I graduated in June 1964 at Rice University and decided to take a trip to Europe before starting Medical School in the fall. My parents indicated they would fund the trip and consider it a graduation present. Imagine my excitement when I learned that one of the Rice Board of Trustees who owned the Bloomfield Shipping line offered four free round trips to Europe in a contest for graduates. The only requirements were to leave on the last port of call of the ship and disembark on the first port we reached and return from the last port returning to the United States. Two friends, Tom Sears and Larry Yeatman, and I were all accepted. The other passenger was Marty Buckley who was a Rice student from Midland, Texas.

My Dad invested in a VW bus for me which we planned to use and return to Houston and hopefully make a profit. One week before departure we were notified to meet our ship, the SS Alice Brown, in New Orleans on June 8. We took a bus to New Orleans and boarded the Alice Brown where we learned we were the only passengers and the ship was not leaving until the following morning.

We decided to spend our last evening ashore in the French Quarter and were able to see the famous trumpeter Al Hirt and jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain. I played the clarinet in my high school band and could appreciate the skill of these musicians. Another group was the Preservation Hall Jazz Band which played in a small room open to Bourbon Street and allowed people to stand next to the musicians. We concluded our evening at Pat O’briens Bar and gardens with their famous hurricane cocktails.

I was sound asleep when I was jolted awake by the sudden motion of the ship. I quickly dressed and ran out on deck convinced our voyage had begun but was surprised that we were moving up the Mississippi. A crewman told me we were going upriver to load more cargo at the Napolean wharf, a military area. None of us really felt like another night in the French Quarter but after realizing it was our last night before two weeks at sea we went anyway. That afternoon I was taking a walk when I thought my trip was over before it began when I was attacked with a chokehold from behind and told I was under arrest. I had been photographing the Dixie Queen, a paddle steamboat and forgotten it was a military area and no pictures were allowed. I explained my situation and the soldier released me after confiscating my film.

The following morning the SS Alice Brown started weaving down the Mississippi. The terrain consisted of countless marshy island and lagoons. I wondered where Andrew Jackson and his troops had fought the Battle of New Orleans in 1814 because there was no dry land until we reached open water.

None of us had sailed on the ocean and we worried about being seasick for two weeks. To our great joy the Gulf of Mexico and most of the west Atlantic Ocean were as smooth as molasses. We met Eric who was our steward and turned out to be an interesting guy. He woke us at 7:30 for breakfast. We spent most of the day reading or learning to play a cheap Decca guitar with a Weavers songbook I bought in New Orleans. Our daily pattern was to go back to bed after breakfast, get up for lunch at 11:00 walk around the ship or exercise in the afternoon, and clean up for dinner at 5:00. In the evening we often played bridge until midnight. When we passed the lights of Key West we witnessed a terrific electric storm over Florida. One night we were startled by four long blasts from our ship. We ran on deck just in time to see our bow barely miss running over a small boat showing only one small light. We discussed whether the boat was a drug runner or possibly carrying people escaping Cuba.

One night after dinner we were invited by First Mate Schulmeyer to visit the bridge. He explained that every day they post our position and distance to our destination. That day we were near Miami and 4,194 miles to Le Havre France. The ship made 400 miles a day and was predicted to arrive around June 22. We could see the hotels of Miami and West Palm Beach but about 60 miles south of Cape Kennedy we turned out into the Atlantic to catch the Gulf stream. First Mate Schulmeyer showed us a Coast Guard map showing iceberg limits and paths of famous unusually large bergs. He stated that we would cross a very small portion of the iceberg area but June is the time of year they are coming down.

One night Eric invited us to use the ship to shore radio and I was able to talk to my parents for a few minutes. They were surprised and relieved to talk to me from the Atlantic Ocean. Later that evening we were talking to Eric and he revealed that he had two wives. One wife lived in Mobile, Alabama and the other lived in Hamburg, Germany. They did not know about his unusual lifestyle and he admitted he had to be careful to keep their names straight but he was never lonely when he was in port.

First Mate Schulmeyer calculated we should reach Le Havre about June 23 but shocked us when he announced that our first port might be Gdansk, Poland since we were carrying a large cargo of grain that we might have to unload first. This was a major problem since none of us had visas for Poland and I had plans to meet friends in Paris who were going to travel with me on the VW bus.

On June 22 we were passed by a huge passenger ship, the SS United States, which was making 33 Knots to our 15. We were near the English channel and soon could see Bishop Rock. Our course was still Le Havre. We went by Normandy beach and could see the famous beaches of Utah and Omaha which were stormed almost exactly twenty years ago on D-day by Allied forces. Some German concrete bunkers were still visible.

We had to negotiate two locks to get to our berth. A huge ship in the harbor was a US Carrier the SS Essex. We were all enchanted by thepastel cliffs of Le Havre with quaint little cars and hundreds of bikes. The town and harbor had been completely destroyed in World War II but rebuilt in the original style. We learned that Americans were not welcome because of the extensive damage we caused to the docks and city. Our voyage was over but our summer trip to Europe had just begun.

My world began in Bowie, Texas.  Oh, I was born in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, almost exactly three months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  My dad was an oil rig driller, working to produce oil from the shallow fields in southern Illinois for the war effort. My brother Wayne had been born in Cisco, Texas, almost four years before me. I was the first Hansen to be born outside of Texas since my great grandfather had immigrated from Denmark in 1865.  I don’t remember the famous white squirrels of Olney, Illinois or the paralyzing mud of the Illinois oil fields during the winters. My first memories are of our farmhouse in Bowie, a two story house surrounded by acres of land, a large pond filled with fish and frogs and the windmill that provided all our water.

My brother and I hunted for birds with Daisy Red Rider BB guns which propelled their projectiles at such a slow speed you could see them leave the barrel and sail away to the target. Nothing ever struck by our sluggish BB’s ever suffered more than a temporary sting if they were hit by one of our shots.  Looking back on this fact makes the Daisy seem like a perfect weapon for boys our age.  Once during a battle of cowboys and Indians I attacked too soon and took a BB in the back from a playmate but it did not even break my skin.

Bowie was named after a famous Texas hero who died at the Alamo during the war with Mexico that resulted in Texas Independence. He had developed a large hunting knife that was widely adopted by frontiersmen who referred to it as the Bowie knife and was used for more than hunting. The town is northwest of Fort Worth and is in the ancestral lands of the Comanche tribe known as Comancheria.  Eighty years before we lived there this land was very much on the frontier and only the very brave or very foolish settlers would dare to put their families in such danger.  My brother and I sought make-believe danger to make our play more exciting. Several generations before our time in Bowie battles between cowboys and Indians there would have been a life and death affair.

Our other playmate was our cocker spaniel we named Smokey because he had a patch of white on his chest of his otherwise jet black coat. He was a loyal companion who readily followed orders no matter how ridiculous they were. But one command he never obeyed, however, was to jump into our pond. We thought cocker spaniels were bird dogs and, as such, should be able to swim in order to fetch game but our dog seemed to avoid the water if at all possible. We determined to find out if he had the right stuff.  My brother and I took positions on opposite sides of the pond and the one without Smokey would whistle and call for him with great enthusiasm. He, of course, would charge around the pond and never get a paw wet.  After several futile attempts to entice him into the water we decided to take drastic measures. Together we picked Smokey up and on the count of three we tossed him as far as we could into the pond.  I remember that he was slowly rotating in the air and his ears were sticking out from his head at such a degree he looked like a small black helicopter.  He never made a sound as he entered the water and completely disappeared under the surface. We fully expected him to emerge in a few seconds and swim back to shore but to our horror there was no sign of him. All we saw were the enlarging circles of wavelets reaching out from his point of entry. My brother and I exchanged glances and without a word we both jumped as far as we could into the pond to save our faithful companion.  I remember we were still in the air when Smokey suddenly popped to the surface with a look of joy I will never forget.  Years later in West  Texas we would take him dove hunting to a watering hole supplied by a windmill and I would recall our attempt to test him only to find that we were the ones that had failed.

One day another dog entered our lives.  He was a stray with no collar, a tall short-haired black mix who seemed very smart. He was twice as tall as Smokey but they were very compatible and we adopted him with the unimaginative name of Blackie. The dogs never fought and were great friends and playmates.  One day during a blizzard we discovered which of the two dogs was dominant.  My dad had built a doghouse that was big enough for both of them but had only a small door. During the storm we looked out our window and could barely make out that the doghouse door was completely filled with Smokey’s rump.

A neighbor farmer appeared one day at our front door with his hat in his hand and politely asked to see the lady of the house. I ran to get mother and together we walked to the door. In his gentle Texas twang he slowly stated that we had to do something about our dog. When mother asked if he could explain the problem he stated that our dog had been getting into his chicken pen and killing some of them.  We were shocked to hear this and assumed it had to be Blackie given his background as a stray.  I was dispatched to get the dogs and returned with them for his review. Mother had already apologized for Blackie and asked the man if he was the culprit but to our great surprise the farmer said “No, it’s not the big one, it’s that little one!” To this day I believe Smokey understood the whole episode. He had a look of total embarrassment that I had never seen.  To his credit, he reformed and never bothered the man’s chickens again.

We loved playing with toy guns and one day Dad came home with a new type of toy gun for us.  It was a plastic pistol with a tiny plastic man equipped with a parachute. You wrapped him with the parachute and stuffed the whole thing down the barrel of the pistol feet first. When the gun was fired the man was ejected by a spring about twenty five feet in the air. The parachute opened and the man drifted slowly back to earth. After shooting him into space about a thousand times, we decided to try it ourselves. Since I was the smallest I was selected to be parachute man.  We collected an old sheet and some string and got to work.  The string was attached to multiple sites on the edge of the sheet and then to my belt. I then courageously marched up to the second floor of the house, opened the screen window and stepped out onto the small section of roof that circled the house between the first and second floors.  After some appropriate drama concerning the need to bail out of a crashing plane that was on fire and yelling some appropriate bravado such as “Geronimo!” I stepped out into thin air. I fell like a rock to the lawn and thought I might be knocked out until I realized it was dark because I was completely covered by the sheet. My brother, probably thinking I might be dead, ran into the house and announced to mother that Jerry had jumped off the roof. I was uninjured but my flight status was suspended and I don’t think I ever saw the parachute man again.

“There’s an Indian behind every tree.” So said Everett Jones as he described my new home to be in Midland in far West Texas. Everett was a native of Kentucky, my Dad’s business partner, and known to be a man who enjoyed a good joke. I guess I should have known better than to believe him but I was eight years old and wasn’t too sure what to expect outside of Dallas. And besides, everyone knew that Everett was a war hero, having flown over thirty missions over Germany in his B-24 bomber and lived to tell about it. World War II had ended abruptly five years ago and Everett had decided to embark on another risky line  of work, the oil business. He and my Dad were working at the Standard Fryer Drilling Company owned by R.J. Fryer. Dad was moving our family to Midland to run their rigs in the booming Permian Basin oil fields. I knew he was glad to be leaving Dallas because he was more comfortable in the wide open spaces of Texas and not commuting to an office every day.

Everett sensed I was a little nervous about moving to Midland but could not resist one parting piece of advice, “Be careful, Jerry, because everything living in West Texas has horns, thorns, or fangs.” When we were finally approaching Midland after a six hour drive, I immediately knew he had been teasing me about the Indians at least because there were no trees to hide behind. The beautiful oak trees of East Texas had been replaced by scrawny, ugly, mesquite bushes with, sure enough, long thorns.

Midland at some point in time began to call itself “The Tall City.” This was partially due to a few buildings which reached ten or twelve stories but mostly because the landscape was so incredibly flat they could be seen from thirty miles away. It is no wonder that Midland and two of it’s neighbors, Big Spring and Abilene, each had their own air force base because novice military pilots could always find an emergency landing place on the flat terrain of West Texas.

I started school in the middle of the third grade at West Elementary. The other kids had already determined who their friends were and did not quite know whether to admit me into their ranks. Things changed after the first recess period. Play at recess consisted of a tough game of dodgeball. Two teams were picked from the group of potential players and then each player took turns trying to hit one of the opponents  standing next to a building wall with a volleyball without the ball being caught. I managed to plunk a few players including their team captain and my status improved immediately.

It is appropriate that a game should have provided me with an easy entry into my new world. I am proud to say that many of those third grade dodgeball players are still friends today. They were my classmates and teammates in flag football, basketball, baseball, track and field and most importantly, high school football.

There must be something in the mineral rich water in West Texas that causes temporary insanity in the citizenry in the fall regarding high school football. Other factors may be an exaggerated sense of town honor in communities with only one high school, the lack of other entertainment, and the frontier spirit passed on by cowboys who enjoyed a good fight. Midland played in a conference with Odessa, San Angelo, Big Spring and Abilene which was nicknamed the little Southwest conference since the winner often went on to win the state championship. After I graduated Odessa started a second high school, Odessa Permian, whose football team became so successful that a book

“Friday Night Lights” was written by H.G. Bissinger about the drive of their team for the state championship. The book led to a movie and a television series that ran for several years.

Midland society was surprisingly sophisticated for a town of around 50,000 in the middle of nowhere. The first residents were some rancher families who had been barely making a living until oil was found in 1923 in the Permian Basin and they became fabulously wealthy. Many residents were highly educated geologists, petroleum engineers, wildcatters, financiers, and bankers. As a result, Midland did develop cultural institutions such as a symphony orchestra, a resident Theatre company, the Museum of the Southwest and an observatory to supplement more traditional activities such as a “World” Championship rodeo and a gaslight era melodrama called the Summer Mummers. One leading oilman, Carleton Beale, even developed a polo competition which must have befuddled the local cowboys tremendously.

The men who were in the oil business, particularly the independent operators, were gamblers and risk takers. One friend of our family,

1. C. Williamson, a geologist, lost six million dollars in 1958 to a famous scam artist named Billie Sol Estes. Mr. Estes sold nitrogen fertilizer tanks to investors all over the southwest. The only problem with his business plan was that he was selling the same tanks to different investors over and over again. When the scheme collapsed many expected that J.C might use one of the tall buildings in Midland as a platform to jump to his death but he attended the weekly meeting of the Midland High School Football Booster Club and behaved as if nothing had happened. Within a year J.C. discovered another huge oil field and according to his daughter he never seemed to let his loss bother him.

George H.W. and Barbara Bush caught the “Black Gold” fever and left Yale University and their prominent position in New England society to make it on their own in the “Oil Patch” of West Texas. George took a job in sales at Dresser Industries. The Bush family lived in Odessa, Texas, and briefly in Bakersfield, California, another oil area but in 1950 moved into a small house on Ohio Street in Midland. He soon formed an oil development company with Hugh Liedtke named Zapata Oil. The Bushes lived four blocks away from our home on 1702 Kansas Street.

Everyone who became friends with them including my dad thought they were fine people. George loved baseball and one of his community activities was to coach Pony League baseball. When he was elected the 41st President of the United States, I called my brother and admitted that if your Pony League baseball coach can become President, anybody can.

George W. Bush was the oldest son of George and Barbara. He was born in 1946 and was four years behind me at Sam Houston Elementary and San Jacinto Junior High. The Bush family moved to Houston in 1959 and unfortunately I never knew George.  Years later George W. moved back to Midland and became very good friends with my friend from dodgeball days, Charles Younger. Charles was also my roommate at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas and had returned to Midland to practice orthopedic surgery. In 2000 when it became apparent George W. would be the Republican nominee for President many reporters descended on Midland to get some background (i.e. dirt) about George. They couldn’t find anyone to say anything bad about George until finally Charles remarked that everyone thought George was a great guy and a loyal friend but “nobody thought he was smart enough to be President.” That statement was only partially true because when George was elected the 43rd President of the United States he arranged a flight to Washington and tickets to an Inaugural Ball for his friends from Midland, including Charles.

Dad and Mom both loved living in Midland. He became a partner when Standard Fryer Drilling Company became Fryer and Hanson Drilling Company. He was running rigs over a huge territory from Farmington, New Mexico to New Iberia, Louisiana and even in western Pennsylvania. During a trip to Pennsylvania in the winter he almost died when the wings of the company airplane began to accumulate ice which caused the plane to lose altitude. The pilot announced the plane was in danger or crashing unless they could reach some warmer air. Finally the ice began to melt when they were near the ground and they were able to land safely but not before dad promised himself that if he survived he would sell the plane and drive to his drilling locations regardless of how far they were.

A combination of fast cars and straight empty highways allowed him to keep his promise to abandon air travel. He could visit drilling sites 500 miles away in northern New Mexico and return the same day. I realize now that mother must have been worried about his safety during those long trips but he never had an accident. He did take time during his trips to have a little fun. During Easter one year he returned from a small truck stop at Four Corners, New Mexico, with a box labeled Easter Bunny Rabbit. He presented the rabbit to me as a present. I carefully opened the box only to find the only sign it ever held a bunny were some droppings it might have left. Then I found the card that read “Whoops! Looks like he got away!”