That story you shared of the swab ripping that guy in half in the pump house is nuts. I've ordered my driller to kill the pumps when a leaking gasket was causing the valve cover to leak. Other than that, I've spent a lot of time scrubbing and hanging out in the pump house...albeit loud/dangerous, it's always warm
Yeah, we( the whole crew) were actually repairing a leaking pump when the Tool Pusher walked into the drillers shack saw that the pump was turned off and turned it back on, this was before lock-out procedures. All but one of us just happened to be smoking and joking standing outside while one guy was taking the crown nuts off. Soon as that 7,000 PSI hit, it just blew the swab right through him.
The Pusher became born again after that. Started speaking in tongues and liked snakes. He owns a drilling company now.
Once we had a flickering light over the shaker, I was tasked with looking at the light and the derrick hand was tasked with going to the light plant to check the connection. The only way to check the light was to climb up on the railing and take a peek. As soon as I touched the light housing the 480volt power grabbed my ass and wouldn't let go, I got shocked the holy hell out of me, a split second later the derrick hand ( Not knowing that I was in great danger) pulled the plug and the electricity released me, luckily i fell onto the cat walk instead of into the shaker. That was probably the closest I ever came to dying on the rig, I got hit so hard that I was physically blind for almost 2 minutes until my vision slowly restored itself. On the rigs at that time we mostly drilled with saltwater mud, Horizontal drilling wasn't even used then and diesel electric rigs were a brand new thing. We were constantly soaked in salt water because of breaking wet connections. Water and electricity just don't mix. Also the fact that there are tons of fucking stupid people working out there didn't help either.
Drugs? yep just about everyone was either drunk or high at work, there were no piss tests and many of the hands were addicted to smack or coke. Coke was the thing in the early 80's, you could work 2 shifts, make an extra $300 that day ( which is about the same as $1,000 today), buy an 8 ball and do it again. I doubled 12 hour shifts for 10 days straight and made an extra $9k. i took hour long naps in the mud shack because we were slow drilling and had lots of time between connections.
I remember my uncle putting joints down on the floor and telling me that I could have one if I scrubbed everything clean up to where it was. We all were smoking pot while working away.
We yelled at each other alot too, and called each other names and generally had a lot of rabble rousing. My dad always tells me how the rigs are a much kinder gentler place to be now and that you can't yell at people anymore.
I once took a job in E Montana to dig a really big hole. The area was called Goose Lake Deep and we went down 16,000 feet with one of the first diesel electric rigs that a company Bomac had ever used. Anyway, this was back in the days of slips, tongs, spinning chains and rotary tables. If you were tripping all the pipe out, it took 18 hours to get it all out and 12 hours to get it all back in. I think in 1 week we tripped it out 3 times and put it back in 4 times. My lats were HUGE from running the lead tongs, when I went in to the Marines I was one of the strongest guys there and won the company Iron Man competition.
When you and the driller can sync up, throwing the spinning chain is like watching the nutcracker suite. A fluid elegant dance of choreographed moves between the motor hand ducking out of the way and the chain flipping up while the driller releases the brake and the chain gets that tug and that pipe just zings into the other. I never had so much fun on a rig as those days.
I have so many rig stories its not funny.