A COUPLE OF RIG TALES

If abandoned drilling machines could talk, we'd hear rousing stories of the struggles to hit the Third sand in the Valley or oil somewhere else in the world.  An old rig could have worked heavy for fifty years or more and the only time between wells would be the moving or maybe waiting out a bust.  A drilling machine was like a good hunting dog, it and the contractor being an inseparable pair in the good times.  There was a lot of philosophy besides hard work in wildcat drilling.  The driller-operator often bet it all.  And try as he might, the rule of miner's risk was always riding the walking beam.

What follows are some stories written in letters to me by a couple of fellows who worked in the oilfields.