• R&B legend Barry White was born in Galveston, where his father worked as a machinist.
• Rapper Vanilla Ice (real name: Robert Matthew Van Winkle) was raised in Carrollton, a posh suburb of Dallas. He first attracted attention as a champion break-dancer.
• Comedian Steve Martin was born in Waco. He moved to California as a youngster.
• Actress Debbie Reynolds was a distinguished Girl Scout and eventual troop leader in her native El Paso.
• Ethan Hawke, star of "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," was born in Austin, where his grandfather served as a five-term state legislator.
• Farrah Fawcett, actress and pin-up star, was born and raised in Corpus Christi, where her father was an oil field contractor.
• Aaron Spelling grew up in a Jewish enclave of Dallas and was bullied so mercilessly by his classmates that he psychosomatically lost the use of his legs at age eight and was confined to bed for a year.
• Jennifer Love Hewitt was raised in Killeen and made her performing debut at age three, singing at a Waco livestock show.
• Shelley Duvall was discovered while she was working as a cosmetic salesgirl in her native Houston. She soon had a role in Robert Altman's "Brewster McCloud."
• Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur in San Antonio in 1906.
• Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham was a gang member in El Paso.
• "Star Trek" actor Brent Spiner was born in Houston, where his father owned a furniture store.
• Choreographer Tommy Tune was born in Wichita Falls and produced theatrical dramas and comedies in the family's garage as a child.
• Despite seeming to be the ultimate New Yorker, film director Julian Schnabel ("Basquiat," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly") was raised in Brownsville, where he was an accomplished surfer.
• Barney the Dinosaur was created by a Dallas schoolteacher who sold the early episodes herself out of the trunk of her car.

Black Gold Facts

• Every hour that a rig is not working costs a company about $2,000. A rig that lays dormant for one week can cost the company more than a quarter of a million dollars.
• A rig weighs approximately 80 tons. After the drilling is finished, the apparatus is taken apart and moved to another location within 24 hours.
• Mandatory rig gear includes hard hats, safety glasses, steel-toe boots and work gloves.
• Drill bits are extremely heavy and cost $60,000 each.
• In two of the wells drilled, the teams entered pockets of Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S). H2S is a potentially poisonous gas that in large concentrations could kill everyone on the rig in seconds.
• There is a rivalry between crews, but it's friendly for the most part. Especially during a boom, most drilling companies have more than one rig running.
• In situations where the same drilling company or oil company is working side-by-side, equipment, pipe, tools and supplies are often shared.
• Most people in West Texas are in the oil business in some way, so there is competition between companies, between rigs from the same company, and even between crews working different shifts on the same rig. It's friendly competition, but roughnecks take pride in their work and want to be better than the next guy.
• Hard-headed drillers and roughnecks usually get to the point where they can't stand working together. In those situations, either the roughnecks quit or the driller fires them.