Harold Hamm is the epitome of the self-made Oklahoman who loves and supports his native state. His family was a hearty set of share-crop farmers who earned their livelihood by raising crops and livestock and chopping and picking cotton. Hamm moved from his boyhood home of Lexington to Enid at age 16, where he attended high school and worked at a Champlin Products Service Station. After graduation from high school, he was unable to afford college so he worked for an oilfield service contractor and Champlin Petroleum Company before taking up payments on a used tank-truck and borrowing $1,000 on a co-signed note to start up his own one-truck oilfield service business. Hamm used this entry into the oil and gas industry to pick the brains of local engineers and geologists on everything from the drilling process to the production of oil.