WONDERFUL FOLK LEGENDS

YEARS AND YEARS AGO, I MADE A (MINOR) LITERARY NAME FOR MYSELF: It was in elementary school and I got a good mark for writing a piece on folk hero John Henry. You recall John Henry? Wikipedia recounts, “A black American freedman, he is said to have worked as a ‘steel-driving man’—a man tasked with hammering a steel drill (such as a star drill or similar) into a rock to make holes for explosives to blast the rock in constructing a railroad tunnel.”

Over the years, the John Henry legend led me to other American folk heroes: Paul Bunyan; Johnny Appleseed, steel-worker Joe Magarac, cowboy Pecos Bill, Bigfoot, and George Santos. Well, yes, this last one is sorta an American legend (albeit a phony one).

Most recently, I added a new one: Kemp Morgan (whose name, coincidentally links Wife Dottie’s maiden name with my favorite sports car.) I leaned about Kemp Morgan through Narrator George Walsh in an old-time radio Gunsmoke episode “Odd Man Out,” 11/24/57. Indeed, I thank Wave Pod for the transcription which follows.

George Walsh recounts, “Now just listen a minute, if you will. I’ve got a little story to tell you. Well, it’s not so little. It’s sort of a tall tale. It’s about Kemp Morgan. Ever heard of him? Well, he was one of the legendary heroes of Oklahoma, or to be more specific, of the oil industry.”

“Seems it was Morgan,” relates Walsh, “who first discovered oil in them parts. Now, folks say that old Morgan didn’t need divining rods and such to show him where the oil was. No, sir, he’d just follow his nose. Why, he’d just sniff his way across the field. And when he found the right smell coming up out of the ground, that’s where he’d plant his well.” 

A Brief Pause: My Divining Rod Experience with Betty Walker. I have many fond memories of Rob and Betty Walker, the only people I knew personally with their own castle, Nunney Castle. 

Nunney Castle, Nunney, England, as it appears today.

As I noted here at SimanaitisSays, “Among perhaps lesser known skills, Rob knew how to tear a full-size phonebook in half; Betty could use a divining rod for searching out Roman coins in Nunney Court fields.” I have one of the coins in the bookcase.

Back to Walsh’s Tale: “Old Kemp Morgan didn’t need any help planting that well either. No, sir. He was his own crew, all Morgan was. Kemp would dig down as far as he could reach. Then he’d unlimber his Sharps [a large-bore breach-loading rifle] and shoot a hole through the bottom of the pit. And talk about fast. Why, that boy would have his derrick up and his oil tanks built before the oil had time to reach the surface.”

“One time he dug a well so deep that it come out on the other side of the world right into the middle of a rubber plantation down around Brazil. It was for days that well spouted pure rubber. Some guy from Akron, Ohio, took it off Morgan’s hands at a nice little profit.”

A Rare Dry Hole. Kemp profited, nonetheless: “He took that old dry hole, sawed it into lengths and sold every last one of them to Kansas farmers for fence post holes.” 

“Kind of hard to believe in it,” Walsh admits. “Say, isn’t it nice being citizens of a country where you can laugh and talk about things, free as a breeze. Write and read and worship too. Yes, sir. Maybe you don’t think about it much, but you should.” 

I agree with George Walsh whole-heartedly (no pun intended). ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026