Chris, you must be reading "The Rising Tide" by John Barry -- I loved that book. I'm now reading "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan, another one you might enjoy. It's about the environmental disaster that hit the High Plains in the thirties -- how an entire region, that became known as the Dust Bowl, was destroyed by man's (and government's) intervention. Since you now live in that area, this one might interest you also.

BTW, in the same time period you were working for Gulf Oil, I was working for Exxon (and then a little while for Chevron) in Ventura, California.

Barbara