Taken from a letter to Jim Charter, who is doing very well. Thought I'd  
post this bit here. I haven't been absent quite that long.

Seven years ago, I had been in the Caterpillar parts business with my  
father for six years. During that time, he went through a treatment for  
hepatitis C. Thanks to $1500 a month in medicine, he is among the "rare  
subset of individuals"[1] to beat the disease physically, but the  
experience wore him down mentally. Only in his early 50s at the time, he  
(consciously? unconsciously?) made the decision to retire. I was left with  
the decision to either abandon or take out loans and "marry" the parts  
business. At 31, I felt too young to be trapped in an office and tied to a  
telephone. I bailed.

I schemed with a younger friend, who was having career problems of his own  
(mid 20s, failure-to-launch, mumblecore type), to run away to the  
oilfield. A customer from the parts business was friends with a VP at a  
Houston oil company. He thought I was crazy, but he promised to help get  
us hired. The younger friend bailed (he works at the Apple Store now).

So I went to the oilfield fit and eager. I had a punk rock band and buzzed  
off green hair. When I landed on the rig, the rig manager met me in the  
briefing room, asked me to remove my hat, and said about my hair, "That's  
a career-limiting mistake there." I laughed, "Career? I don't want a  
career. I want to be a roustabout!"

We hadn't gotten off to a good start, but my work ethic quickly won him  
over. I was getting paid about $45k to sweep, mop, and paint, jobs I'd  
done earlier in my life for $27 dollars a day. I had offers, but no  
intention to "move up" even to roughneck. I used to council new hires to  
"'Just say NO' to promotion!" Still, I was within months offered a chance  
to train for a barge engineer job (typically takes years to be  
considered), and common sense, at least for the moment, took over long  
enough for me to accept.

That didn't work out. Contract negotiations with the Saudi oil company to  
which the rig was contracted resulted in all but a few American's being  
left behind when the rig went overseas.

I did get to ride the tow-ship as far as Africa. It had been a life-long  
ambition to work my way across the ocean. I read "Moby Dick" for the third  
time during the journey.

I came back with nowhere to go but a land rig. I had plenty of money in  
the bank and plenty of prospects. I decided to try life on a land rig and  
leave if it didn't suit me. It was terrible. My lifestyle differences are  
too great for me to live with rednecks. Offshore was easy; there was no  
alcohol, and we all ate in a galley. On a land rig, my not drinking or  
eating Hot Pockets made the other's suspicious.

But I stayed. I wasn't sure why at first, but in time came to understand  
consciously that an environments effects your past as much as it does your  
present or future. I liked living with my hobo past. I like to feel like a  
laborer. And my home life was extraordinary. I had two weeks of vacation a  
month. So much time to nap on the bayous, ride my bicycles, have tiny  
adventures.

Things changed two years ago. I was working some extra time on a rig that  
was only 35 minutes from my house. One day, when we got off, a man from  
the safety department was waiting to train us on some new forms. He  
offered to read the training presentation himself or allow us to read it  
individually. I asked if he would let /me/ read it. He allowed this and I,  
wanting to get home, read the presentation /very/ quickly. The safety man  
pulled out his phone and recorded my "speed-reading."

I shortly returned to my usual assignment hundreds of miles away, but the  
safety man came back looking for me. He tracked me down and offered me a  
job with the safety department. I didn't know what the job was or what it  
paid, but, on a whim, I said, "Sure. When to I start?" It wasn't that  
easy. Took almost a year to get into the department, but I eventually did.

I wasn't well liked on the land rig. I was even hated by some. But I was  
loved by the safety department. My work ethic again impressed. I was  
traveling between rigs and doing inspections. In addition to merely  
finding problems, I took it upon myself to correct them, and that often  
meant shoveling, hammering, and lifting, things no one had ever seen a  
"safety man" do. After a year (we're now up to last February), I was  
offered a job in the office.

Now 38, I still feel too young to work in an office, but my time traveling  
in the safety department through motels on land and redneck galleys  
offshore has taken a physical toll. I have had to eat a lot of shit, and  
this assault on my devout atheist principles has become an obsession. The  
office is only six miles away, so I can ride my bicycle, and I'm home most  
nights. Carrie Ann is, in theory, glad to have me there but sill getting  
used to sharing the house. Work moves very slowly in the office. Too many  
meetings.
-----

It was in my new capacity as HSE Compliance Coordinator that I was flying  
out to a rig Monday with six others (All above me. One a VP) to confront a  
problem rig on their own turf. One of the six was the rig manager who  
confronted me about my green hair seven years ago. At the heliport, he  
held up an issue of "Teen Vogue" with a blue-haired girl on the cover and  
smiled at me. As you know[2], the green hair story was all but retired by  
the end of the day. He has a better story to tell about me now. The seven  
of us made an extraordinary entrance at the rig when we crashed into the  
water only a few feet from it. Thanks to the experience of the pilot, we  
were all able to escape, but the helicopter is in two pieces on the bottom  
of the Gulf of Mexico.

TGIF?

-Shay

[1] Play on something Jim had said.

[2] I had just contacted Jim before getting on the helicopter: "I've been  
working on a short story ... Would you be willing to give it a read? I'm  
about to get into a helicopter, but I can send it out to you tonight."  
Several hours later: "Ha! The helicopter crashed!"

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