That's sad. Being from the west Texas oil fields we new a few of his hell fighters. They were all convinced that they would automatcally be sent to heaven when they died for fear that they would extinguish hell if sent there.
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There's no one more thankful to sit at the table, than the one who best remembers hunger's pain.
LOL 1* I havent heard that in years.
When I was a young man I saw Red Adair, Boots and Coots and a few others out in west Texas
There was a Blowout/fire near Ballinger,
the Tool pusher , hell all the deck hands where high on dope,"Evening Tower". the guy was so stoned he did not or could not turn around and engage the venters.
They twisted off when they hit the arroyo sand,(weird) didnt stop the drill table and blew out, and burned
I was on the cut up crew after the fire was put out.
I heard 8 men dead a few others injured.
it got so hot it MELTED the drill table and the base superstructure.
it was wavy like a piece of butter.
Thats a big piece of iron!
it took us 4 days to clear the site and we where working!
The !!!! pits had caustic in them(to add insult to injury)
it was a Phuc story.
there are not many fires now a days at least not from accidents
the safety equipment is so much better now, computerized driller controls and automatic venters.
there are all sorts of new stuff That I have never seen.
Hell the deck hands dont even use tongs any more.
and there is a whole generation of deck hands that have NEVER slapped chain.
They have an aparatus that holds the top stem securely in place
and the computer controlled drilltable torques it to exact specs
every time!
Dang Dennis, That's my neck of the woods! My family is from the Bronte/San Angelo
area and both of my brothers used to be deckhands back in the 70's and 80's. I sure hated to hear about Red- he was one helluva guy!
I was a deck hand on evening tower for about a year and then decided to make the climb so I got bumped up to derrickman. Much cleaner and more dry up there, but if the well blows you're blowing with it. You have the zip line to ride down if you can get to it fast enough, but even so, your landing zone is generally a fifty gallon drum of cement that serves as an anchor for the line. I'll take my chances and ride the rig down myself.
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There's no one more thankful to sit at the table, than the one who best remembers hunger's pain.
dancing on the monkey boards, whew doggie
we changed positions all the time on my crew so that everyone could work all the stations on the rig. that way when someone called in sick or got fired or hurt, we could keep turning to the right.
the way we allways set up the zip line was to make it long enough that it touched the ground and build a sand trench at the landing area.
it was buzy work between stands.
When we got it finnished we all zipped down the zip line just to break the boredom.
We had these special pulleys that would only go so fast down the line, They never seemed to work very well, the wheel would slip.
the time it took to un hook and get to the zip line and hook up,
if ya had a blow out you would be a cooked marshmellow any way.
That was a hard job when your comeing out of the hole.
we allways tried to time tool changes to just after our shift ended.
He He He
Looking back now I cant believe I was able to work that hard.
