The Lost Canyon Project: May 2019

Terror in the Oilwell Hills

(Bygone Oilfields cntd.)

<last week: Bygone Oilfields Archive

We're looking at the sketches and notes from Archive 10. These pieces would have been the raw material for one of Pete Hampton's shows, this one called "The Bygone Oilfields". Pete included his girlfriend, Gay in the shooting script, and his friend Tom Malloy in the narrative. Keep in mind that these are only sketches and notes for a show that was never finished.

We left off with Pete sneaking into the oil fields late in the afternoon. The sun has set. We'll assume that the passenger in the truck is Tom Malloy. Just ignore the inconsistencies, and hang on...

...What’s That! Look, something bolted in front of me over there towards that drop. Then a skeleton comes at my windshield and disappears."

There’s many strange stories passed around about this place that I heard. One guy had his arms cut off and then he ran away in the hills and they never saw him again until years later.

Then in Lovers’ Lane where cars parked a couple found a hook hanging from a car door as a man ran off. Maybe the guy lost his mind, who knows? I don’t know if it’s true or not. I don’t really believe it.

Ya, but Pete you don’t know I wouldn’t trust it.

Then there’s another story of a couple parked in a remote place where he told his girl to stay in the car while he got out and analyzed a strange greenish light. It was like a greenish mist or gas that hung over a marsh in a valley and it only appeared at a certain time, no one ever dared go near it for fear they’d never return again. Some people were evaporated they said, burnt up in a cold light.

It’s wispy and ghostly when I think of it, Pete, like a nightmare. Only a nightmare could fit it. The her boyfriend screamed and silence fell over the place again. The boy told her not to leave the car, no matter what reason so she remained in the car till dawn when the police arrived.

Terror in the Oilwell Hills

Several years ago in the Oilwell Hills a girl waited in the car while she heard scratching noises on the roof of the car. She was told not to leave under any circumstances until her date returned. She waited all night until dawn when police arrived. She heard a scream hours earlier but no one came back again. She must have dozed off to be awakened by scratching noises above her. An officer told her to get out of the car and not look back, for a tragedy had happened to her boyfriend. She looked back and screamed in horror. His head was chopped off and he was hung from a tree limb. It was his fingernails that were scraping the top of the car to her horror…

The Hookman from the Valley of the Green Mist had attacked him while he checked it out in the night. Many have told me of these stories. Tom Malloy, Scott Young, and even a little kid. It would have been a chiller for my story on the Oilwell Hills;

This time people won’t get bored by my nature stories of the hills. This will be a smash hit with those who are restless and want excitement.

If they want beauty they can always see The Lost Canyon Trip.

NEXT Looking at the Eleventh Archive>

Bygone Oilfields Archive

<Last week: Random Ramblings

We left off last week talking about “The Bygone Oilfields” archive. Jeff Goslowsky shared some recollections, and he brought up Pete’s love for old oil drilling and pumping machinery.

The “Oilwell Hills”, as Pete called them, are east of Uptown Whittier, and the Turnbul Canyon, and Lost Canyon areas. As Pete pointed out, some of the old machinery was still there in the late 1960’s. The Oilwell Hills are depicted in the banner painting for the blog, and are now part of the wilderness preserve that I wrote about in the first post here at the Lost Canyon Project .

I wasn’t sure at first if the box cover was maybe a little goofing around on Pete’s part “Starring Pete Hampton and…Also Introducing Tom Malloy” but this group of pictures was indeed, the beginning of another show.

It wasn’t until I’d finished the photography session that I found several pages of text, a shooting script for the illustrations, and a story fragment on the back of one of the paintings. It is for just this reason that I’ve been careful not to disturb the order of the paintings in any of these collections.

Like The Lost Canyon Trip, the Bygone Oilfields show would have been a slide show of paintings and photographs accompanied by a tape recorded sound track and narrative.

One of the paintings in this collection dates to 1954. The newspaper lining the box was from 1964, so Pete had this story idea going for quite a while before he met either Tom Malloy, or Gay Turner. The show would have combined a tour of some antique oil pumping machinery in the Oilwell Hills with Pete’s “The Terrible Thing” story, and a campfire story/ urban legend called “The Green Mist”. Pete included Tom and Gay in his story notes, so I’d put the notes at some time in 1968.

The following text has been taken as-is from the hand written notes in the archive. I must admit, I got a chuckle out of some of the late 60's slang. "Righteous" was the "awesome" of its day. I have done as little editing as possible.

Pete Hampton writes:

"This story is based on true life experiences as I saw them 10 years ago.

This is a modern suburb, “Friendly Hills” in Whittier California. Behind are abandoned oilfields that were discovered when Whittier was young in 1900. So remote, lonely, and old…

On this trip you will see many kinds of oil pumping devices up there never exposed to the public before.

An oilman once said, “This is unusually fascinating in its own way. Not many people get a chance to see this place”

… Some of you’ll say it’s beautiful and fascinating, some, it’s strange and scary, some it’s groovy, and others will say it’s freaky.

"Tom, look at how quick it changes from a modern tract to a place that’s 35 years behind time. Here’s a gate “Trespassing and Loitering Forbidden by Law”"

Oh, well no one will see me. I just hope the oilmen won’t shut the gate and lock me in, it’s late afternoon. Even the poles are like time never touched this place, WOW!

Look at this old “Iron Butterfly”, a device pulled by a cable from a main power center then pulling three wells up the hill.

Look, a different kind of central jackplant at the bottom of this canyon. My gosh it’s down on the ground instead of on top of a tin house. Here’s an old single cylinder gas engine out in the open with two huge flywheels and a ball governor to keep it going. It lives off natural gas pumped by its own wells. Listen to how loud it puffs, pops and pounds.

Another more common walking beam type oil well seems to answer back over there. It almost seems to make a mechanical rock music. This is righteous! There’s the cam wheel on the ground pulling cables in all directions.

As a curtain of blackness falls over this canyon, I went driving up a lonely road disappearing into the darkness, hoping they wouldn’t lock the gate behind me. For the first time I was driving up a lonely mountain like hill where I’d never been before.

Beginning of story…
Drive up lonely hill at night

Up ahead the road forked. One part went up to a vast desolate valley up in the East Whittier Hills, the other went up the hill which would take me up higher. A fear gripped me to hold me back, yet some curiosity of exploration seemed to drag me on.

Fire shot out of old One Power below. It was dead quiet except for squeaking of jacklines and pounding of jackplants in tin houses.

...A sense of eon’s time struck me by the formations in this sandstone bank, millions of years, maybe. I feel God’s creation of these great hills, how small I am…