If Chuckwa thought riding broncs and bulls was a challenge, he was about to find out it wasn't anything compared to real life.
(Chuckwa on his wedding day...age 16)
By the time he was 17 he was married with his first child--
"I left home and had my first kid on the ground by the age of 17. Six months after he was born, me and his mama ran into some problems due to some unfaithfulness on both our parts and split up. This caused me lots of problems and a great deal of heartache."
in the early 1960's came
the
creating one of the most prevalent and dangerous jobs in the nation
in a Texas minute...Chuckwa became a man...
a boy who had to grow up and work a man's job to provide for his family
Chuckwa became a roughneck..a slang term for a person who has a HARD MANUAL labor occupation working on oil rigs
"I went to work in the oilfield on a drilling rig and worked for that company until I was 22. I got put in jail a few times and due to my heartache I started to do more drinking and the marijuana found its way into my life. I was going from place to place, living it up and all the time doing whatever I could to kill the pain."
In the oil patch, drug and alcohol use is rampant as these rig crews try to muster through 12 hour shifts and labor up to 14 days in a row.
The roughneck is surrounded by heavy machinery that can kill or maim in an instant. Falls from the "catwalk" (the top of the rig), being crushed by falling loads, explosions, being tangled in chains and cables...even hearing loss, are very common in this line of work.
The job is very, very hazardous with a high rate of injuries and fatalities.
Drugs make no sense in this workplace...
yet, somehow, it is a very common.
I remember a scene in THE URBAN COWBOY
(google)
Where Pam says
"My daddy does oil....and all that implies"
for Chuckwa
this implication is not good
he will have four women and four children
Donavan, Cierra, Christian and Ethan
more than four broken hearts,
and he will begin his arrest record
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