Keystone Pipeline Prompts a Book

Most people in the U.S. have heard about the Keystone Pipeline which could carry oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas.  It has made the news, and is still is a point of disagreement between Congress and the President.

As work proceeded on it across Texas, there were many protests. (I’ll talk about some of those at a later date.) These made the workers on the pipeline very anxious when strangers appeared.

The pipeline runs through part of our land (and I’ll talk about that another day also).  Once the court granted Keystone eminent domain, we gave up our fight and decided we would simply enjoy the process of such a large and complex project.  The pipeline is roughly six hundred feet through the forest from our house, so it was easy for us to walk over and watch the progress.

On one of my annual birthdays, my wife planned a large party.   Throughout the day, people would wander down to see what this news-making pipeline was all about. Midway through the afternoon festivities, a couple came back and said the pipe was about to be lowered into the trench.

Within minutes, about thirty of our guests hiked over to watch.  As our crowd emerged through the trees several hundred feet away from the pipe, all chatter among the workers stopped.  Many just stared at us.  Slowly, the foreman got the operation moving again.

This was a massive steel pipe with walls more than a half-inch thick coated with green plastic.   Ninety-foot sections had been welded together and lay perhaps six feet to the side of the ditch.  Many large backhoes were trying to ease a quarter-mile section over and down into the seven foot deep trench.

It was an amazing task. The pipe was too long to be handled all at once. So these machines slowly lowered the far end in and as each backhoe got the pipe it was handling into the ditch, the machine would then move to the head of the line to lift and move the pipe over the open trench.

Talk among the workers remained subdued and when time allowed, they would look in our direction, anxious to know what we were doing.  Our group, on the other hand, whispered, not wanting to cause any distraction for those working on a dangerous task.

When the final backhoe got the last of the pipe safely and gently positioned in the trench, we all began to applaud.

We could see the frowns and worry lines on the pipeline workers immediately change to smiles. The foreman began to walk towards us, grinning.  They now understood we were not there to protest, but to marvel at a difficult task well done.

Of course, the many protests, law suits, and opposition to the pipeline prompted me to write Over My Dead Body.  In this mystery, Syd Cranzler objects to his land being seized for a private corporation by means of eminent domain. He tells the corporation representative his lawyer will file an appeal which, at the least, will delay the project for years.  The next day, Syd is found dead from an overdose of his heart medication.  The police rule it suicide. Case closed.

But Father Frank and another member of his church don’t believe Syd committed suicide and begin to look for evidence.  And the more they find, the more their lives become in danger.

Real things in my life provided the genesis for my book. While I did not address the Keystone, it had jump started a book.

Click here to read more about Over My Dead Body.