Park Record | 2006-05-24 | Page 24

Wed/Thurs/Fri, May 24-26, 2006 The Park Record B-8 Kids' Kollection ibs, 6iear &• 6iifte Energy IIIII >mfillsroughneck pockets methamphetamine are sold in the energy fields for the breakup of his cent, according to Jeffrey Jaquet, the report's author. region every week. But Lowell is second marriage. VM6 HAV6 From the outside, the roughMediaNews Group Wire Service determined not to let his city For a time in the '90s, Kelley said he left the job to chase a more sta- neck's life can look rowdy, almost Rock Springs, Wyo. - It^s onJy 9 descend into chaos again. brutal. From the inside, men talk "We want people to do what we ble life. p.m., but the thump-thump of a Trailw-6 driving base line is already wafting say and we don't want any guff t "One phone call and I was right about it with a rugged appreciation, through the tiger-stripe interior of about it," he said. "We want them back in," he said. "It can complete- even awe. The rig is traditionCrib* i the Astro Lounge, a downtown to feel they're welcome. At the ly tear apart your family. You can bound, hierarchical, intensely male High-thai™ icbtar same time, while it may not be their lose everything you've got. But it's and intensely proud. strip club here. "It's the last vestige of the male,. '•• These days, the wait to get in can borne, we want them to realize it is what you love to do." Unique Exxon Mobil made $36.1 billion dominated stronghold," said last an hour, says Jackie Painovich, our horn?." Drive in just about any direction in net profit in 2005 as both oil and Thomas Conley, a native of long-time bartender, andcusPennsylvania who has been here from the place Lowell calls home gas prices soared. imers have been known to drop and derricks rise out of the rolling That company, as well as others since the 1970s. on a payday binge. "Like we used to say, *lf it were Inside, the room is packed with prairie like the iron skeletons of a like it, pays major drilling contracremote city. tors as much as $22,000 a day for a easy, a girl could do it,' " he joked. 1B9Q Bonanza, #)Q8 6A9-5656 (near Einstein's) men who have just spent 12 sweaty Opsn Mon-Sal IQamSpm In fact, some can. For the men who work them, irigand its crews to punch holes in hours on the hulking derricks that One is Rachel MiHer. Originally pull prosperity out of southern that iron is a metaphor. There is the gas-rich fields of Wyoming and from Oklahoma, her grandfather perhaps no other job like it in Colorado's Western Slope. Wyoming's.natural gas fields. worked on rigs. So did her father. And so it goes. They are of a breed that virtual- America, combining the heavy An experienced roughneck She was going to college in Utah ly vanished from the American machines of the vanishing Rust Belt landscape when oil sold at less than and the outdoor ruggedness of the makes $26.50 an hour - plus over- when she decided to roughneck one summer to help pay for tuition. The time, plus bonuses. $25 a barrel. Hard-bitten and empty range. strong-armed, they revel in their "Everything on a drillingrigis Some Colorado rig workers rig challenged her in ways the classPark City's Newest Country Club stereotype: a fraternity of the big and heavy," said Casey James, a pulled down $84,000 last year. Most room didnt, Miller said, and she rugged and ready who can do a job 29-year-old driller on arigin the never graduated from college, and never went back. few others dare. some never fin"I craved it. It got in my blood," ished high she said. Here, and throughout the West, But Miller concedes that the rig roughnecks are back. By the time the stories get told school. is a place where the niceties of mod"They're all from somewhere else and they're all here to work. back home and get embellished a little, far-fiung°swath ern human-resource specialists have yet to make much of a dent. The more money they make, the it's the pot of gold at the end of the rainThose who don'tfitin are weedmore money they spend," ub for Toy* ed out mercilessly. They're given Painovich said. "If there is such a current energy bow for a lot of these guys." thing as a slow night around here, I boom is a not- tasks they don't know how to perform, told to fetch tools that don't haven't seen it." Better than Owning - Roy McClung to-be-missed exist. With the West in the midst of a opportunity. In Cheaper than Renting ^fvs Mayor of Parachute, Colo. the packed "Because I'm a woman, they once-in-a-generation energy boom, Tbyshare members enjoy ALL the latesl models of RVs. Boats, ATVs. ."," industry experts say there likely will " • ^ ™ ^ ^ ^ ™ « " trailer parks didn^t expect me to have the drive. Wavemnners, and Snowmobiles without Ihe hassle and expense of . ? be more than 10,000 wells drilled in and hotel park- They've been used to the thought owning No matter how you like lo play, you'll always have Ihe neuvest stuffy Colorado and Wyoming over the Jonah field north of Rock Springs. ing lots, the license plates tell of the that it's a man's world. The fact that next 15 years. The machines that do "You ask for a hammer and you draw of good pay and plentiful a woman might be able to do that on the block " '. ., '• *''y<$:'*t$*}'' ' that job are 100 tons of belching, get a 5-pound sledge. You ask for a work: Louisiana, California, Texas, job hurt their pride," said Miller, who now works as an instructor on creaking, twirling steel. wrench, and you get a 24-inch pipe Michigan. wrench." For the towns that ring the "Some guy flagged me down on a trainingrigin Casper, Wyo. -*.-;?;•, And it's weight that is constantly a county road at 9:30 at night," said Imagine a job that - besides region's growing gasfields,the men who work those rigs are a mixed in motion. Arigtypically operates Roy McClung, the mayor of drudgery, back-breaking toil and blessing. Crime is rising fast and 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Parachute, Colo. "He told me he bitter working conditions - offers, drunken brawls are common. But Winches squeal. Pipes lurch. Chains had driven 16 hours straight and with just a small error or a fleeting the hotels are full and grocery swing. A moment of misplaced wanted to know where he could get lack of focus, myriad ways to die. stores have a hard time keeping attention can maim, even kill. Steel chain tongs can suddenly an oil-field job." We take care of the headaches.. food on the shelves. Rig workers tell a joke among tangle, swing around, and crush "By the time the stories get told Storage -Insurance 'Maintenance -Repairs 'T Rock Springs Police Chief Mike themselves about a roughneck who back home and get embellished a your skull. Your safety strap can; .--You Just h a v e fun! , K .,. • Lowell sees the roughnecks as men goes into a bar and holds out the little, it's the pot of gold at the end become snarled and drag you into a; first and last fingers of one hand. of the rainbow for a lot of these spinning drill head. A 2-inch iron who have to be ridden hard. cable, sliced by a sheave wheel, can "These are people who arent What's that, the joke goes. It's a guys," McClung said. Thank you for creating this opportunity roughneck ordering four beers. rooted to the community. They go for us lo expand the types of activities we And if energy is gold, then places whip down, hitting you in the back; i into a bar and seem to forget everyIt's gallows humor. can have with our kids In just the few like Parachute and Wyoming's like a flying sledgehammer. thing their mothers ever taught Since October, five people have Pinedale, Wamsutter and Big Piney Those are all ways in which' months of our membership we have been them," Lowell said. died on gas rigs in southwestern are the modern global economy's roughnecks working in southwest; camping, off-roading, and wave running A young officer when the last Wyoming. With an estimated 2,000 version of the 1849 gold rush camps Wyoming have died in the last eight There is no other affordable way lo do this 1 boom ended here in the early '80s, rig workers in the state, that makes - updated with satellite TV and months. wilh a family" it one of the most dangerous places Lowell remembers the days of prosFor most on the rigs, those kinds catered meals. - Jeff MathQivs titutes walking the streets and fights in America to earn a living. These are towns where the bars of catastrophic accidents are an that erupted into bar-emptying But the risk creates a bond some open at 6 a.m., traffic jams around abstraction. Something you put out NC*\Af ACCEPTING MEMBERSHIP APPLICATIONS brawls. of the men describe as among the shift changes can last an hour or of your mind in order to do the job • Limited Park City Mambarships availsb/e•." .. , . .„, • During-the current boom, drug strongest in their lives. But on a recent Wednesday, tha; more, and a camping, spot, much arrests in Rock Springs have gone "The people that you work with abstraction became realtor the less an apartment, is nearly impossiTo schodu/G on appointment call up nearly five times and alcohol- out here, they basically become ble to find. crew on PioneerrigNo."4i.1 ^ 1 ^ q : 435-655-322T related arrests have doubled in your family," said Charles Kelley, In a death more random than Rig crews are crowded together three years. Five to 10 pounds of 42, who blames long stretches in the in housing known as man camps. most, a worker on the rig wasj Located at Summit Honda by The Home Depot The best are modular compounds pulling on the steel blade of a forkwith weight rooms and profession- lift. The blade slid out, struck him in ally-trained chefs. Most are little the skull, and then landed on his' more than trailers with bunks throat. Casey James and Dan Wilkey stacked in cramped bedrooms. One Angela gives were scheduled to work therigthat shift comes in, the next goes out. And the shifts are long, usually night, and the accident hit home. blood to They changed their clothes, 12 hours. In Wyoming's high desert, the temperature can sink to 40 called their wives, and talked about celebrate life. below in winter, and reach well over it over dinner. Jenna's sister They reminded themselves of 100 degrees in summer. statistics that show it's more danger-1 For most, it's seven days on, brought her to seven days off, but with labor in ous to drive a car than work on a short supply it's possible to work rig. They talked about how they'd donate blood on just about as long your body can be miserable going to an office every day. hold up. her birthday. "It's something hard to talk to Lance Hardy, a 28-year-old from Tyler, Texas, recently finished 28 them about. There's times I've hurt days straight. "When you work on myself and just don't mention it. your days off, that's just more Sometimes the less they know, the money," he said. "You got to make less they are going to worry," James said of the conversation with his it while you can." Men with minimal connections wife that night. James has four children in to a community, lots of money and little to do can be a combustible Vernal, Utah, and when he's not on shift he drives back home. The combination, officials say. In Pinedale, bar fights between money he makes roughnecking is a gas-field workers and locals have devil's bargain. It allows his wife to stay home become an almost nightly affair. In Parachute, a town tucked with the kids, a choice many amid towering bluffs that once American families dont have. That made it a magnet for retirees, police makes it all - the time on the road, are investigating a brutal murder the grueling work, therisk- worth that appears to have started as a it. He still thinks so, even if it's a litfight between roughnecks. In Wyoming's Sublette County, a tle bit harder to step back on the rig mostly rural area around Pinedale after a night like that Wednesday. "You go out there in a bad frame that's seen some of the heaviest drilling in the West, a recent gov- of mind, and someone is going to ernment report found that the rig get hurt. You go out there and count was a far better predictor of you've got problems at home, the area's dramatically rising crime someone is going to get hurt," than population. In less than 10 James said. years, DUIs have quadrupled, "You can't ever relax. You can't assaults have nearly tripled, and ever let your guard down. There is drug arrests have climbed 450 per- danger in everything we do." By MICHAEL RILEY Consignment Prices. Par* £ity Qualify g | WE SAVE LIVES. YOU CAN TOO. PLEASE GIVE BLOOD. 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