My Career in the Oil Business
(Written 11-8-98)
Andrews, Texas, 1947, age 11, almost 12.
I needed a job. I was eleven years old, about six feet tall, and I weighed around 107 pounds.
I applied for a job as a Roustabout in the oil field, and got hired. They thought I was eighteen years old, and the pay was $3.00 an hour.
I was assigned to work with a man fixing rods on the horses that pump the oil out of the wells. He drove us to our first site about twenty miles out of town. We walked about 1/8th of a mile to the first horse. He appraised the situation and told me to go the truck and get him a crescent wrench of a certain size. I asked, “What’s a crescent wrench.” His reply was short and relatively polite, and it was to the effect that I was to just observe all day. He went for the wrench himself. He didn’t talk much, and I didn’t learn much, but I got one of the worst sunburns of my whole life. I didn’t report to work the next day. Instead I went to town and got a job washing dishes in a cafe at 35 cents an hour, having retired permanently from the oil business.