The Boss Wallopers

Graduation night in Wink was always a big deal. All the seniors, decked out in mortarboards and long black robes, paraded one by one up on the auditorium stage to receive their diplomas. The whole town turned out for the event. Afterward there was a dance at the gym and later on a midnight supper, served this particular year at the First Baptist Church. Some graduates slipped off after the dance in favor of one of the local honky tonks to experience earthier pleasures. But Bill took no part in the festivities beyond receiving his diploma.

            By eleven p.m. he was sitting on the front stoop of his folk’s house with a sack lunch in his clinched right hand. Beside him, rolled in a neat bundle, was a new pair of overalls, a clean work shirt, a pair of steel-toed Red Wing work boots, and two pairs of Boss Walloper canvas gloves. He was waiting for the crew car to arrive and take him out to Consolidated’s Rig #4 where he would be working backup tongs as a roughneck.

            Like a lot of kids born and reared in the oil patch, Bill considered a good-paying roughnecking job the pinnacle of success. By the time the graveyard crew picked him up, he was about as excited as any eighteen-year-old could get except for maybe the time he scored the winning touchdown against Pyote in district playoffs. At last he was getting somewhere in life. He was going to be a man and have bragging rights in the local beer joints, just like the other oil field hands he knew.

            After relieving the evening tour crew, the driller sent Bill and the lead tong man into the cellar to finish installing the blowout preventer. The older man, of course, had already been ribbing Bill pretty hard about finishing high school. As they made their way down beneath the rig floor, he started in again. This time he questioned the intelligence of any high school graduate who went around with a pair of Boss Wallopers stuffed in his hip pocket.

            It took about thirty minutes to get everything arranged so they could lower the heavy blowout preventer into place. Bill was brushing some dirt off the base flange when it happened. They never did figure out just what caused it, but at that very minute the preventer fell with a crash. Bill managed to jerk his hands partially back before the massive hunk of iron smashed the ends of his Boss Wallopers flat as a pancake. The kid just stood there for what seemed like an eternity, his face losing color as red began to stain the fingers of both gloves. Finally, he eased his hands out of the gloves and fearfully inspected all ten of his digits. Incredibly they were all there except for the tips of both middle fingers, which were slightly nipped. That was the last time they saw Bill!

            Four years later, almost to the day, graduation night rolled around again. Once again Bill participated, this time receiving his hard-won diploma on a college campus. Beneath his graduation rope, however, firmly tucked in his hip pocket, was a pair of fingerless blood stained Boss Wallopers— a reminder of what he had missed by leaving the patch.