It was during the summer of 1983 that our transition from residential work to agricultural work took place. Mike sold the little rig to one of the many New Yorkers who were at that time making a mass migration to Port Saint Lucie because of really big land buys and construction of the town by a company called G.D.C. (General Development Corporation).

This caused a boom in residential well drilling and getting out of it at that time seemed crazy. But he sold the little rig and spent the money from the sale on rig parts, and used some of it to pay the men who were helping him build the big rig. In no time at all we had an old crown full of shivs for the derrick that he had been building for the last 2 years, a used 4” king swivel, a two drum draw works, a 14” rotary table and more. He bought a used garbage truck. It was a Brockway truck. You hardly ever see a Brockway anymore.

Like Mack trucks do, a Brockway had a dog on the hood, but it was cooler than a bull dog, I don't know what breed it was but it was kind of wolfish looking. He had them remove the trash hopper and body before he took possession of it. I would have hated to have to help do that job. Bet it stank to the highest heaven. He used the four hydraulic cylinders that came with it, two to level the rear, the other two to raise the derrick, and he bought one fat one to lift the front. He mounted it in the center in front of the wheels.

He built a pivot base and headache rack for the derrick, and hired a crane to set it in place. My job was mostly painting, and now I could wire brush and paint the bottom of it while he built and welded the mounts for the derrick rams. 

He tack welded some stops for the derrick legs to the rig floor and we backed it straight up to the loading dock of American Wholesale. American Wholesale was the place where we were renting yard space, a small office, and some indoor storage space for tools and materials. They sold well drilling supplies, pumps and irrigation supplies. It was an easy place to work from because we could buy all of our materials there every morning when we were drilling. I would help get the trucks loaded, and Mike would use the phone in his office. Their secretary, who was also the owner's daughter, answered his phone for him while we were in the field  drilling. Having the rig at the loading dock let us have easy access to tools and use an electric welding machine instead of filling gas cans all the time for the Miller machine.

We spent the next day attaching hydraulic hoses and moving the hydraulic valve bank from the cab of the truck to the drillers side of the rig floor.

Lift Her Up, Let Her Fall

When we finished with the hydraulic lines and valves he said “we’ll raise her for the first time tomorrow”. I gave him a puzzled look “Why not today Mike?” He said “I want Brother Dale to be here when it goes up for the first time.” Brother Dale was Dale Lantis and he owned American Wholesale. He was also the pastor of his own church called The Gospel Hall (hence the name Brother Dale). Mike started taking my mom and us kids there on Sunday mornings, and Dale referred to him as brother Mike. Every grown man in the church was called brother or something and the women were called sisters, they were mostly women who wore big colorful hats and long dresses. My mom was never called sister. I think because she wouldn't wear the hat, and Mike wouldn't marry her. They made it seem like the second part was her fault. Maybe he wouldn't marry her for her refusal to wear the hat. She wanted to marry him but he never asked her. She started taking Sunday morning shifts at the dinner where she worked  just to not have to go to the Gospel Hall. 

The next day we were at the shop bright and early as usual, and a cable tool driller with his sons one who was a little younger than me, and one who was a little older than me, delayed their day to watch us stand her up, along with Brother Dale and some customers who had been in the store at the time. The truck was already running when Brother Dale came out. He motioned for everyone to come to him and said “ I'd like to say a prayer before we do anything else” we took off our hats, bowed our heads, and listened to Dale as he asked God to bless the rig, keep us safe, and prosperous, he put a reminder in there that we were all sinners and needed salvation or our souls would burn in hell, Amen and Mike was at the valve bank. 

With the engine idling high the derrick started to raise until it seemed like it reached a stall point, he pulled out on the throttle a little more, and it started to move again. I could hear the engine strain until the mast was closer to vertical than it was horizontal. It eased up to a ninety degree angle, and remember a few paragraphs back when I told  you that he tack welded the stops for the derick legs to the rig floor? Yup just tacked them on. The legs touched the stops, I was ready to do my part which was to put the pins in, and that's when the stops popped off. The derrick started back towards horizontal again but in the same direction it had been moving. It was falling fast at first, then in slow motion towards the roof of Brother Dale’s warehouse. 

Mike was trying to suck the cylinders back in by pushing in on the valve, but they were fat cylinders with two stages made more for pushing than they were for pulling.I think they used to lift the garbage truck body for dumping before we repurposed them to lift the derick. They weren't able to stop the fall. But he had welded multiple passes on the mounts for the hydraulic cylinders that raised the derrick, and that's what finally stopped the derrick from continuing its uncontrolled fall. Stopping it about fifteen feet away from the roof top of American Wholesale. We all sighed, and shook our heads. Mike cursed a lot. Brother Dale calmed him down, and they went inside. In less than two hours a crane was there, Mike climbed the backside of the derrick , and rigged the crane’s block to the crown. With the tension off of the hydraulic cylinders we hammered on the pins until they came out , and amazingly the cylinders still worked. They always leaked a little over the years but never too bad. 

By the end of that day we were a little ahead of where we were the night before because we had the derrick stops fully welded to the floor. The next day he stood her up again. Brother Dale prayed again, this time giving thanks to the Lord for not allowing his building to be smashed. I did my part by putting the pins in. We stared at it for a little while then I followed Mike up the ladder forty feet. We sat on a brace under the crown looking down on Brother Dale’s store, and the neighborhood  around it. He told me that if I worked hard I could have anything I wanted out of life. We climbed down and got to work setting the drawworks on the deck using an old case backhoe that had a five gallon bucket for a seat. 

Drillers, Dropouts, and a Dog Named Regret

I worked the rest of the summer building the rig and on some days I would help that cable tool driller and his younger son put in house wells in Port Saint Lucie. I had my restricted drivers license, and that allowed me to drive with a licensed driver in the passenger seat, but when we would take the rig to a job I drove his pickup truck with his thirteen year old son in the passenger seat. The summer before I was on a strict  salary of twenty five dollars a week, and I used it to buy my own school clothes and a parrot that I named Roscoe. My mom’s German Shepard busted out a window screen one night while we were all out at the drive-in movies, and he ate Roscoe.

This summer I made between a hundred and fifty to two hundred a week, and I used seven hundred of it to buy a nineteen seventy seven ford econoline van, I wrecked it right after I turned sixteen. I went back to school in September a lot smarter and stronger than I was when I left in June. The rig was ready for work on its first hole in October. I would be sixteen in November and could legally quit school with or without my mom’s permission. During those first few weeks of school I got suspended multiple times for fighting, smoking, and skipping classes. The principal and Mike talked to my mom and convinced her to give me permission to quit school and start learning. It was better for everybody if I didn't go to school anymore,

That cable tool driller worked with Mike as a driller along with Raydar and his other son who was two years older than me on the twelve inch, deep wells in the groves. I would help in the groves on casing days. On T.D. days I would tail drill pipe onto the rod truck, help move the equipment, rig down, and rig up. Some days I would tie my ten speed bike to the cable tool rig, drive the rig to a residential well job, ride the bike back to American Wholesale, and drive a pickup loaded with two inch steel pipe to the rig and bang it in myself. Some days I didn't have to ride the bike, Raydar or Jr would help me. Who’s Jr? He’s the cable tool driller’s older son. Who is Raydar? Go back and read episode two.  But they were both heavy drinkers and there was no telling if one or both of them were not going to show up. The cable tool driller was Billy Sr. He eventually put an old Mayhew 1000 together and started drilling smaller flow wells in the groves east of U.S. 1 in Vero Beach and Ft. Pierce. I have a lot of stories about that family of cable tool drillers. Sr. died in prison, me and Billy Jr. ran together for many years, he’s banging pipes with an air hammer now on the west coast of Florida, and Jason is very successful in his own drilling business.

I’ve made holes of every kind, distillation shafts, dewatering shafts, ventilation shafts , mast arm shafts, injection wells, A.S.R. wells, municipal wells, AG. wells, residential wells, and monitoring wells. I've been all over this country making holes, now I drive a support  truck for a sonic rig , and watch drillers who have very  little experience  do their job. They won't take any advice from me. I guess it took me about a while to learn to take advice from the older drillers too. But occasionally they have no choice but to ask me, and most of the time they figure out how to solve whatever problem they're having on their own. I drive the truck because it's hard to find and keep helpers who have CDL's. I sit on the jobs because they don't have drilling licenses. 

And I bring them bottles of water when they look thirsty, I fill the water totes when they're empty, and run the forklift. A lot of times I have to remind them to eat too.  I sometimes ponder on how it came to this. I suppose it's a good job, it’s easier than drilling and it pays the same. It gives me time to write these stories. It may be that I’m here now mostly to write these stories. I hope you liked this one. Thanks for reading it, and until the next one, remember to do more than tack  weld the important things, and don't let the dog eat your bird.