Oilfield Trash

                                                                                    THE OILFIELD

“The only business you can work a lifetime in and never see what you are doing.”

Excerpt from Roughnecks, Drillers and Tool Pushers—Gerald Lynch

  

When you grow up as "oilfield trash-OFT for short or “oilfield scum” as we were typically called,  you learn to gravitate to others of a similar calling.  Probably we clung together because no one else understood us or wanted to be lumped in with us.

Gerald Lynch, the author of Roughnecks, Drillers & Tool Pushers said it best, “we stuck together because we spoke the same language and lived the same life.” Rarely could you find someone outside the “OFT” who understood what doubles, thribbles and fourbles were.

Living in an oilfield company camp house on a remote lease in the Texas panhandle, my acquaintances were all children of roughnecks, tool pushers and drillers.

They were my only friends until I started school at a small rural elementary school with a total student body of maybe 100 kids.  It was here the OFT kids learned to co-exist with the farmers’ kids and the transient workers’ children who were with us for a few months each year and then moved on.

Our home life was routine driven.  The presence of an old tin lunchbox, a huge coffee thermos and a scuffed up metal hardhat told me if daddy was home or not.  And supper was typically on the table at 5:00 pm and we were safely tucked away in bed by 8:00.

My bedtime lullaby was the constant beat of a pump jack working through the night.  Even as a child I came to learn the sounds that signaled the need of maintenance on those iron horses.

I could tell you exactly how long it took a dirt clod to disappear from sight in an oil slush pit.

I knew the sound of a gas flare off and a “pig” running through pipes.

I learned the term S O B meant many things and not all of them were bad.  Sometimes it meant good, lucky, handsome, talented and hardworking and therefore, not offensive at all.

Because children were “seen but not heard” we often weren’t really seen either.  Our invisibility gave us listening ears to jokes and stories definitely not intended for our tender years.  Therefore, we all had very colorful vocabularies and we could cuss with the best of the hands at a very early age.

OFT were prone to pranks and dirty tricks and frequently even dirtier jokes. Often, they told huge whoppers.  They were vivid, colorful and interesting people who lived hard lives, worked risky jobs and loved what they did.

But, more than anything on earth, I learned I could trust those rough men and the tireless women who packed their lunches and washed their dirty oil patch clothes.  I instinctively knew then and know now they are people who can be counted on.  You might not be readily accepted but once you gain their trust, you become a part of their world.

They are part of my past and present, they are my friends and family.  That “Oilfield Trash” is also the salt of the earth and I’m proud to be one of them.