GASOLINE FROM GAS: Rew resident Cliff Hastings stopped in recently to talk about columns we had recently about making gasoline out of natural gas. He said one reader who wrote about the topic, Clyde Johnson of Port Allegany, is a friend of his.

(Cliff tells us Clyde has an old Oldsmobile bus, which we thought was neat, too.)

“It’s fascinating. When it comes to natural gas, it’s unpredictable,” said Cliff.

He explained, for example, that each well gives a different amount, and “you don’t know where you’re going to find it,” and added that each well provides different amounts. He mentioned two types: casinghead gas and drip gas.

Cliff explained his dad worked in a water plant for a lease on Rew Hill, and he recalled a gas pump that fueled the plant would start pumping around 4 in the morning, and there was enough to run the plant and a little more.

He recalled other wells, though, “had all kinds of gas.”

During World War II, when gasoline was rationed, people couldn’t drive without a good reason, he said, but some oil field workers found ways to make their gasoline go further. “If you worked on the right lease, and you knew how to do it, you could make your own gas,” said Cliff.

He added, “These workers, they made their own gas mixed with regular gas so it wasn’t so terrible.”

Cliff thought it was interesting how drillers use what comes from the ground after they drilled. “It’s not cut and dried. You don’t drill a hole and get (a specific thing).”

He talked about how certain things click in our brains years later, such as when we get a new piece of information.

For instance, Cliff recalls there being four schools in Foster Township when he was a child, and he remembers the superintendent of the Foster Township schools would always celebrate Christmas with the children in the Rew school but not the other schools, and he wondered why.

It occurred to Cliff later that Rew, which had been an oil boom town at that time, probably reminded him more of his hometown — a lumber boom town — than the other Foster Township school locations.

The superintendent would sing Christmas songs with the Rew students. “He had a wonderful voice,” Cliff said.

During our talk, we got a little off topic, but we thought this story was funny and we wanted to share it.

Cliff remembers teaching a friend to skate at the former rollerdrome in Foster Township. The fire doors of the building were left open, and his friend skated right out the door and into the creek outside.