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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 13, 2010 - 11:16am PT
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ah, another google adventure here.
going over some pals at various newspapers where i worked, i find that ron gawthorp, a fellow reporter in minnesota in the early 70s, has written his first novel, and it's a damn good one. reviewers call it "gritty but warm" and they taste in ron's style the flavor of ernest hemingway.
this is a story about wildcat oilmen. ron's dad was one--his picture on the cover there--and ron himself got into being a salesman for oilfield equipment when he got tired of living on a newspaper reporter's salary (easy to get tired of that).
this is one colorful yarn, and if you know something about the industry, as i know a few supertopoans do, you'll probably want to read this just to see it treated in a sympathetic light. among the bonuses are insights into roughneck nicknames ("lucky" is everything but, and "thumb", well, his wife unfortunately told another wife once that, although her husband was a superb lover, his pertinent equipment was no longer than his ... about-to-become-widely-used nickname.) you'll also learn the art of the wildcat drilling deal, involving "honest gambling money", senatorial campaign funds, and slightly overweight bank calendars. my, my, my.
i got back in touch with ron, and we're now swapping old reporter adventures via email. i only worked with him for a few months, but probably learned more from him in that time than anyone. a reporter has to be fearless or he isn't worth his salt, and that was ron through and through. a recently returned vietnam veteran, he raised all our eyebrows then with his open criticism of the war. now, it's wonderful to see his skill at writing come to this.
if you do buy this (available through amazon), you might want to use my bookmark here. ron gets into the nitty gritty of sinking a well hole, and this'll help make heads and tails of it:
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 15, 2010 - 11:16pm PT
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Ah! That is how I lost 90% of my hearing, and all of my money, twice.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 16, 2010 - 10:42pm PT
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seems like everything--your lives, your fortunes, your sacred honor--can easily go on the line when wells have to be drilled. that's what happens here. a great storyteller knows how to end a story, and that's what i especially liked about this novel.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Dec 16, 2010 - 11:06pm PT
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Tony-
Would it be suitable for my 87 year old mother who can only take limited amounts of sex and profanity? You know my father was a geophysicist who headed up a doodlebug crew so we knew a lot of roughnecks in that business and it might be fun for her to relive that era again?
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 16, 2010 - 11:45pm PT
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jan--
that's a tough one to answer because of the way sensibilities vary. my guess would be that it's okay--not a lot of sex or profanity, but enough to give it some flavor. ron also espouses midwest family values and american patriotism combined with a deep distrust of government. he subtitles it "a tale of generational love", and the current of the story is a family farmer's sons growing up and getting into the oil business but still being to true to the way their dad raised them. and you'll find some unexpected appreciation of the piankashaw indian culture of the illinois basin. thanks to this book i now know what a bannerstone is. if you had a doodlebugger in the family, that's kinda what gets the action going--i'm sure she'd enjoy that.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Dec 17, 2010 - 10:35am PT
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There is no sex in the oilfield. Profanity is more or less a full substitution for the english language, though.
I dunno why more women aren't out there. I see a few, and they are treated like the queen when they are out there. Dudes never get to see a woman out on a rig.
Now, women are great geologists and geophysicists and all of that, but out on a rig, they are pretty rare.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 17, 2010 - 03:51pm PT
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i knew one woman carpenter in my career. she'd had a pink toolbelt made up special. she found a niche installing hardware at the finish stage of housebuilding, and was quite good at it.
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krahmes
Social climber
Stumptown
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Dec 17, 2010 - 04:21pm PT
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There is no sex in the oilfield. Profanity is more or less a full substitution for the english language, though.
Not true. Theirs always been tons of sex adjacent to drill rigs (hide your women) and as the industry has become more integrated with regards to women i.e. mud engineers, geologists, wireline operators, mud loggers, ROV operators, directional drillers and even company men; some pretty memorable tales can be told. The oil field of the 1980's isn't the oil field of today and outside of few pockets in Bakersfield I don't come across alot of profanity. On the jobs the majors drill, profanity isn't tolerated.
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wildone
climber
Troy, MT
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Dec 18, 2010 - 05:31am PT
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Whaaaaaat?
What the hell are you smoking? I work on rigs and oilfields and refineries, exclusively, and you're full of sh#t.
It takes me a full week after getting home to stop dropping the f bomb three times per sentence.
But yeah, one point you make of there being lots of sex adjascent to the fields is correct. The dudes like their sluts and whores.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 19, 2010 - 02:57pm PT
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i do have to amend that statement about women carpenters. if you extend carpentry into woodworking, cabinet-making and furniture manufacture, lots of women there, very skilled. i went to the humboldt woodfair in arcata last summer--many formidable females involved.
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