Ramblin Man

That Allman Brothers ( I heard as I was driving) song always brings back memories of a summer I spent "ramblin" around with an original ramblin man. My father ( B.R.) came from a large family, he had several older brothers & sisters. I met most of them, a couple died before I was born. Mostly they were all responsible family oriented people, but he had a couple brothers that were true "free spirits", sometimes they would show up being the truck drivers they were, or sometimes they were in between jobs when they would stop by. When they were without a job B.R. would put them to work for while, until they decided they had enough ( money or work), then they  would be gone. Some times it would be for months, sometimes years.

One summer morning of my youth, the telephone rang very early, before the sun was up. B.R. got up answered the phone, told my mom to fix breakfast, he would be right back. I guess the call was from my uncle, as B.R. returned home he had his brother with him. My uncle Troy, as they were finishing breakfast Troy asked if I wanted to go along with him. B.R. said I could, so I packed my duffel bag and we were gone.

Troy was hauling frozen chickens for Tysons, from Arkansas to N.Y.  We made deliveries to Newark, N.J., Brooklyn, The Bronx, made it up and down the east coast for various other loads before heading back to Springdale, Ark. I got to see allot of the east coast, and places in between. Back in Springdale we got to tour the slaughter house and packaging plant as they were loading the truck. Another load going to N.Y. needs to be there asap.

As we were leaving  Springdale we crossed a bridge over the White River, " By God will you look at that" Troy says. By time I respond to his comment he has the truck pulled to the side of the road, has the truck in reverse and is backing his 53' trailer down an access road next to the bridge we just crossed. As the truck comes to a stop Troy says " we are going fishing". We walked a mile to a bait /grocery store, got hot dogs, ice soda and bait. Once back to the truck Troy digs out a cooler, fishing poles, tackle box, and lawn chairs. He must have had everything he owned stashed away in that cab over Freightliner. We built a bonfire and spent the weekend fishing, "guess N.Y. will just have to wait for their chickens".

Choices

In what seems like a lifetime ago when I was a younger man making a living as a roughneck. I remember a very cold night in northwest Kansas, I worked mourning tour ( 11 p.m. -7 a.m.) as I recall the wind chill was about -25 below zero. We were drilling around 3000 feet deep and needed to change the drill bit, aka bit trip, the driller pulled the bit about 2 feet off bottom and began to circulate the hole clean.  Driller says " OK boys we have an hour before the trip starts" meaning prepare as you will, eat lunch, catch a few minutes of sleep, bundle up because we all knew that we would be out in the cold until the relief crew showed up @ 7 a.m., if they show up. Sometimes the relief crew failed to show up and you are stuck for the next shift. As we are getting ready to trip the pipe one of the floor hands, J.D. was what he was called, older gentleman, lost his job as a salesman, and working on a rig til something better came along. J. D. went to his locker, we thought he was getting his carhartts on but instead he starts changing clothes. We all had lockers in our "dog house"to keep our clothes and work clothes in. Driller says "J.D. what are you doing?", J.D. " well I forgot my hard hat and need to get it before we trip this pipe" and gets his clean clothes on. He also proceeds to put his "greasers" ( oilfield work clothes) in his hull sack--( hull  sack- when mixing drilling mud cotton seed hulls are mixed into the mud to help cake the walls of the hole, roughnecks would take the sack a gunny sack and carry their clothes in them). J.D. has all his things together, pauses at the doghouse door, looks at the Driller and answers the question" Oklahoma City" , opens the door and is gone. So that left 3 men to do a 4 man job, we got the pipe tripped OK , I got the most of the extra work. I had to work both sides of the floor. I learned allot that night, I learned how to "throw a chain" ( spinning chain to screw the pipe together), when you are overwhelmed by something just take it a little at a time, in my imagination the work was going to be tougher than it really was. Sometimes when we stress over things our mind makes us think it is worse than it really is. Learned a bit about choices also, when we make a choice it affects everyone involved. I realize in our present society most people have "inverted" eyes, they consider only themselves and no body elsebut the choices they make affect more than only thierselves. A chioce can be a difficult thing to make but usally the hardest decision is the correct one.---"It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are."
— Roy Disney