Much has been said about the great gushers, the notorious wildcatters, and the raucous boomtowns of oil field life, but the stories of the people who lived their lives in the shadow of the derrick have mainly gone untold. This book is a fascinating look at the everyday life of oil field workers and their families, told through oral recollections and eighty photographs. The surviving culture of the oil patch has become perhaps more significant than the diminishing reserves remaining under the surface of the ground. It is a culture that reveals itself in the popular phrase: "You can take the Texan out of the oil field, but you can't take the oil field out of the Texan." As Texas changed from a rural to urban/industrial society, no group experienced this passage more vividly than oil field workers and their families. This book is a compelling chronicle of those times.