer; Boots MacAllister, junior observer; Carol Rosaire, surveyor; Jack Murray, shooter, and Homer Rutherford, computer. The name of the first hole-digger was Joe Peter Kline; the second hole-digger was a Mr. Harris. Party #2 had the following personnel: Eugene McDermott, party chief; Ollie Lester, chief observer; Al Smith, junior observer; Mr. Auxsono, shooter, and "Little Snakes" La Touche, computer. The first field parties had two observers, two sets of seismograph equipment and two recording trucks.
"Big Snakes" La Touche was a torsion balance operator for Dr. Donald Barton. The two brothers had a French father and an Irish mother and had gone to college in Dublin. The brothers were both painfully thin so that Gene Rosaire had no trouble in finding appropriate nicknames for them. "Big Snakes" was weIl over six feet tall and of a quiet, retiring disposition. "Little Snakes" was barely five feet six inches in height but he was hell on wheels.
Small but mighty, that was "Little Snakes." Robert La Touche made a habit of acting first and thinking afterward; he was absolutely fearless. It came as no surprise that he had served as a lieutenant in the Irish Free State army. The first salt dome records to come before "Little Snakes" as a computer would not plot properly on the time-distance curve so he threw them in the wastebasket. McDermott retrieved the records, shuddered, and at the next strategy meeting with Karcher and Rosaire asked, "What are we going to do about Little Snakes La Touche?" Thinking it would be safer to have him in the field, Robert La Touche was sent to the other crew to train as an observer. Toward the end of the first week, "Little Snakes" quit cranking his camera in the midlle of a shot in order to swat a mosquito that was about to bite him.
At the next get-together of Karcher, Rosaire and McDermott, Gene Rosaire brought up the question, "What are we going to do about Little Snakes La Touche?" Every three or four weeks thereafter, at almost every meeting of the GRC Brass, the question would be asked; but the question was never resolved. The head men were much too intrigued by what La Touche would do next, ever to dream of firing him. Once Gene Rosaire let Little Snakes wear his new leather jacket. Soon after, La Touche snagged the jacket going through some barbed wire. Gene exclaimed:
"Look out, you will tear my jacket."
"What do I care, it is not my jacket," said our hero.
La Touche and Homer Rutherford were going somewhere at night with La Touche driving the car. Having the soul of a poet, La Touche switched off the headlights of the car so he could have a better view of the moon; as automobiles whizzed by on the other side of the road. Party #1 and Party #2 combined forces to shoot the Boling salt dome. In the middle of the operations a farmer walked up to Little Snakes, pointed a loaded revolver at his chest, and ordered him off the property. La Touche calmly reached for the gun, broke it, removed the cartridges and handed the man back his pistol without uttering a word.
Evan G. Thompson and Raymond Andrew "Pluto" Le May were the two troop leaders, or as they were sometimes designated, troop managers, for the Gulf Production Company, assigned to the two GRC parties. When Thompson was called to other duties in the Gulf organization, Pluto Le May functioned as a troop manager for both parties. J. E. Duncan was considered to be the most competent and skillful of the instrument operators, so that he was made the troubleshooter to attend to all required repairs to the instruments of the two Gulf parties. In those days the seismographs and related equipment needed quite a bit of adjustment and it was a sound rule to leave the delicate manipulations to the best qualified instrument man. O. C. Lester took it into his head to repair something minor in his camera that went out of commission. He received a bawling-out from Rosaire, who assured Lester that when he said Duncan was in charge of instrument repairs, he meant that thereafter Duncan was in charge of all instruments repair work.
In May of 1926 the third GRC contract party was organized and went into production on the Gulf Coast for the Freeport Sulphur Company. The party personnel consisted of Arthur D. Kerns, party chief; A. L. Smith and M. D. Andrus as observers, and Francis Campbell as computer. Art Kerns took his first degree in physics at the University of Illinois, then did graduate work under F. M. Kannenstine at the University of Chicago. Kerns also worked for Western Electric under Gene Rosaire and it was Rosaire that hired him for GRC in March, 1926. Kerns was sent to the Bloomfield Laboratory for his first two months of employment, then transferred to the Houston office and put in charge of the third field party.
June, 1926, was a big month for Esme Eugene Rosaire. He finished his thesis shortly before that month and so was awarded his doctor's degree from the University of Chicago at the June commencement. Gene straddled his trip to Chicago by the discovery of two salt domes. Late in May, GRC Party #1 was shooting out of Liberty, Texas, in the extreme south end of Liberty County, and they were having instrument trouble. The first shot on the first fan had a good ground wave and a good time-break but did not record an airwave. Shooting on the other side of the same fan, the airwave and the ground wave both came in solid but somehow the time-break failed to register . After some additional headaches, good recqrds were obtained which located the Moss Bluff salt dome. This was the first dome to be found by an American crew. Richard Erskine was the Humble scout covering Gene's Gulf seismic party and by some heady detective work, Erskine figured out that the GRC must have found something to have done all the repeat shooting on the fans across Moss Bluff.
Eugene Rosaire, brand new doctor of philosophy, returned from the University of Chicago to find his party shooting out of Opelousas, Louisiana. In the vicinity of the nearby town of Port Barre, unusually high velocities had been obtained but they were not nearly high enough to be salt velocities. L. P. Garrett, Chief Geologist for the Gulf, had laid down a hard and fast rule that since the Germans did not shoot lines longer than 3-½ miles, the GRC crews were strictly forbidden to shoot lines more than 3-½ miles in length. Dr. Rosaire persuaded his observers that no one could blame them if they "got lost." In the process of getting lost, the GRC crew came up with some beautiful six mile records. The longer shots brought forth the required salt velocities as confirmation of the Port Barre salt dome. This was the second dome to be found by an American party; Port Barre in St. Landry Parish. Since nothing succeeds like success, six mile shots became common practice and Mr. Garrett's 3-½ mile rule went out the window. Port Barre was discovered three weeks after Moss Bluff which would put the date of the find at mid-June. Exactly a year had passed since the GRC had started to build its instruments at Bloomfield and now the company had to its credit a Texas dome and a Louisiana dome. It was the beginning of an unparalleled high discovery rate of salt domes by GRC contract crews.