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Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Fracking, Organized Crime and Food

Speaking from experience, the first thing that needs to happen after moving to a new place is that you need to get connected.

Since meeting these guys we don't worry so much about "protection" if ya know what I mean.

We have entered the fracking stages of several of the wells and a lot of different contractors come in for their particular specialty.  Somewhere somehow food is now associated with this process, kind of like Thanksgiving.  All meals are catered during the frac and grub like this is brought out to us twice a day along with a gallon of iced tea.  This is supposed to go for two weeks.  Yeah Baby.



Shrimp, Poppers, Hush Puppies, Fish, French Fries, Macaroni and Cheese and Green Beans. Did I not get the pieces of Apple pie in the picture too?  This ain't no downstream stuff.  We have had top notch BBQ and Lasagna and Banana Cream pie and Jerked Pork and and.....  I have put my foot down and told Lisa that we are not upsizing our RV just because we are.  Upsizing that is. 

It's the middle of the night and I just have to check in a truck or two here and there and my thoughts get a little serious.  I write them here so that it's not so in your face like FB and the only ones who will read it are the folks who want, well no bored, tricked whatever into doing so.  I don't feel I am stealing so many minutes of their life this way. 

I read recently a man's fears and forebodences (I just invented that word according to spellchecker) if you will about getting older. He expressed himself with a good deal of eloquence and I admit I was moved.   Everybody has their own theories on life.  I keep mine rather simple and it goes in thirds.  The first third of your life is spent on being born, childhood and then on to puberty and adolescence.  During this time  a lot of life is a bunch of events that seemed unimportant at the time but then  turn into some of our best memories.  Early friendships, family holidays and activities, school, sports and your first awkward moments with the opposite sex to name a few. The second third of life is what I like to call the serious phase.  Somehow scratching your way into a job that at least pays the bills. Have kids, get married, maybe more than once. Scrabble to pay the rent or house payment. Try to do your best by your children.  Watch them grow.  Feel the good as well as the pain.  There are a lot of good memories here as well, but somehow it becomes much more difficult to reference time other than it just flies by.  The third phase would probably be called the extraneous phase.  Like Salmon, our purpose according to Nature anyway, was completed upon our youngest's 18th birthday. It's time for a different purpose. To experience and see other things.  Some retired folks go on missions.  Some do public service.  Good callings. I see myself differently, I not only want to travel and see, I want to do things. A bucket list if you will.  I am not so afraid of Death as to give it a run for it's money.  From the experiences we have had so far, I kind of see this little job Lisa and I are doing as fitting in to that scheme.  Well, that was windy.

I was in HEB the other night.  Place was crowded.  A lot of different dirty oil field uniforms.  One thing was the same though, zombie like faces.  A lot of dead beat guys doing Friday grocery shopping wishing they were anywhere but here.  On the gate, Lisa and I check some guys in that sometimes don't come out for 24 or 30 hours.   12 hour shifts are the minimum. A guy coming back to work after three hours of sleep isn't unusual.  If you talk to some of them, they are just happy to be working.  I guess it was slow last Winter. Like everywhere else truck payments, rent and power have to be paid and the kids had to be fed.  Subsidized lunches, food stamps and unemployment are the unspoken norm, I'm sure.  I have said it before how I enjoy most of the folks I meet here in Texas, they are just different somehow. Friendly, neighborly, hardworking, tough. But they are as conservative as the day is long and stand fiercely comes to mind behind their leaders.  It struck me how working themselves like this, statistically few will reach full Social Security retirement age of 67. Like some people I already know.  Salt of the earth types who have worked so hard they have just broke and have to seek some remedy, disability or early SS benefits. It seems really wrong that our country has come to the point where there are those who would disparage these people for it. 

Yeah, about that.  As an Independent Contractor we have to pay at least fifteen percent of our gross to SS.  That's like 900 bucks a month.  How did it get confabulated to where getting it back became welfare.

Peace be with all.



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