Big-Joe-Radio
My
Grey-Wolf Experience
This
blog is for my baby Joanne. Daddy is proud of you working your first job as a
teenager. Can daddy borrow some money!
The year was in the two-thousandth and fourth year of our
Lord (2004). I was at the tender age of 25. Young, dumb and full of
nonsense. I may have been lacking in the
intelligence department, but I was full to bursting in the heart department. Or
maybe I was just too stupid to know when to quit. Either way I was about to
embark on a journey that would take me to near death experiences, and on the
other side I would know some things about myself that I would have never known
had I not taken those chances. What I am talking about is the time I took a
trip up to Wyoming to learn the trade of oil rigging work. It nearly cost me my
life I believe, but to this day I consider it a time of high adventure. Enjoy
the ride.
I didn’t really have too much going for me at the time. I
was working a normal blue-collar job, just trying to live from paycheck to
paycheck. I managed to find myself repairing furniture at American Furniture
Warehouse. It was an ok job but It lacked any kind of fulfillment. I was fresh
out of active duty Air Force. I really had no idea what to do with my life at
that point. Go to school, or go to work were pretty much my choices back then.
I chose to work for a while since I really had no clue what I wanted to do with
myself. The problem was that sitting in a warehouse and working with paint
fumes, guys whose only care in the world was getting high, and not that great
of a paycheck left me very unchallenged. There was something inside of me that
felt tortured as I begged myself to go out in search of who I would become.
Sooner or later I usually listen to that inner voice.
I don’t know how I came upon the idea or what started the
process, but I came across an ad in the paper that had to do with going to a
school up in Casper, Wyoming. The job was Rough-necking. That job entails
working on oil rigs. That’s all I knew at the time. The eye opener was that
they would get you placed on a rig where pay was between 35-35$ an hour. Being
that I was making 15 dollars an hour, this is what I set my heart on. I called
the school and got an enrollment date. I think the school was like 2 weeks long
and I don’t remember how I paid them or what I paid them. I was about to
discover the true costs associated with this choice.
Giving American Furniture Warehouse my two weeks’ notice
was no problem. That firm had a habit of firing people for little to no reason.
Colorado is a right to work state which means that sort of behavior is not
illegal in the slightest way. You even mention the word “union” in that place
and you were gone. They worked the crap out of you and treated you like crap.
Most of the people I knew who worked there had criminal records or were just
passing the time until something better came along. I was not going to miss
this place at all. I saved up some money for food for the next few weeks and
took care of rent and other bills while I would be traveling for a while. I was
excited to go.
So the day comes and I leave Denver Colorado for Casper,
Wyoming. It was during December. It was relatively cold. I had a shitty Ford
Taurus back then. It got me from A to B, but if I would have known then what I
know now, I would not have made the trip in that car. As I got to Cheyenne,
Wyoming there were no issues with the driving. From Denver up through Fort
Collins and into Cheyenne the weather was fine. The only thing I noticed was a
little wind in Cheyenne. A little would soon turn into a lot. This would soon
be accompanied by snow and ice as well.
There next 178 miles from Cheyenne to Casper were some of
the scariest moments of my life. A trip that should have only taken 2 and a
half hours took me over 6 hours. As soon as I left Cheyenne, on I-25, I
witnessed the wind and snow so hard that the snow would literally come in
directly sideways. If the wind changed direction (which it did constantly) and
the snow was coming at you, you could barely see a foot in front of the car.
The snow was covering the highway. Underneath the snow was ice so bad that if I
drove faster than 35mph, my rear end would slide behind me. What really freaked
me out as well was that every 20 or so miles the highway had crossing guards
like at a train stop. There was a sign that said something like, “Highway
closed when guard down”. That right there told me that this was a normal
occurrence in the state of Wyoming. I had not adequately prepared myself for
such a risk that I was taking. If the highway did close I would miss my first
day of class the following morning and I am sure I would have been kicked out
of the program. I was alone and knew absolutely no one or nothing in this
miserable adventure.
Well I eventually made it into the cold city of Casper
Wyoming. I found the hotel that I was instructed to go to. The school was
paying for that thank God. To this day I am almost certain that if my car had
broken down on the way here, I would have died. The snow got very deep in some
spots and in Wyoming; you can travel many many miles between a single towns.
Freezing to death was a very real thought for me, but that was past me now. At
least for now. There were about 20 other guys that would be in my class. We
were all from different parts of Wyoming, Montana, or Colorado. Much like
myself, it was just a bunch of young guys trying to find a way to earn a
living. I’m talking some real country boys too. I was roomed together with a
guy from Montana. He was a peculiar guy. I asked him quite a bit about Montana.
People get away with murder up in Montana quite a bit, or at least that is what
he stressed. When I asked how, he told me that there are a million mine shafts
in the state. You cross paths with the wrong people and your body could end up
in one of those to never be found again. He was a tough rancher’s type of guy.
He drove a big truck of course. But hearing him talk about his state like that
made the hairs on my neck stand up quite a bit. He was revealing to me a dark side
of the Midwest that I was still young and naïve about. There are parts of this
country that still have that wild, wild west spirit in them. When you get a
young man who has not been influenced by the rat-race fast paced life of city
dwellers, you are going to hear some shit. I would soon embark on a journey
that would make me realize just how much colder the world could be.
My attitude at this point was one that looked like this;
No matter what, I could not quit. I had no job anymore. I nearly got myself
frozen to death in the trip up here. I thought I had made it through the tough
part. I would realize the holes in that thought process. The guy who would be
our teacher was someone with over 20 years in the oil rigging business. All the
way up from a floor hand, which is the guy who does the most labor, to the
driller, all the way up to owning rigs himself. That is a HUGE journey. The guy
was tougher and meaner than any man I have ever witnessed. Obviously he was
driven enough and made some smart business choices in life to get him to where
he is now. This guy would not tolerate
any weakness or laziness. If I didn’t get past this school then that was it. I
would have come here for nothing. I would have taken such risks and induced the
costs so far for nothing.
I learned all there was to learn about the oil rigging
business. There were tests. There was a training rig on the school’s property.
The brainy stuff was nothing. The head instructor that I told you about would
clean half the class size with the physical tests that he would require from
us. If you failed or dropped out, that was it. He had a “Hell Week” all of his
own. The month was December. Casper is always freezing at this time, and the
wind never stops. On the training grounds every day after class sessions he
would make us run with wheel barrels full of sand through the snow for as long
as football field lengths. Sometimes up hills too. We would also have to dig
holes of 3x3 foot and 3 foot deep holes in the cold ground. Afterwards he would
tell us to fill them. All the while this is going on we are being dehumanized
and ridiculed, coached into giving up so we can go to the warmth of our prior
lives. I thought it was the stupidest shit in the world, but at the same time I
had nothing else to fall back on to. I couldn’t quit even if this asshole
wanted me to. All these physical activities were timed too, so the hammer hit
that much harder.
Well your boy got through it. That saying that you become
strong when you have no other choice is truer than a mother-fucker. Yet here we
go again. This is barely the beginning of what I would have to go through.
Finishing that school was just so I could get my ticket to the show as they
say. That show would nearly kill me. The school placed me on a rig out near
Mesa Colorado. I knew nothing about
where I was going, and again I would be taking more chances as I moved further
into life. This time I would not travel alone anymore either. I had a few
travel buddies to go with; a few guys that I had met in the school that were
placed with the same company, on the same rig. The Company was with Grey Wolf
Drilling Company.
We get to the little rinky dink town a few weeks after
the school was done, and reported to the rig that we would call home 2 weeks a
month. That was the schedule; two weeks on, two weeks off. 14 days straight of
working 12 hour shifts in some of the muddiest and cold working environments
that you can think of. It was fun, dangerous, and cold all at the same time. Me
and my two new bros were put up in one of the houses rented by the drilling
company. Here’s how that situation works; you roll into town, get to the house,
and find whatever closet, room, bathroom. Wherever there is space that you can
find to lay your head for the next two weeks. You learn not to trust anyone
because people will steal from you in a heartbeat. Here is the dilemma…oil rig
workers can be some of the toughest, shadiest, meanest mother-fuckers you will
ever work for and with. They make construction workers look like pussies.
My first week at the new job was pure hell for me and my
new compadres. The rig was out in the middle of nowhere deep in the mountains
where snow was a constant theme. We were so out in the back country, that even
in the small town that we were shaking up in didn’t have cell phone coverage. Those
two weeks of working would become what felt like prison sentences. There was no
communication with the outside world. The work itself would make me lose at
least ten pounds per trip. And the people were meaner than shit. You had to
discover how to either be tough, or play the part. Weakness was instantly
attacked.
On an oil rig there are what you call “floor-hands”,
“Derick-hands”, the “driller” who is the boss, and the “company man”. He owned
the rig. The driller was the main boss pretty much. He stood in a heated room
watching the computers to see the trajectory and depth that the thousands or so
of pipe was drilling underground. The derrick hand basically was the guy who
was responsible for lassoing the pipe to the holding areas and other functions
that would have him high up in the tower. If you were afraid of hights, don’t
count on doing this job. You will probably be forced to do some of his job
anyways, which is something I learned very soon. As a floor hand you connect
pipes, un freeze pipes with a steam hose, and disconnect the pipes when the
driller is raising all those 60 foot pieces of pipe out of the ground. The work
is so fucking dangerous. You can get a finger smashed between a pipe so
quickly. You can get frostbite. You have people yelling at you all the time to
get out of the way, give me this, go fuck yourself newbie…stuff like that. They
really test your limits as well. These guys are fucking jacked. You didn’t need
to work out at a gym with this kind of work. I would bring a cooler full of
microwave pizzas, hot pockets, snacks, all kinds of sandwich stuff,
whatever. When there was time to eat,
you gorged yourself because you were at such a high calorie burn that if you
didn’t you could easily pass out.
Let’s talk about the mother-fucking people you would work
with. The driller straight looked like Johnny Bravo on steroids. He probably
had a 32 inch waist, 6 foot tall and shoulders and chest the size of a
professional weight lifter. He was mean as shit too. They would always test the
new guys. He would drop tools in the six foot pools of mud where the water
mixed with mud and say something like, “get my tool faggot, or you’re fired”.
Or “put your harness on and go up to the top of the tower before I beat your
ass asshole”. This was how people taled to each other on these things. I am not
exaggerating. And if you whined about the work you literally risked getting
jumped by the other guys on the rig. I seen it happen too. It was a dangerous
environment. The people came from rough backgrounds, some even out of prison,
and to top it off a lot of the guys were using meth to keep themselves up for
those many days of hard work. I did this kind of work for six months, and I
truly believe I worked for some of the scariest people I would ever come to
work for. The way you dealt with it was by humor. You had to learn quick to
portry that nothing bothered you, even if it did. When a guy called you a
faggot, you responded with something like, “Fuck you, asshole, I’ll suck your
dick quicker than your mom does on new year’s eve!”. You had to find a way to
survive, and showing weakness only got you eaten alive.
When those two weeks were over it really felt like you
were being let out of prison. Eventually you got cell phone reception back on
the drive back to wherever you called home. All the money you saved up during
those two weeks were easily wasted on booze and woman. Towards the end I got
mean as fuck too. I remember one night on the rig, a new guy told me he would
not help me life some heavy stuff. I took a leap pipe collar and threw it at
his head. He dogged it, but I am sure if he would not have moved, I would have
killed him. I would not have given a shit either because in that moment, life
could have not been much worse. I was strong as strong, mean, and Horney as
fuck from all the aggression I had learned to deal with. Finally I couldn’t do
it anymore. I don’t know how or when I did it, but I must have pinched a nerve
somewhere. On my final trip to the rig I lost all felling from my shoulders
down, but not all the way. Just that numb feeling you get like when you fall
asleep on your arm. I wouldn’t get feeling back in my fingers for a full year.
When I went to go see a doctor about it, he told me I could do permanent damage
if I went back to that line of work. I was heartbroken for about two minutes.
Then I realized I couldn’t play that tough guy anymore, the work was killing
me, and I didn’t want to spend my life doing that kind of stuff in the first
place. I listened to the doctor and moved on to the next chapter of my life.
Thank you for reading an
episode of my journey.
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