Roughnecks, Drillers, and Tool Pushers: Thirty-Three Years in the Oil Fields

by Gerald Lynch

Book Overview

Oil, the black gold of Texas, has given rise to many a myth. Oil could turn a man overnight into a millionaire--and did, for some. But these myths have obscured what life was really like in the oil patch, a place that was neither the El Dorado of legend nor quite the unredeemed den of sin and iniquity that some feared.

In Roughnecks, Drillers, and Tool Pushers, Gerald Lynch provides a much-needed insider's view of the oil industry,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0292770529
• ISBN13: 9780292770522
• Release Date: November 1987
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

workingmans narrative of oil field activities

This is the only book I can think of that is written from the point of view of a working man. Mr. Lynch worked on drilling rigs from the early days until the eighties. He has a lot of love for his life in the oil field. I loaned my copy of the book to a man who had also worked in the oil field and he was fasinated with its reality. The book taught me a lot about how oil is found. I live in an oil field but did not know much about the nuts and bolts of the drilling process. I have seen industries and ways of life pass away without a word being written about how the work was performed and how the workers related to one another. Large populations of workers have gone away leaving no written word of what they did. This is a book that develops a story of how people in the oil field lived and worked. It is not written from the point of view of bankers, corporation executives or office clerks.