cc: file, Diane Cluff, Darrell and Nancy Krueger, Sara and Des Penny, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Claude and Katherine Warner, and Lloyd and Luana Warner.
"I missed the last plane from Dallas Love Field to Houston Hobby airport on Thursday night. Bob Davis, Steve Swanson, and myself had gone to Dallas to have meetings with two oil companies about shooting a 3-D seismic survey over some property in South Texas. The last meeting was on the top floor of the first tall building north of downtown. It has a beautiful view of where we used to live, and the downtown Dallas skyline. We finished about 3:30 and the guys assured me the last flight was at 10:00 or 10:30 in the evening. I made the mistake of believing them. Bob and Steve dropped me off at the temple. Jana Betrand, a friend from when we lived in Dallas, had sent me a note after Christmas asking me to go to lunch with her when I was in Dallas. Her x-husband John was the Bishop of the Dallas 1st Ward when they got divorced. He is now married to his nurse. John and Jana have 10 kids, almost as beautiful as you guys. She picked me up at the temple and we went to a La Madeleine's and talked for a couple of hours, catching up on many of our good friends from Dallas 1st Ward days. Jana has done a pretty good job of keeping track of everybody. Then she went to teach a class and I went to a session at the temple. When it was over I called Jana and she didn't answer, so I called the Yellow Cab company. They said they would have someone there in 15 minutes. After a half an hour they still had not shown up. So when I went inside to call again because my cell phone battery was dead. I called Jana first, she answered, and said she would be glad to drop me off at the airport. It was 9:25 when we got to Hobby and I thanked her for the ride and for catching up on friends. It was 9:30 by the time I got to the gate, and the plane was just pulling away. Southwest Airlines is really quite good about doing what they say. When I found out this was the last flight to Hobby until 6:15 AM I wished Southwest did false advertising like most companies do today.
Kind of stuck with a bag full of seismic sections, no change of clothes, no razor, and no toothbrush I walked downstairs to see what hotel was close to Love Field. The board said the Sheraton Dallas Brookhollow was 1 1/2 miles from the airport. I called and they said they could have a shuttle at the airport in a half-an-hour. I asked if it was really a half a mile from the airport and the desk clerk said `Yes.' I made the mistake of believing him, too. I said I could walk 1 1/2 miles in much less than a half-an-hour. I should have realized there was something fishy when he tried to talk me out of walking. I took off walking along the new construction remembering all of my years of memories of Dallas Love Field. After I had walked about 20 minutes I realized I was still next to Love Field, because the terminal was in the northeast corner and I was now walking along Mockingbird Lane at the south end of the airport. It was a pretty night and it did not look too dangerous. So I kept on walking. As I crossed the railroad tracks, which parallel the west side of the airport I remembered Roger and Nina Frame. I remembered the night their beautiful little girl fell on a floor heating unit and burned her face and the resulting terrible scars. I thought about how thankful I am that each of you are physically perfect. I also realized it was still going to be quite a ways to the Hotel.
After a half-an-hour I realized I probably should have taken the shuttle. I decided I would make the best of the walk and stopped at a service station to buy a razor, a toothbrush and toothpase, and an ice cream bar (I was getting pretty sweaty by now). I also realized cowboy boots are not meant for walking shoes. About this time the strap on my Landmark SEG Convention bag broke under the weight of the business plan I was toting. This was when I started to think about the Sheraton and how common it is today to stretch the truth to the point of false advertising. I could see Parkland Hospital where President Kennedy was taken when he was shot, and next to it was the hospital where Roice and Ben were born. These were just off of Harry Hines Boulevard. As I walked under Harry Hines I my mind was full of memories. I saw the Radison Hotel and think this is where I stayed when I interviewed at Mobil, and where your Mom and I stayed when I first reported to work (see http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets/1997/9745.html). On the northwest corner of Harry Hines and Mockingbird, this motel is next to 1930 Empire Central, the first office building I worked in at Mobil. I went over to see if they had any rooms. They only had smoking rooms available and so I decided to walk the next half mile to the Sheraton.
There are a lot of new restaurants which didn't used to be there. An International House of Pancakes, etc. The Bar-B-Que place we often ate lunch when I was working in field operations was still there. As I walked past the back gate into Mobil's compound I realized how much things had changed. The buildings we used to work in were torn down. There were weeds growing across the gate and it had obviously not been opened for several years. As I looked at the slab where my office used to be I vividly remembered the day in the fall of 1979 when my boss and I were having a nice discussion about the status of the four seismic crews we were running. I mentioned in passing that one of our Senior Observors had not had his annual review yet and he had asked me to mention it to the boss. The boss got really angry and let me have it. `You little S.O.B., I was doing this work when you were still in college' was one of the tirade phrases I remember.
At the time I was not very happy with Mobil's lack of interest in my ideas and plans for interactive 3-D seismic interpretation, and this display convinced me Mobil had also falsely advertised the opportunities for me working for them. I remember the secretary coming down an hour later telling me the boss wanted me to fly to Pinedale, Wyoming to check on the crew, to get out of the office, and to cool of a little bit. I actually thought I handled my outward reaction really good, and was somewhat suprised by the request. However, I took the tickets, left, went home and packed, flew to Rock Springs and drove to Pinedale, spent a couple of days doing what I had been asked to do, drove into town from the acquisition area and called Evan's & Sutherland in Salt Lake and set up an appointment for me to talk to the head of marketing, and went back to the crew. I recalled going with the crew back to Rock Springs and their reaction when I didn't get on the plane to fly back to Dallas. They assumed I was going to Utah to see family. I remember the lunch with Vel Cessler, where I asked him to have E&S go to the SEG Convention in New Orleans in just six weeks. I recalled making calls and helping him get booth space. I remembered flying to Salt Lake every Friday night to work with David Nebeker on building the demonstrations for the Convention. We built fault plane maps, multilayed contour maps, deviated well locations with well logs next to them, and could fly through these data like we now finally routinely do at the VETL. I remembered flying to New Orleans and training the E&S sales staff on how to present at the convention and avoiding vendors who might report back to my boss. I recalled giving a private demonstration to Dr. Fred Hilterman and Dr, G. H. F. Gardner, which resulted in my getting the job at the University of Houston (see .../1997/9735.html). I recalled Mobil never sending me to an SEG Convention while I worked for them and how I have not missed one since I left. I remembered when some of those who started work at Mobil when I did came back from the SEG, their excitement in telling me about this wonderful new display technology I would have loved seeing and how the booth was overrun with people all during the convention. I recalled telling these folks what had actually happened many years later.
As I kept walking, I went past Elmbrook, which was where my first assignment after a year of training was. I recalled my first interpretation project presentation. I had mapped the sedimentary basin offshore Argentina and Uruguay, and had colored the main map with a spectrum of colors to show depth. This is now the standard color map display for structure maps on all of the interactive workstations. Stuart Moncrief mentioned that map and it's relationship to workstation maps to me some 16 years after the fact. I remember the boss sleeping through my presentation and being quite offended after all the work I had put in on the project. To be fair the area was no longer of interest to Mobil because an Argentina gun ship had fired a shot across the bow of a British ship the week before and Mobil anticipated the Faulkland war by some 10 years. Ever since then I have been interested in and have followed the exploration activities around the Faulkland Islands. As I thought back to those days of coming home from work at 4:30, I realized my first training assignment was also at MEPSI (Mobil Exploration & Producing Services International). I recalled my first presentation, and how I had taken my contour maps, transferred appropriate contours to transparency film, separated the film with handmade cardboard windows, and made a 3-D display of my the salt structure and reflector maps from Block F-7 of the Dutch North Sea. I still have this model in my bedroom and it has became the basis for numerous similar models at Lamont-Doherty and other places.
Then I turned a bend on Mockingbird Lane and saw I-35 and the pink building where I worked for several years. I recalled all of the time spent working for Mobil Producing Nigeria. I could write for lots of pages about that building, and I won't now because I am getting tired. I looked up to the right and saw the building where we rented time on a time-share computer in Kansas City and did the processing for Computer Genealogical Services. Another story for another time. I recalled the night your Mom and I went out and we took the three boys to stay with a family I was home teaching who lived in a trailer park down in this area. She was as white as snow and from Canada and he was from the south and was one of the darkest blacks I have ever met. I recalled this because when we got up to the door and Ben saw this man he screamed and ran and hid. He had never seen a black man before and it scared him to death. It was really embarrassing.
Suffice it to say, even though it took well over an hour to walk the `mile-and-a-half' from Love Field to the Sheraton Dallas Brookhollow, there were more than an hours worth of good memories pried out of my past. In fact, it has taken me much longer than the walk to write about a few of the feelings and thoughts that raced through my mind as I walked. I didn't even complain about having to pay $89.27 for a few hours sleep. I was sweaty and tired and after saying my prayers full of thanks and requesting watchful care for each of you, I went right to sleep. I did wake up with a cold, which I am just about over.
The desk clerk had told me the first shuttle bus was at 6:00 AM. I made the mistake of believing him again. I got downstairs right at 6:00, and started waiting for the bus. There was a cab, and he was already taken. I wanted to be on the 6:15 flight to Hobby because I had an 8:00 meeting. Finally the shuttle bus driver comes out at 6:20. As we approach the airport I see the 6:15 plane take off. We get to the front entrace at 6:28. I rush to the gate and get there just after they closed the gate for the 6:30 flight. The next flight is at 7:00. I just had to laugh, and I did enjoyed sitting there for a half-an-hour thinking about how wonderful my life has been and is.
Even though I felt groady in the same shirt and garments as the day before,
I made it to my 8:00 meeting by 8:45. I had lunch at the University Club
on top of the Galleria and got draft letters of intent for $20 million
investment in Walden Visualization Systems Corporation. I met with three
different groups at the VETL, made it back to Energy Innovations for
follow-up meetings, finished putting together a sub-salt seismic project
, made it back to the
house about 8:30, and worked with John Amason at his house on the WVS web
pages from 9:00 until 11:30 PM Friday. Busy times, and even though I
am becoming older, I must admit I love doing things which I believe will
benefit you kids, my grandkids to come, and mankind in general. Like
President Hinkley said in his conference address this morning, there is
too much to do to sit back in a rocking chair and watch the world pass by.
I hope some of my enthusiasm for life, despite the challanges and diversions
we all face, will rub off on you kids."