Clairce Bascle
June 1, 2017
June is a big month for summer safety
June 1, 2017
There is no way to adequately thank those who go to work every day – or a succession of days and even weeks, for that matter – to do some of the toughest jobs imaginable under conditions that would make most of us melt.
It seem there are ways of glorifying all kinds of people, like first responders, who certainly deserve a great deal of praise. And other professions we might find interesting that involve work done other than here seem to get our attention.
We recognize the dangers of mining, for example.
But the value of a job does not always have to be judged by its danger. Sometimes it gets judged by its importance to society overall.
And in this part of the world, there is far less praise given than should be to the men and women who make a living on the water, prepare and build things that go to, into and non the water, and who travel over the water routinely to get to the jobs they hold.
They work on rigs but they also work in welding shops, at safety centers and on and around boats.
The mariners, you’ll see them if you
stand outside the TWIC office, where they go to get the cards that allow them to be in close proximity to ports and vessels and oil tanks. They are humble, they look rough, a lot of them, and this is because they are out in the elements. They party too hard sometimes when they are off work, especially the younger ones. But most are just people trying to raise a family in an industry that largely chews them up and throws them out when they are done.
Ask any workman’s comp or disability lawyer. They see a steady stream of the injured and the wounded every day. And even as the companies that pay them brag on the safety awards they receive, danger for the workers continues. And if you don’t believe that, go see the Deepwater Horizon movie again.
But it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. It is the small injury that has big consequences, the one that makes you no longer useful but otherwise looking painfully normal, that does the damage.
But there is no memorial, there is no statue, there is nothing to recognize what these workers do down in our neck of the woods.
Just the fabrication workers going for lunch on Prospect Street – a lot of them not speaking much English, having come here from work quite legally from Central America – they are a part of this great army of workers we have here as well.
In Tulsa there is a great statue of a giant oilman, built by an oilfield supply company out of Texas, dubbed “The Golden Driller.” There have been several incarnations of this but the most famous is 76 feet tall, and it has been at the fairgrounds in Tulsa sine 1966. George S. Hondronastas designed the statue and if you want to see cool pictures go to www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2190#sthash.PZV7bkjQ.dpuf.
It’s a great blog worth viewing.
Our offshore and related industries are having a hard time though they say things are getting better. So it’s not like the oil and gas industry locally has money to throw around on statues. But it sure would be nice.
East Texas has an interesting bust of “Joe Roughneck,” a creation done in 1955 and seen as a symbol of oil workers. But again, it’s in Texas.
There should be some form of monument right here, near where the real works in oil and gas are employed, to show the gratitude of a community that relies so much on oil and gas for its economic health.
Without men and women who find ways to get the crude out of the ground, or the oil up the pipe, there is no energy industry.
So in the interests of fairness and goodness, absent a permanent memorial, a fleeting one will do. The next time you are at the convenience store and see that guy picking up a 12-pack for a long weekend off, still wearing his coveralls, or with that welder’s cap on his head, say hello. Thank him for the hard work he does for our community, for helping in his own way to put gas in the pumps and oil in the burners.
Say thank you to an energy worker. For now it’s the best monument I can think of.
BAYOUSIDE
Boats sit in Bayou Terrebonne, waiting to be called to work. John DeSantis offers support and praise to those in the oil and gas industry this week.
