Clark Randall's Big Break

CHRISTMAS in KHOBAR - Excerpt from Clark Randall's Big Break

... Clark Randall had never considered Chevron’s Arabian venture before, but a seed was planted. He asked around and was quickly hired by Aramco. Not much later he arrived in Abqaiq on a single-status contract for a provisional year before his family could come over. 

Where did Jebel JInubi go?

CHRISTMAS in KHOBAR -  Excerpt from the Introduction

This map pinpoints the locations of the first 40 wells drilled into the Dammam Dome, the geological name for the oil field that started everything in Saudi Arabia. It shows the Dhahran camp and the basic topography of the surrounding area to Al Khobar on the Gulf coast and toward the much older port of Dammam to the north.

     To the west are the twin free-standing jebels: Jebel Midra Ash-Shemali at 509 feet tall and Jebel Midra Al-Junibi, which was two feet taller. Almost everything between these two landmarks and the Arabian Gulf is untouched desert, the same as it has always been.

This map was published in 1947, the year I was born in Dhahran.

Tequila!

When Tequila was legal in Aramco - 1950

ARABIAN SON - Excerpt from Tequila!

...School was okay and all that but the best part was that Tommy M. lived on Third Street, directly across from the school. Sometimes Milt and I would loiter at Tommy’s house after class. He was an excitable kid with an enviable brush-cut that stood straight up about 3 inches high. Enthusiastic about life, Tommy was the only kid in camp who had a mini-motorbike and, better yet, his parents weren’t home during the day. 

We’d hang around his room and discuss the world seen through the eyes of a 9 year old. We talked about the latest war movie, the dead jackal we saw on the road to Khobar, the kids at school and gross teachers but mainly we discussed the proven fact that girls were from another galaxy. Completely mystifying. You wanted so much to amaze them and hear their laughter but they were working from an entirely different script.

Tommy had an older brother who never seemed to be around. He always had the latest 45 records, so one day Tommy comes up to me just before the end of class and says, “You’ve got to hear this.”

“What?”

“You’ve got to hear it,” he said and then dashed off.

Minutes later, Milt and I breathlessly knock on Tommy’s door. He opens it with a giant grin, “Gentlemen, right this way.”

The air conditioning is humming throughout the house. The shades are drawn as we silently walk past the classic Aramco thick-bodied maple furniture in the living room and follow Tommy into his room. He goes over to the dresser and intently drops the needle on the record player.

And there it was for the first time in Saudi Arabia!

A hand clapping rhythm, a guitar, a building Latin beat, a blasting saxophone that couldn’t be resisted and then, “Tequila!” After the first riff, we are all up moving around in some unidentifiable dance. Laughing and gyrating, getting ready to shout “Tequila!” at the right time. We have no idea what Tequila is but it sure sounds like a good idea....

ARABIAN SON @ Amazon

Christmas in Khobar - Excerpt from Salt Tablet Lake

Half Moon Bay! What can I say? 

Living in 1950s Aramco, it was paradise. Not as much for the Ras Tanurans who lived at the beach, but for those us in Dhahran living on the rocky jabal or the citizens of Abqaiq, planted deep within a vast sand dune field thirty miles from the coast, Half Moon Bay spelled happiness.

From the beginning its warm, unspoiled waters lured us all: toddlers, mud castle builders, swimmers, fishermen, sailors, water skiers, snorkelers and beachgoers of every age. 

The shore was completely undeveloped and the beaches as far as you could see were absolutely as pristine as they always had been – not a speck of plastic litter anywhere. Just clean sand bleeding off into the waist-high water for a few yards until sharply descending 15 or 20 feet at the drop off. 

In the summer the water temperature can get into the high 80s but go out to the drop-off and dive under about six feet and you’ll hit the thermocline, a sharply defined layer of cooler water, and the temperature will drop to the 70s. Cool and refreshing. The entire coastline of Half Moon Bay was pretty much the way it had always been for thousands of years, if not more. 

A road had been built across the head of the bay, maybe in the 1940s, leaving to the north a lake a couple of hundred yards long that was cut off from the bay. Salt water kept seeping in, but it never left and the lake kept getting saltier and saltier. The water was much greener than in the bay, so we called it Salt Tablet Lake in honor of the hallowed salt tablet and the ubiquitous hunter green salt tablet dispensers that were everywhere in Aramco. Every weekend hundreds of adults drove past the Salt Tablet on the way to the Yacht Club. Hardly any of them bothered to check it out, but we did. 

The Salt Tablet was probably saltier than the Dead Sea or the Great Salt Lake in Utah. We’d wade out into four feet of water and sit down to float around as if we were seated in chaise lounges. Go out a little deeper and try to dive to the bottom and you couldn’t do it. No matter how hard you swam, by the time you got past your knees you‘d come bobbing back up like a cork.

We’re all sixteen. Ben, Landis and I are floating around in the Salt Tablet with Marie and Sheila. Splashing each other, trying to dive down, bobbing around talking about the party tonight at Barclay’s. It’s August around two in the afternoon. The temperature is about 125 degrees and the UV Hazard Index is about 20 points over death ray, so we are obviously having a great time....

Christmas in Khobar @ Amazon