An Amazing Story: Part 3

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Those that attended the convention might recall getting their photo taken and laminated in plastic tag with their name on it. My Dad took keen interest in that setup and began to ask questions of the security people that were in charge. Before we went back to Texas, my Dad had bought from them the complete system except for the background, which I had to make from a sheet of plywood and paint.

The oilfield was booming and new workers were being hired left and right. The pay was excellent, but some were not suited to the hours. We had a lot of turnover at Alice Specialty, especially among the "swampers" who helped on the winch trucks. We had just built a new paint and body shop, a 6 bay mechanic shop with a grease and front end alignment pit, a fabrication shop with a 30 ton crane, and at the end was the Master Oil canning factory. We had so much theft going on we had to build one mile of chain link fence around the property and hire a 24 hour security service with a guard gate who logged everyone in and out. My Dad liked the laminated name tags because of the photo id. We employeed an average of 120 people back then and some would last from 2-3 hours to a paycheck or two before they decided they didn't like oil field work. Some would stay several months before being hired away for higher pay jobs. Roughnecks with no experience could bring down $4,000 per month in 1980.

The ID system had a camera with two lenses that took two mug shots at a time, then automatically rotated 90 degrees. You could get two aproximately 1 X 1 1/2 inch sets of photos on one Polaroid (tm) print. Then you place the print in a machine that had a die to punch out the photos. One would go on the name tag to be laminated and the other attached to the personnel file. One of the duties added to my job was to take the photos of all ASCO and EMMX Corporation personnel and make the name tags. After the Alice Police Department and Jim Wells County Sheriff's Office found out about our "library" of mug shots, they would sometimes come down to search for a mug shot of a suspect they were looking for and I would make them an enlargement. Needless to say, a lot of employees didn't like the system and some in upper management didn't either. But if Baldy wanted it.....it got done.

So thanks to the APBA convention, I had to sometimes stop what I was doing to go down to my studio in the storage room and make ID's.