About Oil Well Ben and the Hollywood Rustlers
Written by Lucius Parhelion
71 pages / 28500 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-775-6, 1-60370-775-1
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc, Sony-optimed pdf, epub
When Ben gets a chance to leave his New Mexico home to visit his childhood friend in Hollywood, he jumps at it. 1930s Beverly Hills is full of bait and switch tricks that Ben just isn't used to, especially when he meets up with Johnny, someone he knew a long time ago, better than he's known anyone since. Between actors, studios and Tom's suspicious wife, Ben thinks he's walked into the lion's den.
Luckily, Johnny is willing to help out, and becomes Ben's guide through the tricky world of moving pictures. Ben thinks he might like to make Hollywood a more permanent part of his life, but not everyone and everything are as they seem. Can Ben find a way to reconcile all the pieces of his new life, or will he and Johnny have to part ways?
Review
Kara Larson, author of Home Station on the Prairie, writes:
What do you get when you combine the glam of early Hollywood with a
worn-out cowboy, looking for something new in life?
You get "Oil Well Ben and the Hollywood Rustlers" by Lucius Parhelion.
Ben McClure, New Mexico rancher and authentic cowboy, heads off to Hollywood in search of old friends and a new outlook on life. While he might need his eyes opened to some of Hollywood's seedier, big city secrets, he also knows how to read a man -- and a horse -- and figure out who's gun-shy, and who aims true.
Both Tom Walker, Hollywood leading man, and Charlie Smith, up-and-coming director knew Ben way back when in New Mexico. Though his past is tied to both, it's up to Ben to figure out which one he might be worthy of pursuing further.
This is a rollicking yarn in all senses, blending an outside view of 1931 Hollywood with the charm and honesty of a cowboy's roots. Ben and Johnny are likeable, fallible men, and Tom weaves in and out of the narrative as that elusive, dreamy-smiled leading man. Parhelion not only accurately sums up the grime and grit of the range, but shows how this same dirt clings to those early movie pioneers; how much movie life does and doesn't reflect the rest of us, and how much sparkle there really is to Hollywood. If you like vintage, if you like cowboys and shoot-'em-up Westerns, if you wish you lived among the glam and the grit, "Oil Well Ben and the Hollywood Rustlers" plays out like one of those old-time talkies that rides off into the sunset.
Sample
Soda Charlie craned around to look out the driver's window toward the back of the truck. Then he shifted his chaw from one cheek to the other before calling out, "You got both your bags, Mr. McClure?"
"Yep." Ben had already swung down his new suitcases from the truck bed and was dusting them off with a red cotton bandana.
Compared to a few years back, this journey into Hobbs had been easy. Recently, Ben had bought his Allwell Ranch a '29 Ford pickup with puncture-proof tire tubes. They no longer had to stop and fix the flats from mesquite thorns every time they drove anywhere. And, in May, the road past the ranch had yet to harden into the kind of washboarding from which, once you got into the wrong set of ruts, you were not getting out again before you covered the entire twenty-five miles to the county seat in Lovington. But the trip was still plenty dusty, leaving a film of grit over everything in the truck bed.
Ben finished cleaning the leather, wadded the bandana up, and tossed it through the open passenger window to join the old trail coat he had been wearing to protect his brand new suit. "See those get cleaned up and stored away in the big house, would you?"
"Sure will. You have a good time, now, wherever the hell it is you're heading for." Soda Charlie put the truck into gear.
As Charlie drove off toward the feed store, a fresh plume of dust rose up from the street behind him. Before oil had been discovered, the so-called town of Hobbs, New Mexico had consisted of a store, a couple of houses, several windmills, a combined schoolhouse and church, and a tabby cat who liked to wash up in the middle of the town's one street. Now Hobbs had lots of streets with fancy names, but real paving still trailed oil-fueled ambition. Shaking his head, Ben hoisted up his suitcases and headed for the clean new depot.
When he reached the head of the short line at the ticket counter, he said, "Morning, Walter." The agent and he had been in classes together, back when Ben had boarded in town so he could attend school.
"Morning, Mr. McClure. Where you heading?"
"Monahans."
"End of the line," Walter said, reaching for a ticket form. "Transferring?"
"Yep. First class, please." When Walter raised his eyebrows, Ben just smiled instead of laying out any more of his plans.
Here, at last, was a chance to keep something private from the folks who had known him his whole life. Ben had not altogether decided until he walked into the depot, but now he knew where he was going. Thirty-one years old, and he could finally do what he desired and not what he should. And he was going to begin by heading for Hollywood, now that he could afford the trip.
For years, Ben McClure had battled land, cattle, and climate to try to win a hard living from the high plains ranch that had been his father's dream come true. This year, for no better reason than luck, that fight was over and Ben had won. Not that his victory had come easily. In Ben's opinion, any negotiations in a new and booming oil patch were a lot like being sewn up in a canvas sack with five snakes, four of which were diamondbacks, and then having someone kick the bag. But Ben's pa had known everyone who settled this part of the Llano Escatado, the stake plains, so Ben knew them all, too.