You Want it When?

In September of 1981, at the beginning of my senior year in high school, my parents moved forty miles southeast from Patterson, Louisiana to Houma, as my Southern Baptist Minister Dad began a new ministry position. Through the kindness of good friends, Andrea and Ken Cadwallader, I was able to remain in Patterson, complete 12^th grade and live in a comfortable home that was actually within walking distance to school.

The year passed quickly and before I knew it, high school graduation and a trip to Florida for my senior trip had come and gone. Friends I known since kindergarten had said goodbye and I found myself all alone, living in a new city about to start a new job on the eve of my freshman year of college.

I was anxious to start college and get on with the rest of my life. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was about to step into a world that was going to make this bayou boy grow into a man quickly, whether I was ready or not.

The ink on the matching air brushed tee shirts I had bought in Florida for myself and my girlfriend had barely dried when she broke up with me upon my return from my senior trip. The old “let’s just be friends” mantra was one I heard and would hear again as I continued into adulthood. We did in fact become great friends, and still are. She is someone that will always be very special to me. However, I was devastated and reeling from the breakup.

The oilfield industry affected anyone who grew up in South Louisiana in the 1960’s and 70’s. This however, would be my first opportunity to actually earn a paycheck working in the oil and gas business.

At 7 a.m. in early June of 1982, I pulled my 1975, fluorescent orange Volkswagen Rabbit onto the concrete parking lot of Superior Supply Company. Months prior, the manager of the company, Ken Kline, had met my dad and through their new friendship, Ken mentioned he could use another truck driver over the summer and if I wanted a job, Ken would hire me. My Dad, without asking me, told Ken I definitely needed a job to pay for college and on the spot signed me up.

So here I am, 18 years old, a recent high school graduate, 5’10”, 130 pounds of skin and bones and I was about to learn the ins and outs of the oilfield supply business. Soon I would be delivering pipe, fittings, valves, tools, and just about any item needed on a drilling or production rig or to the hundreds of former drilling sites that needed daily maintenance from Grande Isle to Houston. It took about 15 minutes after walking through the front doors of the company for me to realize I was an alien in a foreign world. On that first day of work I had the feeling that by the end of the week I would either be dead, in jail, or fired. I wasn’t holding out hope I would fit into this crass and dirty world unless I found a way to survive and thrive.

The first person I met upon walking into the office was Tony, the inside salesman who basically ran the business each day. He fielded phone calls, took orders, assigned drivers their runs, pulled orders, wrote up tickets and kept everyone busy. Originally from Marrero, a town on the West Bank of New Orleans, he loved everything football, especially his home team New Orleans Saints. In his mid-20’s, he was married with two small kids but still had enough kid left in him to have fun and be a part of the pranks that went on, most of which seemed to be directed at me.

Janet was the office manager and handled the books and all things related to keeping track of billing and receiving, invoices, credits, and some purchases. She was a single parent who was rarely seen without a cigarette between her fingers while at work and a drink in her hand at a local bar when the work day ended.

JC was our outside salesman. He called on rig foremen, oil companies, drilling rigs, other suppliers and anyone who needed our products. Of all the people in our small outfit, I probably received more grief from JC than anyone else. He was also the person I knew I could count on to answer my questions, show me the ropes and help me if I was in a bind. He had served two tours of duty in Vietnam, had been one of the highest ranking non-commissioned officers at Paris Island, NC, sending young Marines from the training fields to the killing fields of Southeast Asia. Leaving the Marines, JC found a second career in the world of oilfield supply.

The other driver and the person who would be training me was Jeff. There’s no other way to say it except to say if there was ever a drug made or found, Jeff had probably tried it and most likely, enjoyed it. Jeff knew the inside of a jail cell in a previous life and promised he was reformed and looking for a fresh start. A fresh start from all drugs, minus marijuana of course. Severely cross eyed, he could stand on a pitcher’s mound and look at the batter with one eye and check on a runner standing on first base with the other eye. I never knew which eye to look into, especially when he switched the eye he was using to look at me halfway through a conversation. His most recent escape from prison for drug possession occurred when his lawyer noticed the cops had put the wrong address on their search warrant when they busted down the door of his apartment one evening, taking Jeff and his drugs into custody. A technicality for someone in a hurry to put down 1B instead of 1C.

At $5.00 an hour, I was on my way to earning enough money to bridge the gap between the journalism scholarship I was awarded and the rest of the tuition and books not covered when I started college. During the first week, after meeting everyone and a quick talk with the boss Ken, I was told to team up with Jeff as he would ride with me, showing me all the places we shopped and delivered. Our first assignment was to load pipe and fittings on our Chevy one-ton pickup truck, complete with a headache rack for hauling pipe. A headache rack is the common name for the heavy iron structure placed over the bed of a truck in order to safely secure pipe with the help of chains and binds.

“On that first day of work I had the feeling that by the end of the week I would either be dead, in jail, or fired. I wasn’t holding out hope I would fit into this crass and dirty world unless I found a way to survive and thrive.”

Our first assignment was to take a load to Grande Isle, the tiny beach town at the end of Louisiana Highway 1, in the extreme Southeast part of the state. There was one way in and one way out to this oilfield stopping off spot where supplies and workers left land and headed to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico aboard boats and helicopters. This run would take about three hours each way, depending on how long it took us to unload the stuff we were taking to the work boat loading dock. We were no more than 30 minutes outside of Houma when Jeff, sitting in the passenger seat of the truck asked me if I minded if he smoked. I told him it didn’t bother me as long as we cracked the truck windows. Jeff thanked me and then lifted up his pants leg, reached down into his boots and pulled out a big bag of weed and rolling papers.

I immediately felt my pulse quicken, my heart started racing and my palms were beginning to sweat making the steering wheel slippery and loose in my hands. I thought Jeff was going to smoke a cigarette, not roll a big fatty, light up and get high as we followed Bayou Lafourche down LA 1 down to the end of the world. My own world was flashing in my mind as I envisioned us getting stopped in Cut Off or Leeville, towns along the way. I tried to concentrate on the road and not think about jail, my Baptist Preacher Dad’s reaction, the loss of my scholarship and what a big old country boy named Bubba may want to do to this skinny, naïve boy of 18 after the jailer locked our cell and said it was lights out. Fortunately, it didn’t take Jeff long to finish off his doobie, hide the rest of his dope and lean back against the seat with his eyes closed to enjoy a short nap. So on we went toward our destination.

Jeff woke up a short time later, just shy of the tiny town of Golden Meadow. Anyone who has ever driven through this tiny Cajun town on Bayou Lafourche, knows it is one of the biggest speed traps in the state of Louisiana. At both ends of LA 1 where the city limits signs are in place, there is another sign that reminds drivers the speed limit is 35 miles per hour. Just so you knew they were serious about speeding in Golden Meadow, a cop car generally sat next to both signs nearly 24 hours a day.

As we drove slowly through the town, Jeff raised up quickly and started pointing to a man walking on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. Despite being stoned out of his mind, Jeff became animated and kept saying, “That’s him. That’s him. That’s the guy.” I took a closer look at the man Jeff was talking about and realized the guy on the sidewalk was actually severely vertically challenged. Just a short man, minding his own business walking down the street in Golden Meadow.

Not wanting to let it go, Jeff once again yelled and kept pointing at the man as we drove by. “That’s the guy. I’m telling you that’s the guy. He’s the man suing the town of Golden Meadow.”

As we passed I asked Jeff why the man was suing the town of Golden Meadow. With a very serious face, Jeff said, “That midget is suing the town of Golden Meadow for building the sidewalks too close to his ass.” With that, the seriousness quickly dissipated and Jeff burst out laughing, slapping his knee and telling me how he ‘got me.’ With the way things were progressing I knew it would be jail first, then on to hell when I died. And this was just my first day working in the oilfield.

Luckily, we made it to our destination, offloaded everything and then turned around and headed back to Houma. In Raceland, we made a stop at the old Frostop Drive Inn to get some delicious root beer and then kept driving back to Superior Supply. The rest of the day was spent learning how to drive the fork lift, explanations about pipe and fitting and learning the difference between a ball and a gate valve, standard pipe as opposed to extra heavy pipe and a variety of other new terms. I was wiped out when I walked to my VW Rabbit around 5, rolling down the windows as I didn’t have AC and thankful I had made it through my first day.

Tuesday, as it turned out was just as interesting as Monday minus the dope smoking. Today we were heading west toward Morgan City, my old stomping grounds to deliver a pallet full of items destined for an offshore rig in the Gulf. Rather than smoking pot, Jeff educated me on all things related to intravenous drug use. If it was meant to be injected into one’s body with a needle and syringe, Jeff knew all about it. I think what really pushed me over the edge was the point he made about having to shoot up between his toes because he ran out of veins on the rest of his body. I did my best not to vomit while driving and kept following Bayou Black until we reached a loading area somewhere between Amelia and Morgan City.

We pulled up to the gate of a huge gravel loading area right on the water where these large metal baskets full of supplies were being loaded by cranes onto offshore supply vessels. It was a busy place with lots of people, products and machines moving along the docks. We waited a couple of minutes watching the activity while the wind blew dust all around hoping someone would be meeting us at the gate to take possession of the products we had on the truck that needed to head to an ODECO drilling rig. About that time, we saw a person on a forklift stirring up a cloud of dust and heading toward us. I rolled down my window anticipating directions on where to unload from the person bouncing up and down on a heavy duty yellow Hyster forklift. I wasn’t quite ready for what came next.

Sitting up high on the black seat of the forklift was a woman who by appearance had lived hard and fast, most of it outside in a hot sun and had probably learned how to kick butt by hanging out in the dive bars that lined Highway 90 between Amelia and Morgan City. She had short hair that barely stuck out from a weathered, dirty cap with STP across the front. In her mouth was a cigarette, ashes falling from the tip, with foul smelling smoke floating up and around this oilfield beauty queen. The coveralls she wore had the sleeves cut off and widened under the arms giving Jeff and I a side view of sagging breasts sans bra. That nauseous feeling from earlier suddenly returned. She put the forklift in neutral, propped her battered steel toe boots over the controls of her Hyster, looked at me and indignantly asked, “What the hell you want?”

I was shocked by her appearance, the scowl on her face and the fact she spoke to me while the cigarette remained in her mouth. I got the impression she would just as soon slit my throat, carve me up and use my body parts on the end of a hook in hopes of catching a Channel Catfish hanging out on the bottom of the nearby Intracoastal Canal. I swallowed and meekly told the woman we had supplies for a particular rig that needed to be loaded on one of the supply boats docked nearby. I tried to show her my paperwork but she dismissed it with a wave of her hand and while pointing to a stack of items close to the dock growled, “Just put that shit over there boy and then come back and I will sign your paperwork.” Jeff was doing everything he could to keep from laughing and finally said, “drive, boy.”

We unloaded everything, jumped back into the truck and returned to the gate where the beauty queen was waiting, still sitting on her forklift, with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. Was that the same cigarette or a new one? It didn’t matter as I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible and return to Houma. I pulled up, put the truck in park, climbed out and walked up to her with the paperwork she needed to sign. “Are you sure it’s all there,” she asked? I made the mistake of  squeaking out a “yes ma’am it sure is”…

Looking back, I think it is apparent that “ma’am” was not the correct way to address her. She looked at me like she was going to say something, but instead let it slide and after signing my paperwork, handed it back to me. I gave her the top copy, got back into the truck cab, put the truck in gear and with spinning tires shot gravel and dust out the back end of my Chevy and returned to Highway 90.

Still grinning but trying to be serious, Jeff said believe it or not, I had just learned a life lesson with this encounter. I shot him a skeptical look but told him to go on and explain. “Being only 18 Steve you have a lot to learn about life and a lot about women. That woman back there, that’s the kind of woman that if you don’t make love to her right, she will kick your ass and eat you for breakfast when you are done.”

I tried not to envision ever being with the type of women Jeff knew well, much less try to envision the oil field beauty queen lying naked next to me. It was at this moment I pulled off the road, stopped the truck, put it in park and opened up my door and vomited. I couldn’t hold it in for a third time and I knew my nauseous stomach would improve but the images in my head would never go away.

As the week progressed, I was feeling better about the work, the places I traveled and believe it or not, the other employees. As the low man on the Totem pole, it quickly became apparent I was going to do all of the grunt jobs including cutting the grass around the building, keeping the warehouse clean, the trucks washed, unload delivery trucks, make sure the trash cans were emptied each day, and whatever else Tony or Ken needed me to do. In between these tasks and making deliveries, I dealt with the general harassment from JC and the others. Being former military, JC dressed sharp and his cowboy boots were always spit shined. Like Janet, he too was a chain smoker and just to tick me off, would stand in the warehouse smoking and when he was done would drop his cigarette butt on the floor, and then grind it into the floor with his boot and walk away.

One time as he was putting his cigarette out on the floor, I thought it smart to interrupt him.

“Hey JC, cut it out, I have to sweep the warehouse floor.”

He looked at me and asked, “Do you have to sweep the warehouse floor?”

“Are you deaf, I just told you I have to sweep the floor including your cigarette butts,” I replied.

With a cocky grin on his face, JC sneered, “Well okay, as long as you are going to sweep the floor.” Then he laughed, stepped on the cigarette and walked back into the front office.

While I was training with Jeff, JC was making deliveries which kept him from making sales calls. By Thursday I was driving on my own, which freed up Jeff to also make deliveries and allowed JC to get back to calling on customers. One of our toughest, grouchiest and most foul-mouthed customers was a rig foreman whose name was Charlie. This crusty redneck from Texas was the top man on a nearby land rig and because of his reputation, JC would typically make any deliveries that went to Charlie. On this particular day, JC was too far away on a sales call to get back in time to deliver a few items that Charlie needed right away. I was in town picking up items from another supplier so when I returned to the shop, Tony gathered up the items Charlie requested and sent me on my way to Charlie’s rig. I had heard enough to be wary of Charlie but as I drove I was sure the scuttlebutt JC and others spread was purely exaggeration. There was no way the stories I had heard about Charlie could possibly be true.

Outside of Houma, I turned off Highway 311 and continued on a gravel road that dissected sugar cane fields and made my way toward the rig. As I neared the clearing for the rig, I passed large Caterpillar engines, supply sheds, trailers, stacks of drilling pipe stacked neatly on pipe stands, mud pits, fuel and water tanks, all of which were placed in and around the drilling rig and derrick. There was lots of noise and activity. It fascinated me to be standing this close to a drilling rig for the first time. I parked the truck, stepped out and got the attention of a man who was walking toward one of the trailers.

I asked the man where I could find Charlie and instead of replying he merely pointed to one of the trailers and went on his way. I walked to the trailer the man had pointed to and knocked a couple of times. A gruff voice told me to “enter” so I did and sitting behind a desk was a stout man of about 50. He had short-cropped brown hair that was greying at the temples. Unlike the oilfield hands I saw working outside, this man was wearing clean blue jeans, a western-style cowboy shirt, real alligator skin cowboy boots and a smirk on his face that said, ‘What the hell do you want kid?”

I told him my name and the purpose of my visit and the only thing he said to me was “Where the hell is my Budweiser?”

“Your Budweiser? I’m sorry, I don’t have any beer. I’m delivering some items you ordered from Superior Supply,” I told him for the second time.

“JC always brings me beer when he makes a delivery so where the hell is my beer?”

“I’m sorry sir, I don’t have any beer but I can ask JC to deliver beer to you the next time he comes out.”

Charlie’s face started getting red and his anger was rising and I was thinking it was time for me to leave. This man’s supplies could be tossed in the nearest sugar cane field as far as I was concerned because it wasn’t worth getting punched by this old grizzly bear of a man.

“Get your ass out of here and don’t come back unless you have a case of beer with you,” Charlie yelled.

I think I said yes sir as I quickly backed out of the trailer and retreated to my truck. I started the truck and fishtailed it down the board road toward the gravel road that would take me back to Highway 311.  I pulled into the parking lot of the first convenience store I came across. I parked in front of a pay phone, turned off the engine, jumped out the truck and went to the pay phone to make a call back to the shop to tell Tony what had just happened. After depositing $.25 into the phone, I dialed Superior’s number and after a couple of rings Tony answered the call.  After telling him what had taken place, he started laughing and began calling me names that reflected a crude way of naming a female body part. Tony told me to get back in the truck, to go and tell Charlie where he could stick his supplies and make him sign the ticket and call back when I was done. That was an easy thing for Charlie to say sitting in the comfort of the office while I had to face this oilfield devil in person.

I’m not going to do that I told Tony. His reply was then I better buy the man some beer, deliver his stuff and then get back to town. Against my better judgement, I went into the convenience store, bought Charlie a 12-pack of Bud cans and headed back to Charlie, the Texas hell raiser. I pulled in front of Charlie’s trailer, carrying my delivery ticket, a case of beer and as much of a backbone that my 130-pound frame could support.

Recognizing me and seeing the beer I was holding, Charlie asked for the ticket, took the beer and not so kindly told me where to put the supplies I had in the back of the truck. I unloaded my supplies and once again fishtailed it down the boardwalk and hightailed it back to Superior Supply. I planned on telling Tony and JC they could deliver supplies to Charlie next time because I wasn’t going back.

I got back to Superior Supply and walked into the office area where the entire gang was standing around smoking and apparently waiting on my return. As soon as they saw me they all busted out laughing and grilled me about my encounter with Charlie. JC was laughing the loudest and told me he would reimburse me for the beer I had bought. I found out later that Charlie had called JC after I left the rig and had told him what happened. JC and Charlie enjoyed a laugh at my expense. I was starting to think the entire thing was a set up and that Charlie was all bark and no bite until JC got serious and told me two stories that made me realize that the tool pusher was not to be messed with and should be left alone.

The first story was about Charlie’s most recent arrest that had happened a few months earlier in the spring of 1982. Apparently Charlie and another man were drinking in some backwoods bar, got into a heated argument and Charlie pistol whipped the man and may have killed him if the cops had not shown up. The alleged victim decided not to press charges so Charlie never served jail time for the incident.

The second story JC told me was about one of Charlie’s trips back to work one week. As Charlie lived in Texas and worked in Louisiana, he would drive back and forth on his days off –a normal oilfield seven days on, seven days off rotation. On one of his trips back to Louisiana, he encountered a couple of young men driving a souped-up Chevy Camaro on one of the desolate stretches of four-lane highway somewhere between East Texas and South Louisiana. The guys in the Camaro would pull in front of Charlie and then slow down. When Charlie would try to pass, the men would gun the engine and speed away leaving Charlie lagging behind.

This went on for quite a few miles until both cars had to slow down as they approached a stop light of another highway that intersected the highway heading north and south.  The Camaro pulled into the left lane and eased to a stop. Charlie crept up to the red light in the right lane and eased alongside the Camaro. The two men in the Camaro had their windows rolled down, were laughing at Charlie, calling him names and daring him to get out of his car and do something about the situation he found himself in.

Charlie rolled down his own window, smiled at the two jerks in the hot rod, reached under his seat and pulled out a Dirty Harry style long-barreled .44 Magnum Smith and Wesson revolver, took aim at the car’s engine and unloaded until he was out of ammo. The light turned green and Charlie pulled away, leaving the Camaro smoking and leaking fluids on the concrete with the two men scared out of their minds and probably sitting in their own increment. Charlie told JC he gave them a friendly one finger salute and continued down the road and back to work.

I never delivered supplies to Charlie again that summer.

Friday afternoon came and my first eventful week graciously came to a close. I was tired, both physically and mentally. Tony asked if I would be back to work on Monday. I told him I would but I was looking forward to a two-day break from Superior Supply. He laughed and said I had done a good job and had been a good sport putting up with all of the antics and crap that was unloaded on me that week. I smiled but not too much because I knew the summer was going to be interesting and challenging and I needed to be ready for whatever came my way and I expected the jokes and ridicule to continue.

On Monday I returned to Superior Supply and the first person to greet me was JC. Smoking a cigarette, smiling his usual cocky grin, JC said, “Good Morning Peter Puffer, how was your weekend?”

It was going to be a long summer.