Phil Knighton, What a Ride It’s Been

My First Car

Check your senior year yearbook and you will see a picture of me driving a 1911 Model T Ford on the sidewalk in front of good ole East High.  In the seats were Jack Kleinheksel, Gene Carter, and Eric Knorr. It was a photo requested by the yearbook staff.  Great fun.  Most of the “neat guys” were driving souped up 1950’s cars, hot rods of a sort.  I was always behind the times, driving daily a 1928 Model  A Ford (not even classified an antique at that time).  The Model A came first.  I paid $10.00 for it when I was 13, as I could legally drive when I was 14.  Gave me a year to fix it up and it was a mess.  Using a 6 volt battery “borrowed” from my Dad’s Hudson Hornet, it started the first day I towed it home.   The motor smoked a lot and it needed new tires, a paint job, reupholstery and a new canvas top.  We painted it with an Airway vacuum cleaner with burnt umber fenders, a silver-sand body and cream wheels.  None of this was original but it was “wheels” and that’s what counted.  I used lawn mowing money to do all this and to later buy the 1911 Model T when I was 14.  When I was 15, with borrowed money, I made a down payment on 12 antique cars in a building in Waverly, Kansas.  I sold the 1911 Model T to repay that debt and kept two Maxwells out of the collection, a 1914 touring and a 1910 two-cylinder roadster.  I still have those two.  Made a few bucks there

Hooked on Cars

I got hooked on antique cars and have had them all my life.  While at East I wanted to take shop classes.  Mrs. Worthington (remember her?) advised me I could not because my folks had checked some form that I was going to college, and East High had me on a different track to prepare for that.  I sure wish that hadn’t been the case because I had to help with my college expenses,  and  working  part time in a machine shop would have been more lucrative that mowing lawns.  Today I own a full machine shop with which I butcher out a few parts. 

Jones Six

At WSU in Freshman English I doubled up on interests.  For a research paper, I chose the history of the Wichita built Jones Six cars.  With no good source of information,  I called  fellow choir member Frank Good who wrote the Home Town News column in the Wichita Eagle to get permission to go into the “morgue” at the Eagle (where the dead newspapers live).  Sure he said, but I’ll do you one better and put it in the Home Town News that you are looking for information on the Jones cars.  The morning it came out our phone at home started ringing at 5:00 AM.  I had 80 calls that day and over 200 through the week.  Folks called who had a Jones or worked in the factory.  One guy said he was Jones’ right-hand man through the whole deal.  I took our recorder over and interviewed him for two hours.  It was transcribed and my paper was done.  Better yet, Jones’ daughter called me and had her Dad’s scrapbook.  She gave it to me with original pictures, sales brochures, etc.   What a treasure!   I had no idea that some day I’d find one and restore it, but I did many years later.  It literally walked up to me at an antique auto swap meet.  I bought, sold and repaired antique car speedometers.  The guy looked at my business card and said,” Oh, you’re from Wichita.  I’ve got a car made in Wichita and I’d like to get rid of it.”  I did buy it.  It’s still in the family.  It’s one of eight that survived the production run of 3900 from 1914 to 1921.  Most were open cars and people were changing to enclosed cars in the late teens and twenties.  I suspect the older Jones cars got converted into pickups and were driven into the ground.  WWII also caused many old cars to be scrapped for the war effort.

My Education

Off to WSU first, majoring in Music (voice), then History, then English Literature, all the while taking a few geology courses for fun.  My Dad was a geologist, my paternal grandfather was a mining engineer, my great grandfather was a sidekick of William F. Cody. They developed a copper mine in Arizona, sold it and it now is the world’s largest open pit copper mine in the world.  I graduated in Geology.  There were no jobs in geology in 1964 so I went on for a Masters.  In 1967 I transferred to KU to do a Ph.D.  I had been teaching geology since my senior year and really enjoyed it.  At KU my financial situation became so desperate I started interviewing as the oil industry was waking up. Of three job offers out of six interviews, I chose Humble Oil and Gas (later renamed EXXON) and went to Lafayette, Louisiana.  I came back and married my sweetheart from college days.  We lived in Lafayette for two years.  We decided to go back to Kansas, and I had a job teaching geology at Washburn University where I could pursue a law degree at the same time.  The oil industry was in a nosedive and we saw it coming.   Rita was a good person and an RN.  But we had some issues and parted company in my senior year. 

A Variety of Jobs

I dropped geology, spent some time prosecuting for Sedgwick County, then worked for KG&E on their legal staff.  I had spent some time before that prosecuting for Sedgwick County.  There I second chaired some murder cases and mostly chased welfare deadbeats.  After KG&E I went to work for the Federal Land bank managing 4,000,000 acres of mineral rights they owned.  It was a delight.  I worked oil and gas, building stone, gold, copper, silver, sand deposits and uranium leases.  To get the fair value terms on leases for these deposits you had to learn about them and then negotiate with mining companies.  I really enjoyed this and took their revenues up four-fold.  They had hired me to see what I could do.  I asked after four years to be paid competitively.  Big mistake in a way.  Their management had changed, and the new president did not think the Land Bank should own these minerals in the first place.  He suggested I get another job elsewhere.  I did.  I opened my own law practice in the suite of Lambdin and Kluge.  They helped me with overflow work and, God bless the good ole USA, they passed the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1976.  The natural gas prices had gone up rapidly and Congress’ only idea was to cap them in categories of old gas (fixed at about $.14 per MCF), new gas ( escalated from about $1.25/MCF)  and stripper gas (Market price then about $1.80/MCF).  These prices escalated with inflation.  The beauty of this plan was you needed a lawyer to file an application to prove the classification through the Kansas Corporation Commission Oil and Gas Conservation Division.  Perfect for a geologist-attorney.  I used to call that law the ‘accountant and lawyer’s relief act’.  It also afforded me the time to specialize and I was asked to do the chapter in the Kansas Oil and Gas Law Handbook on Kansas Corporation Conservation Division practice.  I really enjoyed that work and lectured on it to the bar Association and Geological Societies.

Native American Connections Discovered

I did a few cases where some SOB had really taken advantage of someone.  It irritated me and I’d latch on to them and rag them until they gave in.  Some other lawyers nicknamed me ‘the Mongoose’. I got two Comanche feathers for those “kills.”  Oh, and at age 15, I was adopted as a blood brother with a blood ceremony into the Comanche tribe by a Comanche named Roy Wall. My given Comanche name is Little Eagle. He was my voice teacher and coach.  We hunted together and he taught me how to fly fish.  Roy built me two beautiful rods.  He also wrote a column for the Eagle on fishing and hunting.  He wrote a number of novels too. Special guy in my life.  Later when Chris and I were doing DNA testing for ancestry, mine came back 12 % American Indian.  8% Cherokee and four 1 %’s other tribes. We don’t have an oral history of Native American ancestors. I don’t know if this is real or not, but most of my ancestors lived in Cherokee territory in the early days.  Could be.  Under Andrew Jackson in 1830, a law was passed that American Indians could not homestead land because they had been given so much in Oklahoma.  (Most of it was not farmable but became prolific of oil and gas.) And he ordered them removed form their lands in Northern Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Eastern Tennessee in the infamous ‘Trail of Tears’ forced march. Many died on the way.  The Cherokee who had fought on the American side in the revolutionary war and the war of 1812, felt betrayed.  To this day you will not find a $20 bill in Indian Territory in Oklahoma.  That law preventing them from homesteading was repealed in 1889, as I recall.  Most persons with full or partial Indian blood kept quiet about it if they wanted to go west and homestead land.

Death Threats

I have had two death threats in my practice and that’s two too many.  One was from the Deacon of my church who was also a VP at KG&E.  I had published a full-page article in the Wichita Eagle when I learned in my uranium trading that Westinghouse was going to cancel the supply contract for Wolf Creek Nuclear station just as it was being constructed.  I had advised KG&E and offered them some uranium leases on the Land Bank deposits as a backup.  They told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and declined.  I felt so strongly it was a mistake and wrote the article.  I was invited to lunch at a classy club downtown.  Before we could order, they demanded I rescind the article.  I replied the USA reserves are insufficient to support the 100 plus nuc’s we had and the rumor circulating inside the uranium industry was likely true.  The VP advised that people who do such things often just disappear.  I got up and left the free lunch immediately.  Hope they had a good meal.  KG&E got their ‘Dear Ralph’ letter from Ralph the CEO of Westinghouse to Ralph Fiebach CEO of KG&E several weeks later cancelling the uranium supply as ‘commercially impracticable’, a UCC defense to performance.  They were sued and KG&E won some money but not uranium.  The USA reserves have not changed since that time either. 

The second death threat was at a restaurant when a defendant (and real scumbag) came in and saw us.  He had cheated some investor friends out of $30,000.  He came over to our table and started shouting he’d kill us right in front of everyone.  Then he stormed out.  We filed a police report and did not sleep at home for a few days.  He died in prison some years later for some other little deeds.

Personal Life

I met a lady playing tennis who had three really neat kids.  Billie was a widow from the Vietnam war.  We hit it off and got married.  We were together for 23 years raising her kids whom I adopted.  When  she decided she did not want to be married any more one day and went her own way, I was sort of devastated.  I did get over it and Billie now feels free to come over for family do’s.  Seemed we should because when the kids and grandkids and now great grandkids are here we should all be able to enjoy that.  She always asks what she can bring too.

Licking my wounds, I had been doing some drilling deals with a lady geologist whose Dad was a geologist.  We did a little trip together and I was hooked on this lady.  It took three years to reel her in. She was caring for her mom who was in a wheelchair.  But I got all three, Chris, her mom and her cat, all of whom I adored.

As an aside, I always enjoyed hiking in the Rocky Mountains.  Each summer I would go to Jack Kleinheksel’s for a week of rugged wilderness hiking with a group of guys who were his neighbors.  I also loved performing in music productions and had a number or two in some of them.  The Wichita Bar Association used to produce some satirical productions written by George Powers and Art Skaer, who had an astounding voice.  Most were rewrites to Broadway show music. They roasted everyone and were really funny.  I also did weddings and funerals, and some old car music for antique car tours and conventions.  You know,  ‘In My Merry Oldsmobile’ type songs.  In the early days car manufacturers hired vaudeville song writers to do songs featuring their brand, like ‘Henry’s Made a Lady Out of Lizzie’ for the 1928 Model A that succeeded the Model T.  I only mention it because it was one of the joys of my life.

And Now

My best joy is Chris. We’ve been together 27 years now.  We just do geology. I parked the legal license in “inactive “status just in case I need to reactivate it.  If you saw in Skip’s report on me, we built a house after we hit a nice sized oil field.  About half-way through building it, in November 2014, the price of oil fell from $95/bbl to $17.50. That decline shut in half of our small producing wells, so we had effectively 10% of the income we were building the house with.  We finished it with borrowed money and moved in in 2016.  Put it on the market in 2018; no buyers yet.  Fortunately, we kept the two old houses that are side by side as a safety net.  One we lived in and the other was office space. Tough to sell a high-end home in the economic recession and Covid era.  That’s it. See you at our 2021 reunion!

Phil did not make the 2022 reunion. See Remembering Phil Knighton, 1942-2022.