Back When Hector Was A Pup…

I moved to Ardmore, Oklahoma, just for something new and different… Away from home, Okla. City, and stretching the umbilical cord where it wasn’t so easy to run home to momma for a good meal.  I had been doing custom picture framing for ten years and I thought it would be a snap to get a job.  Shows how naive I was in my early thirties.  Ardmore was probably a tenth the size of OKC if that,  at the time.  There were two frame shops in town, both were family run and neither needed help.  Undeterred in my hunt for a job, I went to the state employment agency and filled out my info.  It was only a couple of days and a lady at the employment agency gave me a call and asked if I’d ever thought about working outside.  This was in April of the year so it wasn’t hot yet and I was 30+ years younger and so I told her I hadn’t thought about it but that wouldn’t be a problem. So she sat me up with an interview the next day with a supervisor with Atlantic Richfield Oil Company to do roustabout work. I didn’t know what a roustabout did but I was game and it paid probably double what I could have made custom framing.

Now, just as a reminder, back then, I was 5’9” and maybe 120 pounds.  Skinny Minnie.  I go in for my interview, dressed in nice casual wear.  When I walked into the gentleman’s office he stood up and greeted me, they did nice things like that back then. He looked at me and said that, frankly, he wasn’t sure that job would be for me.  I asked why and he said that there was some heavy lifting and it could be dirty work and he asked if I had any idea of how much I could lift.  I told him probably 100 pounds depending on how it was packaged.  I also told him that I would be able to tell him before anybody else could if the work was too heavy for me.  I had had two hernia surgeries and I didn’t want to do that again, so based on my positivity, he hired me to be a roustabout in the oil patch.

My friend took a picture of me in my working clothes… hard hat, steel toed boots and old jeans and t-shirts in the summer…

Layers in the winter.  But I always wore my small loop earrings.  You see, this was at the start of equal opportunity employment and ARCO (Atlantic Richfield Oil Company) needed to hire a woman to meet the e.o.e. ruling.  So I was the first woman that they had hired out in the field out of the Ardmore area. I’m working on a pulling unit here.

Pulling unit here…

and here.

We rotated around with different jobs, the pulling unit,  there were two wench trucks and the gang pusher, kind of like the foreman in the field.  Essentially, roustabouts do the maintenance work out in the oil field.  We didn’t do any drilling so the work, while it could be dangerous, was not nearly as dangerous as a drilling rig.

The one thing that everyone answered the call on was leaks.  If the pumper spotted a leak in a line, everyone who was working at the time, usually about ten of us,  went to wherever the leak was found to see what needed to be done. Being a small field, when we had leaks the company would call out independent backhoe operators if it was more than just us being able to shovel out to expose and find the leak.  They also called out vacuum truck drivers to suck up the water and oil.

We were out on a leak a couple of months after I started working and the hole had to be dug by the back hoe. We were waiting on parts to do the repair and I went over to talk say hi to the fellow that drove the vacuum truck. I’d met him before and he was a nice guy.  He was talking to the backhoe driver and when I started towards them, the backhoe driver, whom they called Chief, was looking down at the ground, almost digging his toes in like he was embarrassed.  Pool, the vacuum truck driver was grinning like a possum… With kind of a questioning look at him I introduced myself to Chief and he just blurted out, “I didn’t know you was a woman and I told Pool you must be the meanest son of a bitch in the field to be as scrawny as you are and wear earrings out here and live!” 

It was a great job.  I worked there for 2 and a half years before I moved back to OKC and went to work for UPS. And I still have friends around who knew me back then that occasionally will still tease me about being the meanest little s.o.b. in the patch.

A Little Bit Of This...

A little bit of that...

When all else fails and I can't decide what I want to blog about I figure I can always go to my "junk drawer" of stuff family and friends send to me or photos I take of things that catch my weird eye.

This first one is a motorcycle topiary that I saw when I was walking around Las Vegas. Now how cool is that? Find a few parts around and stick in a shrub, do some artful trimming and don't forget to water.


I love vanity license plates. And this is one of the best I've seen. I had to take a phot0 so I could send it to my baby brother and s.i.l. to give to her
daughter that we teased about being a drama queen.

I don't know if they sent it to her or not, but it tickled my funny bone.








This one I'd like to have to give to one of my nieces. Obviously, she has chi-hua-huas as I call them. I keep telling Carol that if she thinks my schnauzers are barky, she ought to go down to Texas with me when I go visit Launa and meet her babies. She has three or four unless they have had babies or someone in the house has brought another one home.




And here's one of those places that is never there when you need it. Boy, I could have spent some money in there more than once in my life.








When the evening of running around is done you can settle in and have a redneck fish dinner. Someone has been watching the food channel and decided to fancy up their plate.

This is the only way I'd eat 'octopus'. I thought that this was a great presentation, but we all know that I'm a twisted sister...





And if you really want to catch fish for that dinner, you can get most any kind of bait you want at this place... or if you have a bad sub-dermal hematoma from banging your shin tryin' to haul that fish in, you can even have leeches right handy to suck the blood out of the hematoma.


Well, that's all for now folks. Come back and see me again now, ya hear?

I'll Be Damned... It Worked!

Some things, I suppose, are never meant to be. I think my odds and ends post was one of those things. So here I am, back at the drawing board, to try again. Of course it won’t be nearly as smart or as fluid as my original post that got lost in the strange netherworld of locked up computer land, which I affectionately refer to as the Lost Continent of Assholiness with whatever descriptive words I may come up with at the time of visitation.

That being clarified… I think I got as many comments on that non-post as I’ve gotten on any number of posts that I have sweated my brain cells coming up with clever goodies to share with the blogsphere. And, believe me, I appreciate the sympathy and the giggles. I was going to just delete the post, but Hallie caught it and I decided to take my medicine with a grin. Now I am trying something new, at least to me. My friend Carol, or Missy, whichever comes first, said to try Word. That way I can work offline and save it to a folder, then transfer it to my blog whenever I want. I didn't even know I had a program called Word. Duh. We will see how this works out.

I have a confession to make. I am a tearer-outer. I find things in the newspaper or in magazine that I think are interesting and rather than keeping the entire magazine or newspaper I tear them out and put them in a stack., next to my chair, or next to my bed, wherever I happen to be when I’m reading. When the mood hits or I trip over the stack, I go through all my tear outs and decide whether they are worth keeping, or try to figure out what tidbit of information I pulled the dang thing out of the magazine or newspaper for in the first place.

Initially, what started this odds and ends post was some quotes out of the Astology column in the Dec. 31, 2008 edition of the Oklahoma Gazette. Since I am an Aquarian, I naturally had to check my horoscope, just to see what I was in for in 2009, just in case the astrologers are right.

The author of the column, Rob Brezsny, said that Aquarians should write out the quotes and keep them in a prominent place for the duration of 2009. According to him the will set the right tone for everything we Aquarians do in this year.

The first quote is from psychologist Abraham Maslow: “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be”.

The second quote is from choreographer Agnes DeMille: “Dance in the body you have.”

The third is from historian Gerald Sorin: “When Reb Zusye went to heaven, God didn’t ask him why, in his life on earth, Zusye wasn’t Moses, but why he wasn’t even Zusye.”

Personally, I think we all could do well to keep this handy in 2009... And beyond.

This, Helen Gardner, Is Some Of Your Life...

It's a bit past due, quit laffin' Dar, but after much meditation and many scenarios, I decided that 100 Things about me was fair enough to be requested. The proviso is if I'm going to do this, I am going to do this with the help of photos. To the left is moi at about 2 1/2.

You see I get embarrassed talking about myself, but by using pictures I'm only telling a story. It will be about thing in my life, but the pictures could be my props and it won't seem like I'm braggin' about ma-self, don't cha' know.

And feel lucky if you get 10 at a time, cause I did 10 for Honest Scrap and it about wore me out, so be knowing I has to has a break for a while after spilling my guts. So here goes...

1. I was born and reared in Okla. City. This photo was taken at my Aunt Macks and Uncle Bud's place at S.E. 15 and High. More later on them.

2. I have a birthmark on my butt. No photo ---yet.

3. I have flannel flamingo pjs.

4. I've always wanted to live on a beach

5. I'm legally blind so must wear glasses at all times when I'm out of bed because I literally have been know to walk into posts... and apologize.

6. I learned to ride a bike, my oldest sister's when I was about 4. There was no way I could even get close to the seat, except in the middle of my back because it was a big girl bike. So I stood and peddled and steered hanging on to handlebars above my head. Now they call 'em 'ape hangers'.

7.That was the summer I was bitten in the face by my aunt and uncle's farm dog. Scared hell out of everyone but me. Head wounds bleed bad and, yes, even 60 years later I still have scars, one on my bottom lip and another in my left eyebrow.

8. This was also the summer that my Uncle Bud tried to teach me to milk a cow, but I didn't get very good until I was about 6 because my hands were chubby little things and not very strong.

9. I started washing dishes when I was about 5. Mom would set the kitchen stool up to the sink for me and let me wash the silverware and non-breakables. I was a big help, I just know I was.


10. I loved school. I was so excited to get started in kindergarten because then I be a big girl like my two older sisters. Tried to put these three photos side - by- side but blogger has ideas of it's own... These 3 were taken on my first day of kindergarten and I was so excited to go to school that I could hardly be still. I don't know why the photos are the way they are... perhaps I ought to google Google to try to fix the problem... or would we find that it would be an exercise in futility. I have figured out that Google sometimes has a mind of it's own and I wonder if his name is "Hal". (name that movie) (L. click = Bigger)