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