Weekend America

Roughneck, Wyoming

SEPTEMBER 15, 2007 Listen to this Story

Man Camps

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This weekend, the gas fields of northwest Wyoming are filled with men (and sometimes women) known as roughnecks and roustabouts. They work on the drilling rigs, in shifts of 14 consecutive days, followed by 14 days off. On their off days they head into nearby towns to shake off the boredom and loneliness. But this steady stream of rowdies is adding pressure to these towns, including Pinedale, Wyo. And as any roughneck will tell you, the more pressure you add, the more likely something is to blow. Reporter Brian Calvert spent the weekend in Pinedale to see how the town is holding up.

Notes from Reporter Brian Calvert

I got the idea for this story in the summer of 2005, when I worked as a roustabout in the gas fields of Wyoming, outside my hometown. A roustabout company fills construction needs before and after a drilling rig goes up. I noticed that the hours were long and the work was hard, but there wasn't that much for these guys to do on their time off. Many of them were alone and away from their families for extended periods of time. Some of the workers lived in tents, some of them in campers, and some of them in pre-made little towns called "man camps."

Their presence—and the boom in general—was adding significant pressures to Pinedale, especially an influx of drugs. In addition, there's a general lifestyle that goes along with this work, and the men and women in the gas fields—or what they call "the patch"—have a reputation for being rowdy and enjoying a fight with each other now and again. My own father claims to have a scar on his head from a beer-bottle beating he took a long time ago when a fight erupted between some gas field workers when I was a young boy.

So I started wondering what exactly these guys did with their time off, and how it affected the town.

I wanted to look at the lives of these workers through karaoke songs they sang at a pretty iconic bar for the area. The World Famous Corral Bar is a bit of an icon in the area, with the standard lonesome pool table in one corner, a pine bar and seats. Generally, the Corral is full of these workers. They're a loud and jeering bunch, but they took to me and my recorder well, and only one of the guys said he felt sorry for me for being a journalist. ("You put your nose in other people's business, but never mind your own," was his assessment of the profession.) They sang songs I thought they might, like Willie Nelson's "Always on My Mind" and Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down." And they surprised me with a few songs, like "Summer Loving," from "Grease," though I suspect that was one guy trying to impress some ladies in the bar.

One surprise that didn't make the broadcast was that golf was the hobby of choice for some of these guys. At karaoke night, I heard tattooed, rough-and-tumble workers in sleeveless T-shirts discussing their short game. I spent one morning and 18 holes with a guy about my age who had grown up in a small, neighboring town and became one of the most important managers out in the patch. He had a great attitude about the whole thing and knew that a lot of people wouldn't have been able to find work without the boom. He also had a decent short game.

• Music Bridge:

  The Dropper

  Artist: Medeski, Martin, and Wood

  CD: Note Blue: Best of the Blue Note Years 1998-2005 (Blue Note)

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