I was trying to make up my mind about what I was going to do after graduating from high school. It was the beginning of a long hot summer which I was used to. When another pool friend suggested that we could get a job as "roustabouts" working in the oil field for "good money", I almost shouted yes. My buddy and called and sure enough they needed "roustabouts" whatever the heck that was. We showed up at the dock early one morning for a two week stretch working in the oil fields. We heard the food was great and while the hours were long (12 hours a day) we were young and healthy.
Our first job was carrying these extremely long, HEAVY, timber boards. I couldn't call them lumber because they made me think of large Cypress Tree timber that hadn't been cut in several hundred years. When we picked up these water soaked pieces of timber that seemed like they were 20 foot long, it took all the strength I had to get the darn things up on my shoulder for carrying through the marsh. We struggled and managed to carry several of them before practically collapsing. The next job we had wasn't quite as strenuous. All we had to do is clean a filter. Now in the oil industry, 40 years ago, you can imagine what a "filter" looked like. This particular filter was about 20 feet long. (Everything looked really big back then. It was before the marines beefed me up and got me into shape). The diameter of this tube shaped filter was about 8 foot and there was a hinged door that sealed the filter. We were ordered to remove the existing filter material which amounted to the thickest hay-like material you have ever seen. It was like indestructible seaweed, only pitch black from the oil that it filtered. At first, we had these little pitchfork like shovels and we would reach through the narrow opening and drag out several ounces of this material at a time. After what seemed like an eternity we could no longer pull the material out of the tube. That's when we were told we needed to climb inside of the filter to get ALL of the filter material out. We did as we were told but it soon became quite clear that this was going to be a very dirty job. I thought to myself, so this is what a roustabout does for a living....... After what seemed like another eternity, we exited the filter, covered from head to toe in oil. Thick black oil from head to toe. Our clothes were soaked, our hair was soaked, every pore of our skin was soaked in heavy, thick, oil. We had earned a shower and we cleaned and showered for over an hour trying to remove the everlasting odor of oil du juor.
The two weeks passed quickly, eating delicious, high quality foods, as much as you could eat. All of the food was very tasty, even better than my mom's cooking. Out there, very little expense was spare for food, so we always had great meals, seven days a week. This part, I liked quite well. The rest, not so much. The hot summer sun stole our energy and the oil industry squeezed two weeks of our young lives about as hard as they could be squeezed. Martin and I returned to the city vowing never to return and we didn't. I'm sure because we were fresh meat and new to the environment, we were given the worst of the worst jobs, not just to test our resolve but also to give a little break to those who had gone before us. I'm sure we could have gone back and things would have gotten better but there was pool to be played, girls to be romanced and life to be celebrated. We did that for a while before noticing that there was a war going on and some of our friends were starting to disappear. A year later, I decided I wanted to join the marines like my brother before me. He had survived two tours of duty in Vietnam and I figured I could make it too. The bush of Vietnam wasn't a bed of roses and sometimes our baths were not much more than a dip in the stream we were crossing or maybe a walk through a rice paddy but at least we didn't have that thick, black oil oozing out of our every pore.
I hope this doesn't discourage you from giving North Dakota a try. I'm sure things have changed and you don't have to climb inside of oil filters like we did. From what I've learned about life is that you can get used to practically anything. I was never afraid to try something new and you shouldn't be either. Life is meant to test you and who knows, you might become one of those guys that loves the oil field work. The money is great, the winter is cold, the oil field work is tough, the cost of living is low, so what... give it a try and report back to us. :indecisive:
