Abio 19: Oklahoma oil field roughneck guy -- Benicia Herald April 21 2024

For Sunday, April 21, 2024 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 1,313 words

For my final summer job, I decided to become an oil-field roughneck in Oklahoma.

My Uncle Bill had been taunting me to come out and make some real money. He’d find me a job in no time.

I caught a bus to Blanchard, Oklahoma. Uncle Bill was a big-shot tool pusher – in other words he was highly skilled at unsticking the giant Hughes drill bits when they got stuck in rock two miles underground. He could wriggle them free.

Aunt Maxine set me up in a bedroom, but I seldom saw my Uncle Bill. He was always too busy to find me a job. Something urgent. He had early-morning helicopter-in-the-yard kind of urgencies.

I wandered around Blanchard and met a guy, Rick, my age. I explained how I was seeking summer oilfield work, but my uncle was too busy to help.

Rick was bored. He said, “Hell, I’ll take you out to the rigs. Get in.” We hopped into his dusty, dented Ford Capri and drove to the first rig, about 20 miles from the house. He parked in the dirt lot. Rick pointed. “That building at the base of the derrick is the doghouse. Go in there and ask for the driller, the foreman. Ask if they need help. It’s that easy.”

I got out and went in. Three men were looking over schematics. “Hi. You guys need any help? I’m looking for a job.”

The driller looked up and said, “Yes. We could use some help. Can you start right now?”

“Right now? I’m not really dressed for it.” I had on a button-down short-sleeve poly shirt and clean jeans.

“We got jumpsuits, all sizes.”

“I don’t have any gloves.”

“We got gloves.” He pointed to a full barrel of used gloves.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I never worked on a rig before.”

“We will train you.”

“Let me go ask my buddy if he’ll come back for me.”

“Tell him eight hours.”

I ran. “Rick. I got a job. Can you pick me up in eight hours?”

“Congratulations. I told you it was easy. I’ll pick you up in eight hours, unless you pull a double.” He drove off, and I returned to the doghouse to change into my roughneck clothes. I liked the term roughneck. It sounded strong, rugged, daring, attractive to women.

When I reached the doghouse, while picking out coveralls, the driller walked over. “Steve, your friend has driven away, and I forgot to tell you some others important things about the job.”

I waited. He took a big breath and let it all out. “This job is seven days a week, 365 days a year, no days off, no holidays, no vacations. As the new guy, you are a Worm. Everyone is your boss. If a worker doesn’t show up for the morning shift, you pull a 16. If you do miss a day, we will not fire you, but if someone else comes looking for a job, they take yours.”

It sounded like an endurance challenge. I agreed to all terms.

Next, I needed gloves. At the used-glove barrel, I noticed something unsettling. A lot of the gloves had a finger tucked in. For a typist, this many missing-finger gloves was spooky.

I worked three 16-hour shifts my first week. Tore the skin off my palms. I had to wear heavy bandages under my gloves.

The job gets easy once the calluses form. It’s easy to learn, but you have to learn fast.

On Rick’s recommendation, I transferred to the night shift, 10-6. Drilling companies don’t want dangerous activity going on in the dark, so dayshift guys do most of the heavy lifting. As night-shift guys, we’re more like watchmen. Keep the drill spinning. Shoot bull in the doghouse, eyes on the drill, until around 3:30 a.m. when we would kick the engines into neutral and add another 30’ extension of pipe. That took about 15 minutes. We were done for the night.

A lot of roughnecks ran their trucks on free propane. It was a legal no-no that they all knew. Company didn’t keep track. So it goes. Propaner advice: keep your grill and headlights clean. Cops look for dirty headlights and bugs on grills: means you haven’t been to a service station.

The driller wrote me a check for $680 for my day’s work. Rick picked me up and I showed him my $680 check. “That’s $85 an hour [in 1977] Rick, after tomorrow’s check, I can buy a motorcycle and you won’t have to drive me to work.”

He knew of a used Honda 360 for $1,000. I bought that motorcycle the next day.

Our well hit oil and was capped. Time for this drilling crew to move to a new site west of Oklahoma City. They invited me to come along. One guy had a three-bedroom trailer and offered me free rent near the rig. “Oh, hell, yes!” I said. Band of roughneck brothers.

The plan: rendezvous at a U-Haul parking lot on Rte. 44 on the edge of Oklahoma City by 8 a.m. tomorrow and the caravan will depart for the site unknown. No-shows get replaced. The guy with the trailer gave me his phone number in case I got lost.

That evening, I told Aunt Maxine that I was moving out. I explained the new job opportunity and free lodging. I can catch Greyhound in Oklahoma City in three weeks and go home with enough money that I won’t need a student loan for my senior year.

Maxine didn’t hesitate. “No! You are staying here. There are plenty of other rigs hiring. I promised your mother I would take care of you. I can’t let you run off and live in some trailer I don’t know about.”

I had to remind her. “Maxine I’m twenty-two. I can go if I want. Please just wake me up at 5 a.m. so I don’t miss the rendezvous.”

I know Maxine is up before dawn every morning because she makes Bill biscuits and gravy with an egg. I was all packed. She just needed to give me a holler or knock on my door. Would have taken 30 seconds. She did not holler or knock. She did not wake me. I awoke at 5:45 a.m., hurried downstairs. Maxine was sitting calmly at the kitchen table sipping coffee. “Aunt Maxine. It’s after five. Why didn’t you wake me up?”

She shrugged “I musta forgot.”

I was so angry. “Why would you do that? It meant a lot to me to travel with these guys. We’re friends. I only have three weeks left before school starts.”

Then she said something that turned a lightbulb off in my head. She said, “I did what I thought was right. Do you give $20 a week to your church? I do.”

I grabbed my duffle and walked out of her house. Damn. I left my helmet in my bedroom. I’m not going back in there. Oklahoma has no helmet laws, I just believe in them. I peeled out without my helmet, stones flying. Let her worry for a while.

Even at 70 mph all the way to Oklahoma City, I was going to miss the Rendezvous. I needed to find a phone. I split my attention between the road and phonebooths.

Wait! Holiday Inn. There’s a phonebooth in front. What’s that? Ah. Someone is in it. Check the road. Red light? Eight lanes of traffic crisscrossing in front of me? No time to react. No helmet. Ahh! Crash and darkness and immobility. After a ride in an ambulance, the doctors treated me for one cracked rib and one stitch in my shin. Discharged the same day.

The Honda pink slip, I gave to Rick. I broke even on what could have been a lucrative summer.