I grew up in an oilfield family. My stepfather, his father and brothers had successful careers in exploratory drilling operations around the world.
My first memories where of life on Malta, a small island in the Mediterranean where my mother and I lived while my dad worked in the middle east. I really enjoyed life there and would like to visit that beautiful place again. I attended a British school, riding a V.W buss to school past the harbor and all the colorful boats. I remember the sound of the christian church bells mixed with the calls to prayers from the mosques. The sounds of the horse drawn glass carriages carrying the coffins to the cemetery, the buss drivers arguing with each other at corners as to which one was to yield, and the catacombs that we once toured with friends.
When I was about 12 years of age I started going to the rigs my father was responsible for the 'mud' on these operations. Mud is the drilling fluid that circulates down the drill pipe performing several preprocesses in its trip all the way down and the stem and back up the bore. If all goes well its not a bad job, but thats often not the case. If you loose circulation bad things happen! This is where it gets exciting fast. At best you just stop, plug the hole that its seeping from and go on. This in itself sounds simple, its not. I am fortunate that I got hands on experience that most don't get until much older and having a inquisitive mind that constantly seeks knowledge I learned from practical application the engineering required to drill a hole deep in the earth. My dad was one of the most respected in his field and others often sought his advice in various problems that occurred in deep hole drilling operations.
I witnessed some amazing things, often very scary, but I found that as long as my dad didn't run it was safe. Safe being a relative phrase here, as the chances of blowing a very big flaming hole in the ground where the multi- million dollar rig was and where he were standing was always a possibility!
I once saw, from a distance, a rig "blowout". Watching the drill pipe fly out the top of the rig and the rig falling over and bursting into flames.
I saw the results of a blowout that resulted in the area around the rig covered in petroleum jelly, basically Vaseline covering the ground,sagebrush and trees in several inches of the stuff. this one didn't destroy the rig or catch fire.
Once while I was sleeping in the camping trailer that served as living quarters on the rig when an unearthly sound woke me and the ground was shaking with a vibration I would come to recognize as a high pressure 'flare'. This is the process of burning off of gas pressure that is very close to destroying the rig. A very scary but exciting thing for a young boy!
I was allowed free reign around the rigs my dad was on and often took advantage of this and stuck my nose into every place I could! In today's world this would be impossible with the safety rules you just don't let kids run around dangerous equipment. I watched gas bubble up in the mud pits. Watched the 'shakers' sift out the larger pieces that the mud brought up, sometimes picking out pieces. Once I even watched as a tungsten tooth from the drill bit bounced down the shaker towards the waste pit. I grabbed it up quick and ran to the company man's shack. I knew he would want to know that the bit might be failing! The 'company man' was the operations supervisor the representative of the company that owned the rig. The guy on this rig was to become a close personal friend of our family, his kids and I where the same ages and we still know each other. This guy also taught me how to shoot pistols, much to my dads disapproval. I remember the argument when my dad came off the rig floor and found him showing me how to shoot a 44 magnum. He said that I didn't meed to know how to shoot a pistol because they where made for shooting people. And the company man said "maybe some day he will need to shoot someone". This was before they became friends, later we would all laugh about this and many other events that we shared. this guy was the first person I knew that had done many things in his life and had many different careers and this I admired and am sure influenced my future life. He was also a great story teller, and I would like to share one of my favorites with you.
the story goes like this...He had a great, powerful, full-blooded and faithful dog that once saved his life. While out hunting way out in the mountains with his dog he was attacked by a bear while taking a leak, his rifle leaned against a tree too far away for him to grab, he could not run as the bear knocked him down! The bear had him pinned to the ground and prepared to maul him, he knew he was going to die a horrible death and thought of his wife and kids having to live without his help and guidance, he said his last prayer. His dog selflessly jumped on the bears back and started biting its head fiercely the bear let go of the him and concentrated on getting the dog off its back. This gave him time to get to the gun. The dog was still attacking the bear and they both went after each other as he raised his gun trying to shoot the bear and not the dog! The bear suddenly caught the dog and it was over in just a split second. He shot the bear but it was too late for the dog. He picked up the dog and walked crying several miles back to his truck. He was married to a full blooded Cherokee Indian and he asked her to have the chief of her tribe lead a ceremony especially for the dogs spirit. At this ceremony they degreed the dog a warrior and renamed the dog Bear. They gave it a very special warrior's sending off to the spirit world. They then preserved the dogs pelt and presented it to his master which he said I will allow you my young friend to see, he said to me, and went to a army locker where he kept his pistols and other treasures. With great reverence he unwrapped a beautifully crafted felt lined pelt with the full head mounted, just like you would see a bear rug! It was a very small, ugly mutt dog! I didn't know what to do, too polite to laugh, too dumbfounded to say any thing I just gapped at him, my jaw working but no words came out! Bear the dog. This was the kind of humorous stories he was known for. The oilfield was full of people like this! Never a dull moment around this crowd.
Later, when I was 16, my dad put me to work in a warehouse that supplied the rigs with the stuff we used to make the 'mud' with. This was mainly 50 to 100 pound bags of bentonite and barite also called bar. At first I helped load our tucks with this both by hand with dollies and with the forklift. Soon I was the manager and learned inventory control and how to manage the drivers. I also learned the responsibility of a 24 hour a day job. Weather, time of day and holidays meant nothing in the oilfield, just like the military you had a job to do and you did it no matter what! I had been reading all my dads books on being a mud man, geology and petrochemical engineering and soon it would be time to go to a private school that only taught this part of the field. My dad had told me to never tell anyone at work how old I was and because I looked older this never came up. Part of my job was to drive the 'bobtail' trucks and the semi tractor trailers to the loading areas and some times under emergency situations to the rigs and unload and drive back. I didn't realize how risky this was not only to my dad's job and mine, but to the company's insurance as well. Early on while parking one of the semi trucks with a large 'van' trailer attached I ran it into another semi truck. Not just any truck but the one owned by a guy that took great pride in his new work vehicle! He spent his own money dressing it up with extra chrome, lights and ect. I didn't see it backing this van into the line of trailers and backed into it pretty hard, damaging it really bad. I knowing that the driver of this truck was going to be upset prepared myself to tell him what I had done. Mustering all my courage I went to find him, I was told he was out having lunch, I asked that he come find me when he came back. Big mistake! I should have gone to him at lunch and told him there before he saw the truck. He came back and saw his truck before I talked with him. I heard him yelling and left my office to go handle this bad situation. He saw me and knowing it was me that did this started running towards me promising to kill me! Did I mention he was a very large black man build like a linebacker? He also could run like one! Thank God that my dad just happened to show up while I was trying to keep good distance between certain death and this guy. My dad talked him out of killing me by promising him a brand new truck and paying for all the extras that he required. The next fun I got from this job was getting crabs from cotton seed hulls! Cotten seed hulls are used to help plug a 'hole' in the drill bore that is causing the fluid to leak out the bore and not make it back up to be treated and returned through the drill stem. This is a very dangerous condition, especially if your very deep and have encountered gas. The drilling fluid is the first thing to keep the gas down in the bore and in so keeping the rig operation and personnel safe from explosion! We get this waist product from the farm industry that comes from the cotton gin separating the cotton from the other stuff and seeds in it. This stuff comes in big burlap bags the size of a recliner which is loaded on large trucks. At this time none where on pallets meaning we had to unload it all by hand and place it on pallets so the forklift could move it to storage. This was a job all the drivers and warehouse workers did together. This time it was a very hot humid day and most of us took our shirts off and by the time when done we were covered with grime. A few days later we all had lice all over us! One joke circulating was that we all have the same prostitute at the local cat house, funny now years later but not then! The oilfield is full of colorful people all with fascinating stories. One of our drivers kept telling us how he was musical and played the guitar. We all said where is your guitar, we want to hear some music? He told a sad story of having to sell it to buy a buss ticket to come and work here with us. One day I get a large package delivered to my office with his name on it. When he returned dirty and tired from hauling a large load out to a rig I told him of his box. He immediately brightened up and carefully opened the box and unwrapped a brand new acoustic 12 string guitar. He strung it and tuned it as the other drivers all returned from deliveries. As soon as he was ready he asked me first what song I would like to hear. Being a huge fan of Led Zeppelin at the time i said 'stairway to heaven'. He lot only played the song but sang it so well it brought tears to my eyes! He then played requests from the others from country and western to blues and even classical, all amazing. He carried that guitar in the truck with him every day and played often for us, what talent! One of our drivers I later found out was a 'match maker' in effect he was a pimp. He had a ring binder filled with pictures of young women, some actually had clothes on, that he would solicit money from men for the opportunity to hookup with these women to marry or 'date'. Needless to say he was fired, seems even the oilfield at the time had its moral limits. One morning my dad tells me I am coming with him to fire an engineer for cocain use. This guy had offered drugs to a company man on his rig to get them through a long night and was told his services were no longer needed. The company man then called my dad and told him what happened and my dad talked this guy into keeping this to himself if the engineer was fired and blacklisted, this saved a lucrative service contract for my dads company. I had to retrieve the company car from the guy's house with my dad waiting in his car out front. Dad didn't want to wake this guy up and fire him right then fearing a confrontation with someone high on cocaine,. Of course the guy wakes up thinking someone is steeling his car and runs out with a gun, sees my dad out front and me in his car he lowered the gun and walked back in his house! He resigned before my dad could fire him. Growing up in the northern USA I learned how to drive in snow and mud. Our company vehicles where usually ford crown Victorias, basically a LTD, ford F600 flatbeds, and ford 9000 semi tractors with float, vans, and bulk trailers. My dad and a few of the drivers did amazing things with these. I had been with my dad when he would drive his car through snow and mud that one wrong move and your stuck, he never got stuck, never! Our last stint in Wyoming he got a Chevy Blazer, this as the first 4 wheel drive he got as a work vehicle. That year my sister and her new husband came for x-mas and wanted to go see my brother who was working about 30 miles away on a rig as a roughneck. I knowing where the rig was agreed to guid them there, this was years before GPS or even cell phones. In this part of the US weather can change drastically very quickly and this evening it did in a big way! A huge snow storm blew in with lots of wind and very heavy snow, usually you would just wait it out and in a day or 3 the bulldozer would come and uncover the road and you could leave. we had the company man call my house and tell my parents we where ok and would see them in a coupe of days. My mom was having none of that! She informed my dad he was going to go retrieve us! I can only imagine the argument that happened. He called the rig back and said he would be coming. In these days communication with the rigs was through radio telephone patch in meaning you have a VHF radio at the rig and at a 'phone service'. The rig would call on the radio to the closest radio telephone service and ask them to dial a phone number and then connect the radio to the phone line. This works ok if you have a good signal, thank God we did this night! Dad shows up and he is not a very happy camper, he chews us out for coming there in a 2 wheel drive truck, chews us out for driving out in winter, chews us out for coming to see my brother even chews us out for not just insisting on staying on the rig until we got dug out. A chevy Blazer in 1977 carried 4 people, the 2 in the front were in bucket seats and the 2 in the back on a very small bench seat, you should be very short and skinny in the back. We where 5, 3 large framed people. This was a ride home we still talk about. It is night in a blizzard with the wind blowing hard, this makes it almost impossible to see as the snow reflects the headlights. The snow is falling fast and being blown hard, this makes high drifts and fills in any depressions in the earth. So the road was blown over, unpredictable drifts everywhere, the road very narrow and crooked and you couldn't see more that 3 feet in front of the Blazer! Insanity to drive in, unless you had an innate ability to memorize the path of the road and be able to keep your momentum up as to be able to go up hills and bust through deep high drifts, which my dad must have had. We went through snow so deep it came over the hood of the truck, often the headlights didn't cast much light because they where under the snow! The only way we made it to the main road, a gravel road that had not been plowed yet, was ether by feel, memory or sheer luck! Dad never told, just stated that he knew where we where the whole trip! By the time we got home it was after midnight and we were all so wide awake after the ride through snowy hell we were not going to sleep so we had our christmas a few hour early. One thing about driving in the wilderness is animals are everywhere, often on the road, so every once in a while they get run into. its amazing the damage a raccoon can do not to mention an armadillo, don't even think about a elk or cow! It happens, I was unlucky enough to hit a antelope on my Honda XR75 while chasing a heard of them cross-country. I failed to notice the straggler when we all made a turn! I remember sitting up on my butt as the dust settled and seeing the antelope laying on its side struggling to get up. All I thought was hell it didn't even hurt the damn thing! After determining I didn't have any broken bones I got my bike back up and running and rode back home with my handle bars and front fender bent badly my tank dented and antelope hair all over it and me. I pulled up at the house, my dad on the front porch enjoying a beer, I got off and limped up the steps. He laughed and said 'you hit an antelope didn't you', "yup" I said. "Did you kill it" he barked. "Nope" was all I murmured. "Well hell" was his reply. I carried suppose up from the basement for the elderly woman that worked in the general store in the very small town we lived in for $2 a day. This was my money for .22 bullets and gas for my bike. One day the supply truck delivered a leather scabbard for a horse saddle for the owner to sell to hunters. I bought it and fastened it to the forks of my bike just like I had seen in pictures of old bikes in WWII. This was great! Now I could go shooting on my bike all over the area around the house, many rabbits, squirrels and even chipmunks fell to my .22 auto! One of our drivers had a Native American wife and I would give the edible ones to her to cook. When she cooked the rabbits, fried like chicken we would share with the other people close to us as I would bring several home and clean them for her. It was some of the best tasting wild game ever! Didn't like the squirrels don't matter how she cooked them, too gamey! I really wish I would have carried a camera during my adventures on my bike as I saw the most amazing sights. The first time I was indirectly hit by lightening was on that first bike. Riding way up in the mountains I saw a thunderstorm coming from a ways off, thinking I could get down the game trail I came up before the storm got close I headed off down the mountain. My thought where I could get down then skirt it back to the road and avoid getting wet, it was a hot summer day and I didn't have a jacket and knew it would be a cold wet ride the 20+ miles home if I failed. I drastically miss judged the speed of the storm and got caught half way down this narrow steep valley by it. The dirt there gets slick and deep when wet and it was all I could do to keep upright and on the foot wide trail as I rode. I am going around a rock about the size of a double refrigerator when lightening strikes the rock, blasting pieces on my left side as I pass about 5 foot from it! I can feel a zap through my boots, knees and hands and the heat gave me a sunburn on my right arm. I loose my balance and fall off into the mud. I did the fastest remount and restart I have ever done thinking if another one strikes close I will be a dead because I am grounded! I get back to the main road and it is so deep in mud that all the trucks going to the one rig at the end of this road are stuck to their axle. There are about 3 bobtail trucks and 5 four wheel drive pickups stuck together. One guy offers to pay me to take him to the rig thats about 5 miles up the road, so off we go in mud 6 to 10 inches deep. By the time I get home I looked and felt like hell! My bike and I covered in mud so bad mom won't let me in the house so I get to endure her squirting me off with the hose then stripping to my underwear before going in for a hot shower. So much for dodging the storm and getting home dry! Life lesson learned!
More to come........
My first memories where of life on Malta, a small island in the Mediterranean where my mother and I lived while my dad worked in the middle east. I really enjoyed life there and would like to visit that beautiful place again. I attended a British school, riding a V.W buss to school past the harbor and all the colorful boats. I remember the sound of the christian church bells mixed with the calls to prayers from the mosques. The sounds of the horse drawn glass carriages carrying the coffins to the cemetery, the buss drivers arguing with each other at corners as to which one was to yield, and the catacombs that we once toured with friends.
When I was about 12 years of age I started going to the rigs my father was responsible for the 'mud' on these operations. Mud is the drilling fluid that circulates down the drill pipe performing several preprocesses in its trip all the way down and the stem and back up the bore. If all goes well its not a bad job, but thats often not the case. If you loose circulation bad things happen! This is where it gets exciting fast. At best you just stop, plug the hole that its seeping from and go on. This in itself sounds simple, its not. I am fortunate that I got hands on experience that most don't get until much older and having a inquisitive mind that constantly seeks knowledge I learned from practical application the engineering required to drill a hole deep in the earth. My dad was one of the most respected in his field and others often sought his advice in various problems that occurred in deep hole drilling operations.
I witnessed some amazing things, often very scary, but I found that as long as my dad didn't run it was safe. Safe being a relative phrase here, as the chances of blowing a very big flaming hole in the ground where the multi- million dollar rig was and where he were standing was always a possibility!
I once saw, from a distance, a rig "blowout". Watching the drill pipe fly out the top of the rig and the rig falling over and bursting into flames.
I saw the results of a blowout that resulted in the area around the rig covered in petroleum jelly, basically Vaseline covering the ground,sagebrush and trees in several inches of the stuff. this one didn't destroy the rig or catch fire.
Once while I was sleeping in the camping trailer that served as living quarters on the rig when an unearthly sound woke me and the ground was shaking with a vibration I would come to recognize as a high pressure 'flare'. This is the process of burning off of gas pressure that is very close to destroying the rig. A very scary but exciting thing for a young boy!
I was allowed free reign around the rigs my dad was on and often took advantage of this and stuck my nose into every place I could! In today's world this would be impossible with the safety rules you just don't let kids run around dangerous equipment. I watched gas bubble up in the mud pits. Watched the 'shakers' sift out the larger pieces that the mud brought up, sometimes picking out pieces. Once I even watched as a tungsten tooth from the drill bit bounced down the shaker towards the waste pit. I grabbed it up quick and ran to the company man's shack. I knew he would want to know that the bit might be failing! The 'company man' was the operations supervisor the representative of the company that owned the rig. The guy on this rig was to become a close personal friend of our family, his kids and I where the same ages and we still know each other. This guy also taught me how to shoot pistols, much to my dads disapproval. I remember the argument when my dad came off the rig floor and found him showing me how to shoot a 44 magnum. He said that I didn't meed to know how to shoot a pistol because they where made for shooting people. And the company man said "maybe some day he will need to shoot someone". This was before they became friends, later we would all laugh about this and many other events that we shared. this guy was the first person I knew that had done many things in his life and had many different careers and this I admired and am sure influenced my future life. He was also a great story teller, and I would like to share one of my favorites with you.
the story goes like this...He had a great, powerful, full-blooded and faithful dog that once saved his life. While out hunting way out in the mountains with his dog he was attacked by a bear while taking a leak, his rifle leaned against a tree too far away for him to grab, he could not run as the bear knocked him down! The bear had him pinned to the ground and prepared to maul him, he knew he was going to die a horrible death and thought of his wife and kids having to live without his help and guidance, he said his last prayer. His dog selflessly jumped on the bears back and started biting its head fiercely the bear let go of the him and concentrated on getting the dog off its back. This gave him time to get to the gun. The dog was still attacking the bear and they both went after each other as he raised his gun trying to shoot the bear and not the dog! The bear suddenly caught the dog and it was over in just a split second. He shot the bear but it was too late for the dog. He picked up the dog and walked crying several miles back to his truck. He was married to a full blooded Cherokee Indian and he asked her to have the chief of her tribe lead a ceremony especially for the dogs spirit. At this ceremony they degreed the dog a warrior and renamed the dog Bear. They gave it a very special warrior's sending off to the spirit world. They then preserved the dogs pelt and presented it to his master which he said I will allow you my young friend to see, he said to me, and went to a army locker where he kept his pistols and other treasures. With great reverence he unwrapped a beautifully crafted felt lined pelt with the full head mounted, just like you would see a bear rug! It was a very small, ugly mutt dog! I didn't know what to do, too polite to laugh, too dumbfounded to say any thing I just gapped at him, my jaw working but no words came out! Bear the dog. This was the kind of humorous stories he was known for. The oilfield was full of people like this! Never a dull moment around this crowd.
Later, when I was 16, my dad put me to work in a warehouse that supplied the rigs with the stuff we used to make the 'mud' with. This was mainly 50 to 100 pound bags of bentonite and barite also called bar. At first I helped load our tucks with this both by hand with dollies and with the forklift. Soon I was the manager and learned inventory control and how to manage the drivers. I also learned the responsibility of a 24 hour a day job. Weather, time of day and holidays meant nothing in the oilfield, just like the military you had a job to do and you did it no matter what! I had been reading all my dads books on being a mud man, geology and petrochemical engineering and soon it would be time to go to a private school that only taught this part of the field. My dad had told me to never tell anyone at work how old I was and because I looked older this never came up. Part of my job was to drive the 'bobtail' trucks and the semi tractor trailers to the loading areas and some times under emergency situations to the rigs and unload and drive back. I didn't realize how risky this was not only to my dad's job and mine, but to the company's insurance as well. Early on while parking one of the semi trucks with a large 'van' trailer attached I ran it into another semi truck. Not just any truck but the one owned by a guy that took great pride in his new work vehicle! He spent his own money dressing it up with extra chrome, lights and ect. I didn't see it backing this van into the line of trailers and backed into it pretty hard, damaging it really bad. I knowing that the driver of this truck was going to be upset prepared myself to tell him what I had done. Mustering all my courage I went to find him, I was told he was out having lunch, I asked that he come find me when he came back. Big mistake! I should have gone to him at lunch and told him there before he saw the truck. He came back and saw his truck before I talked with him. I heard him yelling and left my office to go handle this bad situation. He saw me and knowing it was me that did this started running towards me promising to kill me! Did I mention he was a very large black man build like a linebacker? He also could run like one! Thank God that my dad just happened to show up while I was trying to keep good distance between certain death and this guy. My dad talked him out of killing me by promising him a brand new truck and paying for all the extras that he required. The next fun I got from this job was getting crabs from cotton seed hulls! Cotten seed hulls are used to help plug a 'hole' in the drill bore that is causing the fluid to leak out the bore and not make it back up to be treated and returned through the drill stem. This is a very dangerous condition, especially if your very deep and have encountered gas. The drilling fluid is the first thing to keep the gas down in the bore and in so keeping the rig operation and personnel safe from explosion! We get this waist product from the farm industry that comes from the cotton gin separating the cotton from the other stuff and seeds in it. This stuff comes in big burlap bags the size of a recliner which is loaded on large trucks. At this time none where on pallets meaning we had to unload it all by hand and place it on pallets so the forklift could move it to storage. This was a job all the drivers and warehouse workers did together. This time it was a very hot humid day and most of us took our shirts off and by the time when done we were covered with grime. A few days later we all had lice all over us! One joke circulating was that we all have the same prostitute at the local cat house, funny now years later but not then! The oilfield is full of colorful people all with fascinating stories. One of our drivers kept telling us how he was musical and played the guitar. We all said where is your guitar, we want to hear some music? He told a sad story of having to sell it to buy a buss ticket to come and work here with us. One day I get a large package delivered to my office with his name on it. When he returned dirty and tired from hauling a large load out to a rig I told him of his box. He immediately brightened up and carefully opened the box and unwrapped a brand new acoustic 12 string guitar. He strung it and tuned it as the other drivers all returned from deliveries. As soon as he was ready he asked me first what song I would like to hear. Being a huge fan of Led Zeppelin at the time i said 'stairway to heaven'. He lot only played the song but sang it so well it brought tears to my eyes! He then played requests from the others from country and western to blues and even classical, all amazing. He carried that guitar in the truck with him every day and played often for us, what talent! One of our drivers I later found out was a 'match maker' in effect he was a pimp. He had a ring binder filled with pictures of young women, some actually had clothes on, that he would solicit money from men for the opportunity to hookup with these women to marry or 'date'. Needless to say he was fired, seems even the oilfield at the time had its moral limits. One morning my dad tells me I am coming with him to fire an engineer for cocain use. This guy had offered drugs to a company man on his rig to get them through a long night and was told his services were no longer needed. The company man then called my dad and told him what happened and my dad talked this guy into keeping this to himself if the engineer was fired and blacklisted, this saved a lucrative service contract for my dads company. I had to retrieve the company car from the guy's house with my dad waiting in his car out front. Dad didn't want to wake this guy up and fire him right then fearing a confrontation with someone high on cocaine,. Of course the guy wakes up thinking someone is steeling his car and runs out with a gun, sees my dad out front and me in his car he lowered the gun and walked back in his house! He resigned before my dad could fire him. Growing up in the northern USA I learned how to drive in snow and mud. Our company vehicles where usually ford crown Victorias, basically a LTD, ford F600 flatbeds, and ford 9000 semi tractors with float, vans, and bulk trailers. My dad and a few of the drivers did amazing things with these. I had been with my dad when he would drive his car through snow and mud that one wrong move and your stuck, he never got stuck, never! Our last stint in Wyoming he got a Chevy Blazer, this as the first 4 wheel drive he got as a work vehicle. That year my sister and her new husband came for x-mas and wanted to go see my brother who was working about 30 miles away on a rig as a roughneck. I knowing where the rig was agreed to guid them there, this was years before GPS or even cell phones. In this part of the US weather can change drastically very quickly and this evening it did in a big way! A huge snow storm blew in with lots of wind and very heavy snow, usually you would just wait it out and in a day or 3 the bulldozer would come and uncover the road and you could leave. we had the company man call my house and tell my parents we where ok and would see them in a coupe of days. My mom was having none of that! She informed my dad he was going to go retrieve us! I can only imagine the argument that happened. He called the rig back and said he would be coming. In these days communication with the rigs was through radio telephone patch in meaning you have a VHF radio at the rig and at a 'phone service'. The rig would call on the radio to the closest radio telephone service and ask them to dial a phone number and then connect the radio to the phone line. This works ok if you have a good signal, thank God we did this night! Dad shows up and he is not a very happy camper, he chews us out for coming there in a 2 wheel drive truck, chews us out for driving out in winter, chews us out for coming to see my brother even chews us out for not just insisting on staying on the rig until we got dug out. A chevy Blazer in 1977 carried 4 people, the 2 in the front were in bucket seats and the 2 in the back on a very small bench seat, you should be very short and skinny in the back. We where 5, 3 large framed people. This was a ride home we still talk about. It is night in a blizzard with the wind blowing hard, this makes it almost impossible to see as the snow reflects the headlights. The snow is falling fast and being blown hard, this makes high drifts and fills in any depressions in the earth. So the road was blown over, unpredictable drifts everywhere, the road very narrow and crooked and you couldn't see more that 3 feet in front of the Blazer! Insanity to drive in, unless you had an innate ability to memorize the path of the road and be able to keep your momentum up as to be able to go up hills and bust through deep high drifts, which my dad must have had. We went through snow so deep it came over the hood of the truck, often the headlights didn't cast much light because they where under the snow! The only way we made it to the main road, a gravel road that had not been plowed yet, was ether by feel, memory or sheer luck! Dad never told, just stated that he knew where we where the whole trip! By the time we got home it was after midnight and we were all so wide awake after the ride through snowy hell we were not going to sleep so we had our christmas a few hour early. One thing about driving in the wilderness is animals are everywhere, often on the road, so every once in a while they get run into. its amazing the damage a raccoon can do not to mention an armadillo, don't even think about a elk or cow! It happens, I was unlucky enough to hit a antelope on my Honda XR75 while chasing a heard of them cross-country. I failed to notice the straggler when we all made a turn! I remember sitting up on my butt as the dust settled and seeing the antelope laying on its side struggling to get up. All I thought was hell it didn't even hurt the damn thing! After determining I didn't have any broken bones I got my bike back up and running and rode back home with my handle bars and front fender bent badly my tank dented and antelope hair all over it and me. I pulled up at the house, my dad on the front porch enjoying a beer, I got off and limped up the steps. He laughed and said 'you hit an antelope didn't you', "yup" I said. "Did you kill it" he barked. "Nope" was all I murmured. "Well hell" was his reply. I carried suppose up from the basement for the elderly woman that worked in the general store in the very small town we lived in for $2 a day. This was my money for .22 bullets and gas for my bike. One day the supply truck delivered a leather scabbard for a horse saddle for the owner to sell to hunters. I bought it and fastened it to the forks of my bike just like I had seen in pictures of old bikes in WWII. This was great! Now I could go shooting on my bike all over the area around the house, many rabbits, squirrels and even chipmunks fell to my .22 auto! One of our drivers had a Native American wife and I would give the edible ones to her to cook. When she cooked the rabbits, fried like chicken we would share with the other people close to us as I would bring several home and clean them for her. It was some of the best tasting wild game ever! Didn't like the squirrels don't matter how she cooked them, too gamey! I really wish I would have carried a camera during my adventures on my bike as I saw the most amazing sights. The first time I was indirectly hit by lightening was on that first bike. Riding way up in the mountains I saw a thunderstorm coming from a ways off, thinking I could get down the game trail I came up before the storm got close I headed off down the mountain. My thought where I could get down then skirt it back to the road and avoid getting wet, it was a hot summer day and I didn't have a jacket and knew it would be a cold wet ride the 20+ miles home if I failed. I drastically miss judged the speed of the storm and got caught half way down this narrow steep valley by it. The dirt there gets slick and deep when wet and it was all I could do to keep upright and on the foot wide trail as I rode. I am going around a rock about the size of a double refrigerator when lightening strikes the rock, blasting pieces on my left side as I pass about 5 foot from it! I can feel a zap through my boots, knees and hands and the heat gave me a sunburn on my right arm. I loose my balance and fall off into the mud. I did the fastest remount and restart I have ever done thinking if another one strikes close I will be a dead because I am grounded! I get back to the main road and it is so deep in mud that all the trucks going to the one rig at the end of this road are stuck to their axle. There are about 3 bobtail trucks and 5 four wheel drive pickups stuck together. One guy offers to pay me to take him to the rig thats about 5 miles up the road, so off we go in mud 6 to 10 inches deep. By the time I get home I looked and felt like hell! My bike and I covered in mud so bad mom won't let me in the house so I get to endure her squirting me off with the hose then stripping to my underwear before going in for a hot shower. So much for dodging the storm and getting home dry! Life lesson learned!
More to come........
