I GREW UP IN THE OIL FIELD.
I grew up in the oil-field. Where? Hell it doesn't matter, the oil field isn't a place at all; it's a way of life. You can be working in Odessa, Texas; Gillette, Wyoming; Prudhoe Bay, Alaska; Maracaibo, Venezuela; or Rangely, Colorado and it will still be the same folks that you meet on the street, and go to church with. They drink hard, work hard, play rough and work out their lives in one of the most dangerous and physically demanding occupations in the world. They usually don't get ahead in life. It's chicken one week and feathers the next, sequential polygamy and Jack Daniels whiskey. There is no job security, zero, zilch, none, if you can't do it you can't stay. When the rig goes down you go with it; everybody is laid off until the rig goes up again. If you don't like it there is always some poor son of a bitch waiting to take your place. The work is so damned hard it numbs your mind and most of the time you come off tour so tired you can't even eat.
The oil is deep under the ground and bits get dull way too often. If the bit gets dull on your shift it has to come out of the hole. When the Geolograph slows down, that's the machine that tells you how fast you are drilling, you get the bad news from the driller. A driller is half drill sergeant, half lead man, and total slave driver will say something like, "It's my bit and your drill pipe, now get your damn pipe off my bit." Drillers are responsible to the tool pusher for getting the work done on their shifts and most of them take it serious. There are timesyou have to start out of the hole because the bit is worn out, like when you are down 7,000 feet in the middle of winter in Wyoming and you are working graveyard and the wind is blowing straight out of the Arctic and the chill factor is down to 50 below that it gets so bad you just want to lie right down and cry.
There are more oil field hands behind in their car payments and more banks and finance companies looking for them than anywhere else in the whole damn world. Furniture is bought when things are booming and sold or just left behind when things are bust. If you can't get it in the bed of a pickup or the trunk of your car it’s just left behind. You don't have the time to put an ad in the paper to sell the stuff because they don't give you any notice the rig is moving and you don't have any way to haul it. Life is hard, fast, and unforgiving.
Friends outside the crews were hard to come by. They called us roughnecks, roustabouts and oil field trash. And sometimes the names were deserved, but everyone that works in the oil patch knows the rules. They also know the rules on how to break the rules. However, there is a hell of a lot of good people in the oil field too. One of the best I ever met was a man named Curly Park. How many of your friends will take a collect call from you in the middle of the night, get out of bed, drive 500 miles, pay your bar tab, buy your breakfast, lend you a hundred dollars, and take you where you want to go without ever asking you how you got in that fix anyway?
Curly was that kind of friend. I was eighteen and working on the floor for Slim Hegwer Oil Well Service Company in the Rangely Basin of Colorado over near the Blue Mountains when what I'm going to tell you took place. Seems like last century sometimes and sometimes it seems like only yesterday.
Curly was the derrick hand on that old work-over rig. Chief Ingram was the driller. Curly was four years older than I was, but that didn't matter to Curly or to me. He taught me how to throw a chain and work the lead tongs instead of letting them work me. When we had to double over, which was often, he would shoulder part of my work. And there were several times he saved my hide. Like when he pulled me out of the derrick during a blow out.
This weevil driller had put the blow out preventer on upside down when he rigged up which meant the rams were on bottom instead of on top. It always happens when you aren't expecting it. We had run 740 quarts of nitroglycerin into the hole in order to fracture the formation and increase production. Only the time bomb went off premature. It went off just as the soup reached the gas zone and the blast bit us in the ass. When they closed what they thought were the rams they really closed the blanks. Now rams are designed to fit around the pipe and the blanks designed to close the hole when nothing is in the way. Closing the blanks just jammed the pipe and allowed the oil and gas to blow out through the well head.
There were two men on the floor pouring pea gravel into hole to keep the blast down when the shot went off. I was in the derrick helping Curly rig a Geolograph line. You've all seen the movies when the oil blows out of the ground and soaks everything around the well and people just stand around getting soaked? Well what you don't see is the gas escaping. Gas is heavier than air and it hangs low to the ground just waiting for something to set it off. When the shot exploded the derrick gave a heave and I thought it was going to fall. I froze against the derrick leg. Curly didn't waste a second. He grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me onto the derrick board then onto the Geronimo line. He climbed on behind me and pushed us off. We had made it almost to the ground before the gas which had spread all over the location ignited with a big whoof. Curly and I were blown off the trolley and on to the ground out in the sagebrush. There were no broken bones, but I was black and blue for a month. It was a whole hell of a lot better than the guys on the floor. They buried what was left of them two days later. The pea gravel blowing back out of the hole had the same effect as a 12 gauge shotgun at close range and the ignited gas burned them to a crisp.
There were a lot of times when I could barely move my tired butt off the floor after a sixteen hour shift, Curly would drag me off to supper and give me a shot of Jack Daniels then take me home. You needed a friend like Curly when you worked in the oilfield.
Like a lot of roughnecks Curly was divorced and behind in his child support payments. He had married young, only 18 when he married Yvonne. She was even younger a slender dish-water blond brought up on the wrong side of the tracks back east somewhere and drifted out west. They met in The Silver Dollar saloon in Rangely, Colorado one afternoon when we were drinking the ache out of our bones after a hard day of running casing. Yvonne was waiting tables at the saloon and Curly asked her to dance with him when she brought our beer. Something must have clicked while they danced, because by the time the record ended they couldn't turn each other loose. I think Curly and Yvonne believed they were the only couple to ever find true love in the history of mankind.
Like most young lovers things went well for a while. By the time we completed working over the wells on the Sharples lease and moved the rig to Thermopolis, Wyoming they had two of the prettiest little girls you ever laid eyes on. Curly named them Heather and Susan after two aunts who had raised him. Curly would go without sleep just to drive Heather and Susan around in his pickup. Those girls thought he was about 8 feet tall.
We had been back in Rangely for a couple of years when one morning Curly came by the house with Heather and Susan to drink coffee and pass the time. Yvonne had gone back to work as a waitress at the Silver Dollar. She said she needed adult company. Spring was everywhere that day and I had my saddle horse, Skeeter, caught up behind the house. I planned to work the winter fat off him that day by riding him over to Baxter Springs and back. When the girls saw him they asked me to take them for a ride. They weren't big enough to ride by themselves so I climbed aboard with Susan in front of me and Heather behind. We had a marvelous time. The three of us rode most of the morning with Curly just sitting on the pack porch, drinking coffee and watching us. After that it was my job to teach them to ride.
Hell there wasn't any work to it and it didn't take long before they were riding alone. I gentled a couple of my sister's horses for them so the four of us could ride. When the weather was good we used to take trail rides up into the foothills around Rangely. Sometimes we would spend all day in the saddle. The girls never seemed to get tired of riding. My mom would put together a picnic lunch for us, and when the girls got hungry we'd stop for a while and eat whatever she had packed. We asked Yvonne to join us every time, but she never came along, said it wasn't her cup of tea. It wasn't long before the girls were good riders and sometimes we would race through the sagebrush whooping and hollering like a bunch of Comanches. It's a wonder we didn't break our necks. I sure got to love those girls; almost as much as Curly did.
Then sometime just after their eighth anniversary Yvonne started going to the Anchor Club while Curly was working evenings. The Anchor Club was the hang out for all the smart set in town and she liked to think she was part of it, but smart she was not. Sometimes she wouldn't be home when Curly got off tour. Several times he found the kids in bed alone with no one watching them. Curly never complained. He thought Yvonne needed the company, but then one night she ran into a fast talking tool pusher from one of the big rigs that passed through every now and then and she didn't come home at all.
I never saw a man hurt so much. Although he didn't quit his job like some men would, he spent every minute when he wasn't working looking for her. Heather and Susan stayed with my folks during this time and I would read them a bedtime story each night. Curly searched every bar and beer joint between Craig and Roosevelt and he finally found her shacked up with that tool pusher in The Dinosaur Motel over in Vernal a week later. I was with Curly when he tried to talk her into coming back home. He pleaded and begged her to come back. Told her the girls missed her something awful, but she was caught up in the fast life and wouldn't listen. This was back before dope got to be everywhere. It was just fast cars and whiskey then, but they worked just as efficiently. After the tool pusher left town without her, she sort of drifted from one man to another. Even though Curly asked her to come back and make a home for the girls she refused. Then for about a year she really went wild. I think she stayed drunk the whole time. She would give her body to anyone willing to buy her a drink or two.
Curly had the kids during this time, but never got a court order for custody. He was still in love with Yvonne and kept hoping she would come back and make a home for the girls. Yvonne eventually did sober up and went back to work, but she never went back to Curly.
She asked Curly to let the girls come live with her and promised to take care of them. He believed she had finally come to her senses and would become the mother the girls wanted and needed. I told Curly the only thing that made her ask for the girls was that her live-in boy friend was out of work and child support payments looked like a good way to pay the rent. He couldn't believe that of his Yvonne. She went to court and got custody and an order for child support. Curly didn't contest it and he didn't complain when the judge awarded her more than half of his pay. He just sent her the money. Said his girls needed all the help they could get. He didn't know how true that was. This went on for a couple of years.
Then the rig we were working on went down. There wasn't any unemployment to fall back on; it was the feathers part of living. With no income and no savings Curly got behind in his child support payments. Yvonne complained and the county put out a warrant for his arrest. It didn't matter that Yvonne was spending every dime he sent her on her new boy friend instead of the girls. It didn't matter that Curly had to pick up the kids every fall and outfit them for school. It didn't matter that the only times they had a decent meal was when Curly had them on weekends and holidays. It didn't matter that that the rig was stacked and everybody was laid off without so much as a hello, goodbye or kiss my ass. It didn't matter that it had been three months since he had drawn a paycheck of any kind. Yvonne complained to the District Attorney and got a warrant for his arrest. I still don't understand the logic behind it. If a man is in jail how in hell is he going to work to support his family? Somebody said that Yvonne's boyfriend was related to the Judge; I never did find out, but I know they put out a warrant for Curly.
Three months had gone by since the warrant had been issued and neither of us had seen a paycheck. Finally, Curly and I got back to work. We hired out to Chief Ingram who was drilling for Slim Hegwer. Chief was a Cherokee Indian out of Oklahoma. It was October and we were working evening tour on the Fee lease in the Rangely Basin. One cold night when there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the wind was blowing off six inches of new snow up in the Blues, the chill factor was way down and we were coming out of the hole. I was working lead tongs, we had a weevil on backups, Curly was in the derrick. About 10:30 that night a sheriff's car pulled up on location and this cocky young deputy jumped out of his car, leaving the door open, and climbed the stairs up to the rig floor.
You could tell he'd never been around a drilling rig by the way he tried to talk to the driller while he was in the middle of unscrewing a stand of pipe. It's dangerous work and it takes all your attention just to stay alive and keep all your fingers and toes. The deputy was spic and span in his bright new uniform. He was wearing what looked like a new Stetson hat, his shoes were all polished, his brass was just shining and you could have cut your hand on the creases in his pants. He looked like a recruit just out of basic training.
Chief was working the cat head, busy breaking out the stand of tubing in the elevators and the deputy got all bent out of shape because Chief wouldn't stop and talk to him. Hell, Chief wouldn't take his eyes off the work to look at him, he stayed focused on what he was doing. Men have had arms jerked off in the cathead because they weren't paying attention. When we got the stand of pipe racked back in the derrick Chief chained the brake handle down, straightened up to his entire six foot four inches, two hundred thirty eight pounds, turned to the deputy and asked, "Now what in the hell is it you got to say to me that's so damned important?" The deputy backed up a step and said, "I've got a warrant for the arrest of Anthony Colton Park. I was told he's working for you so if you will just point him out…"
Chief shifted the wad of Mail Pouch from one side of his mouth to the other, spit into the night and said, "Don't have no Anthony Colton Park on this crew". He turned his back and unchained the brake handle and dropped the elevators. I latched on and we started the next stand of pipe out of the hole.
The deputy was somewhat put out. He looked around, not knowing just what to do and finally walked over to me and asked, “Are you Anthony Park?" I told him no and that furthermore I didn't know any Anthony Park, which was true at that time. I didn't know Curly's name was actually Anthony. I had stood up for him when he got married and even the preacher called him Curly.
The deputy looked like someone had let the air out of his tires and looked around for help from any quarter when the newly hired weevil shouted, "Maybe he means Curly. His name is Park. He's up in the derrick", he said and pointed up with his thumb. The deputy looked up through the traveling block lines to try to see who was in the derrick.
Maybe that twelve inch crescent wrench had been left in the derrick by one of the daylight hands. Maybe it got kicked off accidentally by Curly when he racked the stand back. I don't know what caused it to fall. But fall it did. It fell 96 feet and smacked the deputy alongside the head and he dropped like a shot. It sounded like someone had slapped a side of beef with a meat cleaver. I cringed when I heard it hit him. He fell headlong into the oil-based mud that was about an inch deep on the rig floor and lay still. It was lucky that it was a glancing blow or it would have killed him graveyard dead.
Now oil-based mud has got to be one of the dirtiest substances in the oil patch. It won't come out of your clothes once it gets on them. You can run them through a steam box and the stain won't even fade. Well it really messed up that deputy's pinks and greens and that new Stetson he was wearing. We didn't roll him over, thought it would be a pity for him to have to get his patrol car all dirty, so we just left him lay sprawled on his stomach in the muck while we came on out of the hole. None of us stepped on him though. There toward the end we kind of thought the deputy might have been dead. He was out for the better part of 10 minutes. I know that's what Curly thought because he slid down the Geronimo line, got into his pickup, and drove off. He didn't say adios, goodbye, kiss my ass or a damned thing, he just left.
When the deputy came to he couldn't remember much. Oh he knew his name but didn't know where he was, much less what he was supposed to be doing in this end of the county.
We had to work short handed for the rest of the tour. I was tired when I got off and went straight to bed. I drove by Curly's place next morning to see how he was doing and tell him the deputy hadn't been killed. Curly wasn't there. His pickup was gone along with his hunting rifle and his good boots. I looked all over town for him that day and finally went to the café where Yvonne was working and asked her if she had seen Curly. "Oh yeah," she told me, "He came by late last night and picked up Heather and Susan to take them shopping in Grand Junction. He said if you see Sonny tell him I'll be back in time to go to work."
Well, he didn't make it back, and neither did the girls, in fact no one that I know ever heard from Curly after that. He never wrote for his check. It stayed pinned to the office wall for years just yellowing in the sunlight. For months every time I picked up my check I would look to see it was still there. It was and it may still be there for all I know. At first I thought he would write, but time passed and I didn't hear from or about him. Chief told me he probably didn't want to get me into trouble thinking he had done in that deputy. I kept hoping I would run into Curly and asked every new hand that came through if he ever heard of a Curly Park.
I missed him a lot and quit roughnecking and took a job with Haliburton just so I could look for him. I figured that if he was anywhere I would eventually run into him because they work all over the world wherever there is an oilfield. I made it to Canada, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia even the North Sea. Over the years I kind of gave up hope of ever finding Curly and the girls but I never stopped looking. It got so that everywhere I went people knew the first question I would ask would be about them.
Twelve years later I was working in Glacier Bay, Alaska. We had been called in for Coastal Drilling Company to run a cement plug when I received a letter addressed to me in a female's handwriting. It had been forwarded three times and finally reached me late that spring. I didn't recognize the return address; it was in San Antonio, Texas. I looked at it for quite a while wondering who I knew in San Antonio and finally when the curiosity got the best of me I opened it. When I read the contents I went over to the office and told my boss I was quitting and to send my pay check to me when I wrote. I caught the supply plane leaving for Juneau that day. In Juneau I bought a ticket for Seattle and changed planes there for Denver. I didn't have much time. I had to make it by June 21st which was the following day so I traveled light. I couldn't get a flight out of Denver until the next morning and then I caught a Braniff flight to Dallas and chartered a Texas Air Cessna 310 from there to San Antonio. It was late afternoon when I got to San Antonio and I grabbed the first taxi I found.
"Where to?" the taxi driver asked.
"University of Texas." I told him and leaned back in the seat to re-read the letter.
You are cordially invited to attend the Commencement Ceremonies at the University of Texas in the Convocation Center, June 21, 1967, 7 PM, for Heather Cynthia Park, Magna Cum Laude, Batchelor of Science, Civil Engineering.
Written in the lower part under her signature was. "Uncle Sonny, Come if there is any way you can possibly make it. Dad and sis will be here."
