From the West Texas oilpatch........

Hyoi · 05-19-2007, 06:29 AM

This is a tale from the West Texas oilpatch, a separate nation if I’ve ever seen one. West Texas, USA, has a unique lingo, accent if you will, that replaces the words fire, tire, wire, etc, with far, tar, war, and so on. You hear such as “My left-rear tar blew out yestiddy” or “I had to strang some bob-war across my north pasture” or “My dadburned Winchester misfarred on me.” So it came as no surprise that the toolpusher on this particular liner job not too far from Midland was telling a story about how he had farred one of his drillers.

Just to fill in, the toolpusher is the big dog on the drilling rig site and the driller is next in line. The toolpusher hires the rig crew, meaning he hires the driller and the floor hands that follow him around, keeps track of how many feet per day the drill bit is penetrating, and orders service companies out to do specialized jobs. I was working for one of these service companies, out in the field to see how well my equipment was performing.

A liner job is no more than running a couple of hundred thousand pounds of pipe into the drilled hole, hanging that pipe in tension, and then cementing it in place. They invariably happen at night and always involve sitting around in the toolpusher’s trailer, waiting for the pipe to be run, sweating over whether the hanger is going to work, if the pipe tally is correct, if the plugs are going to bump…….and swapping lie after lie after lie. After thirty-six hours of no sleep, everybody gets pretty friggin’ good at it.

This one toolpusher was telling me how a driller that used to work for him had run the traveling block up into the crown and how the whole mess (tons of steel and cable) had ended up falling down onto and through the rig floor. The traveling block is a moving pully, the crown, some twelve stories up, is a fixed pully and the driller is supposed to control the traveling block to lift a joint of pipe just high enough to connect it to another joint of pipe. Well, this driller must haven gotten mighty loose. Mighty loose.

After he had checked to see if anyone had been hurt or killed, the forlorn driller walked over to this toolpusher’s trailer, sort of like a pup with his tail between his legs, opened the door, and asked,

“Am I farred?”

The tool pusher says,

No, goddamn it, you’re NOT farred. You get your sorry ass out there and clean up that mess. When you’re finished, THEN you’re farred.”

HungLikeJesus · 05-19-2007, 11:09 AM

Hyoi, I like they way you set up the story, providing all the details that most of us, otherwise, wouldn't understand.

Hyoi · 05-19-2007, 11:22 AM

Thanks, HLJ. That's the fun part.

05-19-2007, 06:29 AM	#1
Hyoi Faithful Companion Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 188	From the West Texas oilpatch........ This is a tale from the West Texas oilpatch, a separate nation if I’ve ever seen one. West Texas, USA, has a unique lingo, accent if you will, that replaces the words fire, tire, wire, etc, with far, tar, war, and so on. You hear such as “My left-rear tar blew out yestiddy” or “I had to strang some bob-war across my north pasture” or “My dadburned Winchester misfarred on me.” So it came as no surprise that the toolpusher on this particular liner job not too far from Midland was telling a story about how he had farred one of his drillers. Just to fill in, the toolpusher is the big dog on the drilling rig site and the driller is next in line. The toolpusher hires the rig crew, meaning he hires the driller and the floor hands that follow him around, keeps track of how many feet per day the drill bit is penetrating, and orders service companies out to do specialized jobs. I was working for one of these service companies, out in the field to see how well my equipment was performing. A liner job is no more than running a couple of hundred thousand pounds of pipe into the drilled hole, hanging that pipe in tension, and then cementing it in place. They invariably happen at night and always involve sitting around in the toolpusher’s trailer, waiting for the pipe to be run, sweating over whether the hanger is going to work, if the pipe tally is correct, if the plugs are going to bump…….and swapping lie after lie after lie. After thirty-six hours of no sleep, everybody gets pretty friggin’ good at it. This one toolpusher was telling me how a driller that used to work for him had run the traveling block up into the crown and how the whole mess (tons of steel and cable) had ended up falling down onto and through the rig floor. The traveling block is a moving pully, the crown, some twelve stories up, is a fixed pully and the driller is supposed to control the traveling block to lift a joint of pipe just high enough to connect it to another joint of pipe. Well, this driller must haven gotten mighty loose. Mighty loose. After he had checked to see if anyone had been hurt or killed, the forlorn driller walked over to this toolpusher’s trailer, sort of like a pup with his tail between his legs, opened the door, and asked, “Am I farred?” The tool pusher says, No, goddamn it, you’re NOT farred. You get your sorry ass out there and clean up that mess. When you’re finished, THEN you’re farred.” __________________ When you stop trying to make sense of it all, it all begins to make sense.

05-19-2007, 11:09 AM	#2
HungLikeJesus Only looks like a disaster tourist Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: above 7,000 feet Posts: 7,208	Hyoi, I like they way you set up the story, providing all the details that most of us, otherwise, wouldn't understand. __________________ Keep Your Bodies Off My Lawn SteveDallas's Random Thread Picker.

05-19-2007, 11:22 AM	#3
Hyoi Faithful Companion Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 188	Thanks, HLJ. That's the fun part. __________________ When you stop trying to make sense of it all, it all begins to make sense.

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