By Jim Whitt Contributing Editor
In 1981, Barbara Mandrel released a song that describes many of us in rural America – I Was Country Before Country Was Cool. What I remember most about the song, which was recorded live at the Roy Acuff Theater in Nashville, were these lyrics:
I remember circlin’ the drive-in
Pullin’ up and turnin’ down George Jones
I remember when no one was lookin’
I was puttin’ peanuts in my Coke.
The crowd went wild when George Jones stepped up to the microphone to join Mandrel in the last chorus of the song. You didn’t have to see him to know who it was because there’s no mistaking his voice: “Hey, I was country when country wasn’t cool …”
The country between the East and West coasts – often referred to as flyover country – is not typically viewed as cool by the media/entertainment complex based in those two extremes. But that is changing because the East and West coasts don’t dominate the conversation anymore.
Country music dominates the airwaves, and Taylor Sheridan dominates television with his hit series Yellowstone, and its spinoffs 1883 and 1923. His most recent production is Landman, which is set in the oilfields of West Texas.
Producing shows about ranching and the oil business is a natural fit. Ag and oil are two sides of the same coin. That coin is land. Agriculture produces food and fiber above ground, while oil is pumped to the surface from below. Those two industries feed and fuel the world. Unfortunately, those industries are under constant attack by the Chicken Littles who claim they are causing the sky to fall.
Landman presents a side of the oil business that most people outside of flyover country have never seen. There’s a scene in one episode where oilman Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) takes his attorney, Rebecca (Kayla Wallace) on a tour of a wind farm. Here’s the conversation that takes place (I’ve deleted the profanity and much of the nonessential dialogue).
Rebecca: Wind turbines. Out here? Who owns them?
Tommy: Oil companies. We use them to power the wells. No electricity out here. We’re off the grid.
Rebecca: They use clean energy to power the oil wells?
Tommy: They use alternative energy. There’s nothing clean about this.
Rebecca: Please, Mr. Oilman, tell me how the wind is bad for the environment.
Tommy: Do you have any idea how much diesel they had to burn to mix that much concrete? Or make that steel and haul this out here and put it together with a 450-foot crane? You want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that thing? Or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan, it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it. And don’t get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your Tesla battery. And never mind the fact that, if the whole world decided to go electric tomorrow, we don’t have the transmission lines to get the electricity to the cities. It’d take 30 years if we started tomorrow. And, unfortunately, for your grandkids, we have a 120-year, petroleum-based infrastructure. Our whole lives depend on it. And it’s in everything. That road we came in on. The wheels on every car ever made, including yours. It’s in tennis rackets and lipstick and refrigerators and antihistamines. Pretty much anything plastic. Your cell phone case, artificial heart valves. Any kind of clothing that’s not made with animal or plant fibers. Soap, hand lotion, garbage bags, fishing boats. You name it. Everything. And you know what the kicker is? We’re gonna run out of it before we find its replacement.
Rebecca: It’s the thing that’s gonna kill us all … as a species.
Tommy: No, the thing that’s gonna kill us all is running out before we find an alternative. And believe me, if Exxon thought them things right there were the future, they’d be putting them all over the place.
Who’d ever believe we’d see an episode of a hit TV show deliver an in-your-face, just-the facts-ma’am, tutorial about the oil business and so-called clean energy? That tutorial wasn’t news for any of us from flyover country who have made a living in the ag or oil industries. And some of us are old enough to remember listening to George Jones and spiking our Coca-Cola with peanuts. Yeah, we were country – long before country was cool.
