I don't actually remember a time that the oil industry wasn't part of my life. My parents owned a country grocery store at Westerose, Alberta (South Pigeon Lake). Commonwealth Drilling moved into the area, one of the first drill sites was on Tom Dorchester's quarter of land, Tom was the famous chuckwagon driver from the area. He been inducted into the Wetaskiwin and County Sports Hall of Fame.
Commonwealth had two rigs in the area, Rig #19 and Rig #21, The rig managers would come to our store at 6AM every morning to call in morning reports to their head office, as there was no communication from rig, and we were the only locations close by with a phone that wasn't on a party-line. The Superintendents, Rig Managers and Drillers were mostly Americans. The remaining crew members were local fellows hired and trained to be derrickhands, motorhands and roughnecks. My brother, Rob Muller, worked on Rig 19 as a roughneck. He quit school, lied about his age and started a career in the industry.
In those early times, many of the families lived in trailers following their husbands jobs. They would park their mobiles homes in areas where there was either a school close by or on a school bus route for the children. My parents built a trailer park to accommodate these house trailers. My dad was known as "The Stork". Inevitably the husband was at work, when the wife went into labour. Someone would come banging on the store door and my dad would be the one to take them the Wetaskiwin hospital for delivery. Imagine the husbands surprise when they got home - you have a "Special Delivery" from Erwin Muller.
The single fellows that weren't from the community would room and board with families in the area. That may have been where the expression "lock up your daughters" originated from!!
Over the years, most of my family and the community ended up working in the industry as more companies moved in to drill and the industry started to expand throughout Alberta. Rob stayed in the industry off and on for many years, and my brother-in-law, Stan Wright, actually worked with Peter Bawden Drilling, Both of them balancing farming and the rigs, to make a life. I was entranced with the industry from the get go, so it was not surprising that once I found my niche, I never left.
I don’t remember exactly whitch rig it was #17 or #20 in Bonanza that most of the crews were farmers in hay time or whatever and all of them were familiar with both figs anyways . Times were tough and the window for getting the crops off was pretty narrow Ed Marten the consultant was sympathetic and as long as there was a full crew onthe rig he was cooperative. So all these crew members would arrange who would be able to fill the rig crew. It worked very well that we all could work and get the farming done as we were all one big family that had a job to do
Very interesting read Faye, well done!
Great job in getting this blog started Faye. I look forward reading some very interesting and funny posts.
Well written fun to read