Wedding Weekend in San Antonio

One of Dave's oldest friends, coaching buddy, and former roommate finally got married over the weekend in my hometown of San Antonio. It was a miracle he was actually off from work so we had to go. It was great for him to catch up with his old coaching friends and we were able to spend some time with his grandparents.

He cleans up pretty well! I am used to seeing him in boots and his Silverbelly but the dress shoes and suspenders were nice too. 

It was a nice weekend. But it is back to reality, for me at least, since Dave doesn't go back to work until Wednesday hopefully. 

Jim T's Clarification

Jim T. in fact did respond to my email and I thank him for that. He clarified what he meant within the article that he wrote. Us oilfield wives tend to get very defensive and protective of our husbands and families.

I pasted Jim's response below. Thanks for the invite to tell our story but it just isn't my thing to be in the spotlight like that. We are just another newlywed couple trying to start a family and find our way. 

___________________________________________

Hi Andrea,

Thanks for writing. I did read the article. I understand the reaction, but I want to assure you, I wrote the piece not to mock or look down on oil/gas industry workers, but to show a national audience how tough of a break they’ve gotten as prices crashed.

A few facts, I think, are really critical to the piece. The first is that there remains a huge gap *on average* between the earnings of college graduate and non-college graduates in America (see: here - http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm) – and over the last decade-plus, non-college-graduates, especially men, have seen their incomes fall. We’ve lost millions of factory jobs, for example, that used to pay solid wages for those workers. Here’s a piece I did earlier this year on a study that shows one look at those stats:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/06/the-21st-century-has-been-terrible-for-working-americans/

The second is that, indeed, more than 9 out of every 10 oil/gas workers doesn’t have a college degree. (The source for that is an analysis of Labor Department data by economists at the Brookings Institution, which they did at my request – I could send you the raw files if you’d like to see them.)

The third is that compared to the typical job for a similarly educated worker *not* in oil and gas, jobs in the industry pay really, really well. As you say, that pay reflects a lot of things, including how hard the work is and how hard the job can be on the worker’s family.

So what we meant in the story, when we said ‘lottery ticket’, is that an oil/gas job is a rare opportunity for a non-college educated worker to earn a lot more money than he could elsewhere in the economy. Not that he wasn’t working hard to make that money, just that, like a winning ticket, those jobs are really hard to find (in the context of the entire national labor market).

I would add that I would never call your family, or your fellow oilfield families, trash. I grew up in a small town in Oregon where a lot of my high school classmates’ parents worked in the timber industry, at a time when that industry, which had paid solid wages, was shrinking rapidly. It was devastating for those families, who worked very, very hard; a lot of what I write today, about the plight of workers and the middle class in this country, is rooted in that experience. I try to tell stories about people who work hard, whom the economy has failed for one reason or another. I’m sorry this one didn’t come across that way to you and your friends.

Thanks for your time. I hope you and your husband make it through the tough time in the industry, and that it recovers soon. And if you all would ever like to tell me your story, I’d love to hear it and very likely write about it.

Best regards,

Jim

My Response to Jim T.

The Real Oilfield Wives have a blog in which I follow. This morning one of the writers, Ashley posted THIS in response to an article written by Jim Tankersley which you can find HERE. 

I encourage everyone to read Jim's article and then read Ashley's response to how she felt about it. 

I, too, took to letting Jim T. know how I felt about what he wrote: 

Thanks for the response. I hope you read the article that Ashley wrote.

Let me start by saying you have not made friends with the wives with that article. I cannot speak for 

Ashley and her family however I can give you insight into mine down in south Texas, in the heart of 

the Eagle Ford Shale. 

My husband is an educated man. He graduated from Texas State University. He was a teacher and 

a coach for many years all over the state of Texas. He left that job to move back home to be close 

to his sick grandmother and was able to be picked up by a local oilfield company with whom have 

kids he grew up with. 

Fact - most men in the industry are educated. They may not have college degrees which is the education measure you used however they have to get certifications and special training to be able to properly and safely perform their jobs. Being educated doesn't mean you have to have a college degree. Just like Ashley stated in her article, she is a very educated woman by your college standards however I feel the same way in the sense that I do not know if I could perform my husband's job to his level of professionalism and accuracy and I too carry a BBA in Entrepreneurship and a minor in Real Estate from the University of North Texas. 

Working in the oilfield is not a lottery ticket. I do not even understand that term nor have I ever heard it. 

Just because you can claim you have a job in the oilfield doesn't mean that you all of a sudden are 

raking in the money. 

My husband is not on the drilling side which is where the majority of the mass amounts of money is, which is also the side of the industry that your subject of your article was on. The service companies took a big hit, as did the drilling side when the rigs started to get stacked. My husband is on the completions side. A very different aspect to the oilfield that most do not think about. He is still working for a very large and prominent coil tubing company. Yet again, as Ashley stated in your article, we are facing tough times and keep our fingers crossed that we make it through any more layoffs. 

If I could just say that your article seemed one-sided and degrading to the wives of educated (college degree or not) oilfield workers who continue to bust their butts regardless of the industry's current standings. We are not oilfield trash as many people call us. 

If I could ask where you got your stats on the education level of oilfield workers that you mention? "More than 9 out of 10 oil and gas jobs are held by men without college degrees."

Thank you for your time. 

___________________________________________________________

If you want to contact Jim T yourself you can do so at jim.tankersley@washpost.com 

or on Twitter at @jimtankersley

The Spirit of the People

"You ask me what I like about Texas I tell you it's the wide open spaces!

It's everything between the Sabine and the Rio Grande. It's the Llano Estacado, It's the Brazos and the Colorado; Spirit of the people down here who share this land!"

Gary P. Nunn penned those words a good while back. They have never held more true in my heart after what I experienced this past weekend. With our rivers and lakes overflowing with water, I witnessed firsthand the "spirit of the people down here who share this land!"

Last Monday on the 25th, my wife decided she wanted to spearhead and coordinate a flood relief donation drive in conjunction with our church, Cross Trails Cowboy Church. Being 200 miles away didn't stop people from caring. The love and generosity that overflowed from the Orange Grove, Alice, and Corpus Christi communities exemplified that "spirit!" Our living room and garage was soon filled with supplies and we sorted them throughout the evenings. A horse trailer was left open at our church to hold donations that were dropped off and it was filled to the top. So much so that another was brought in to accommodate the overflow.

Sunday, May 31st, we headed north with three trailers in tow. Along the way we made a stop in San Antonio's North side, to pick up more items. A friend used her bar, Cootey's, as a drop off point for those in that community who wanted to help as well. I don't know how we were able to get that large donation to fit, but old school Tetris skills may have come into play.

We continued to San Marcos, where the majority of the items were donated and dropped off at the school district's warehouse. These are earmarked for the 38 or so families from Travis Elementary who were affected by the flood. We then headed into Wimberly, where we dropped off 1500+ pounds of pet food and live stock feed with W.A.G.S. (They are being used to distribute pet supplies to area shelters and to the loving families who have taken in foster animals at this time.)

Finally we made our last stop at Wimberly High School, where we dropped off cleaning supplies. It was in that gym that my heart sank. What I witnessed in there was that "spirit!" The amount of items donated at that one drop off point showed me a state that didn't fall apart during tragedy. Texas is not a place that looks to gain something when others lose everything. Texas is a place that holds out it's hand to lift those who have fallen. And I'm proud to say I have seen this to be true.

We want to thank everyone who donated their time, energy, and resources to this cause.

The spirit of the people down here, truly is beautiful.

Dave wrote this letter to the Alice Echo Newspaper after they ran an article on our efforts on Friday. 

Not even everything we took. We still had a stop in San Antonio

The crew that made the journey to San Marcos to drop everything off!

Approx 1500 lbs of dog/cat/livestock feed we dropped off in Wimberley at WAGS that eventually made its way to Martindale. 

RR 12 bridge

RR 12 bridge