Old friend from Numar

I was once traveling through West Texas with Ted, returning to Brenham from
a tough logging job in NM. We were tired and hungry when we pulled into a
little place to eat and relax. The waitress asked me what I'd like to drink,
and I said just water for now. She asked Ted, "Would you like some water
also, sir?" Without missing a beat he replied "Water?! Hell, I ain't dirty,
I'm THIRSTY".

Loved that guy. What a unique, nice, fun, interesting, and intellectually
curious person.

We've all lost a good friend and a good man.

Earle Drack

Email your stories

Dear Friends of Ted,

You can email stories to neal.breakfield.tedbacker@blogger.com instead
of emailing them to me directly. They will automatically go into the
site as drafts and I will go and publish them manually. That is
exactly how I posted this one... very easy. PLEASE BE SURE TO INCLUDE AT LEAST YOUR NAME IN THE BOTTOM OF THE EMAIL.

Don't worry about editing or making it look pretty. I will take care
of editing for spelling, punctuation, etc. I will also be sure to
strip out any personal information that you may have in an email
signature except for your name (unless you specifically ask me to
leave it in).

Regards,

Neal

The Aberdeen Scotch-Trader

This is my FAVORITE Ted story because it is indicative of the creativity that he applied to everyday life to solve problems in ways that most people don't think of... or even if they do, don't have the guts to try.

Ted was a wireline Field Engineer for Schlumberger early in his career. Later, he joined his good friend Ron Balliet at a startup oilfield company called Numar as one of their first field engineers (I think Ron was the first and Ted was the second). Ted, Ron and many others enjoyed the pleasure of working at a small, but well funded startup company where they got to write their own rules of how things were run and travel the world on the company's nickel. What a job!!!

Several years ago, Ted told me the story about a time when he was working for Numar on a job in Aberdeen, Scotland. I believe that Numar had a shop there to run operations, but they were having trouble getting some of the electronics that they needed to repair their tools in a timely manner. Ted, having been a former Schlumberger field engineer came up with a uniqe solution.

There was a Schlumberger shop nearby that he knew had many if not all of the parts that they needed. So Ted put on a pair of old Schlumberger coveralls (still with his name stitched on them) rented a car that looked like one of the vanilla Schlumberger company cars and took a trip to the Schlumberger shop. I believe that he told the guards some line of BS about being newly in from the states, and they let him right in.

Ted drives up to the open-hole tech lab at the shop and proceeds inside. Without knowing a soul in there, he plops a case of good scotch on the counter and starts handing out bottles. He then pulls out a laundry list of electronic parts that he needed, and says "Alright boys, think you can help me out with some of these?"

Ted left the Sclumberger shop about 30 minutes later with a carboard box that was once filled with scotch, and was now filled with transistors, capacitors, resistors, op-amps and other electronics that he needed to fix his tools.

He got everything on his list and drove back to the Numar shop with a smile bigger than Texas!

A Man of Many Stories (READ THIS FIRST)

My name is Neal Breakfield. I have known Ted and Cindy since 2000 when I went to work with Ted at Halliburton where he was my boss for a while. Ted was definitely one of the more interesting bosses that I have had in my life.

The purpose of this blog was inspired when I went to Guzzi Dave's to get a haircut on Friday, July 27th. After Dave told me about Ted's illness, we got to talking about some of Ted's stories... the man had a MILLION STORIES!! Ted is one of the most unique people that I have ever known in my life, and one of the things that make him so unique are the wide variety of very interesting, and in fact some down-right CRAZY things that he has done in his life.

Dave and I discussed getting a tape recorder to capture some of those stories directly from Ted's mouth if we can. I also decided to start this blog to let Ted's friends and families share some of the many stories that they remember about him with all of us.

I am opening this forum to any and all, so post away. If you have trouble posting, please email the stories to me at neal.breakfield@gmail.com.

He is still with us, so some of these might even help to cheer him up a bit, or maybe cheer up Cindy and the family.