Hard Hats

Hard hats can stay really clean when you don't get out of the pickup very often. When they just sit on a credenza in the office, unsuspecting visitors will tend to actually think you go to the field now and then and actually wear the thing.

Put a company logo on the front of a hard hard and bingo, you are a big shot. They then look good when you walk up to the floor for photo ops.

This CEO on the left is looking for somebody to ask which end of the workover rig to walk to. His hard hat is so gleaming white if the W. Texas sun hits it just right it will temporarily blind you.

Generally speaking, however, the best hard hats, the ones with real character, are stinkin' dirty. It happens when you work from can't see to can't see.

Sometimes hard hats just get too damn filthy to wear anymore and you have to pitch 'em. Unfortunately the EPA nor the BOEM have disposal standards for hard hats in the oil and natural gas industry...

Hard hats are like gloves, when you take them off and set them down, the sumbitches seem to always disappear. Then you have to go looking where you left the damn stuff before you can go back up on the floor. That can sometimes be embarrassing and raise the temper level of the driller that was waiting on you to show up.

Hard hats will keep your head warm in the winter and in the summer they will definitely keep the sun from cooking your brains out. They rarely prevent you from getting oily teeth, however, and never keep your ears clean.

...or your face.

Hard hats can protect your noggin from harsh winter elements and can be fitted with accessories for extra protection from the sun...

When hard hats are hard enough, they work, and keep you from getting your skull caved it...

The great Myron Kinley worked on a blowout one time that was hurling big rocks everywhere so he screwed his hard hat on top of a football helmet, complete with nose guard across the front.

Tin hard hats in the well control business provide a good shield from you and the fire if you keep your head cocked properly. They can definitely keep your face from getting all the skin burned plum off of it. Plastic hard hats around a fire are no bueno.

Some hands like to put on a hard hat, glasses and a gator to go incognito in the hope that when they get their ass eaten out by the tool pusher they will not be recognized.

Some hands can make wearing a hard hat look like they're a real bad ass....

...or sassy.

This hard hat of Joe Carpenters went to every country in the world with an oil or natural gas well in it, at least nine times. It could sure 'nuff tell some stories.

Hard hats can be used for advertising, to let people know you have been around the block as a seasoned professional. They can also be used to make certain political statements.

If they are muddy they are owned by a drilling hand, oily by a production hand and slimey by a vacuum truck driver. One of mine on the right says I was "winterized," which is a load of crap...when it gets down to 40 I sit in the truck with the heater going wide open.

They can also be so damn fancy you'd be scared to take 'em out of the box. Imagine droppin' this puppy out of a rackin' board?

Where would you wear this damn thing on the right? To a joint to pick a fight?

On a date with the girl next door?

Her dad would see this hard hat and put a restraining order on your oilfield ass immediately.

When I was a kid I worked offshore for about six months on a big jack up in about 400 feet of water, LA. I'd come off a rig in S. Texas as a driller but was put in the derrick. We had a really wormy motorman on that rig, a kid from Iowa, I think. He had a big fat head and no hair. He could not keep a hard hat on his head for his life. His hard hats were always blowing over the rail and falling in the ocean. I'll bet that sumbitch lost at least four of them that I recall the few months I worked with him. When he'd make a new hitch sometimes he'd carry 2 or 3 hard hats in his work bag. I suspect the Gulf Current was littered with this worm's hard hats, all floating east toward Florida.

If we needed him around the moon pool, or on the sub deck below the rotary table, we knew he'd lose his damn hard hat so we took to duck-taping the son of a bitch to his head; multiple wraps over the top of his hard hat under his chin... looked like he had a big tooth ache or something. We'd tape it down so hard he could barely speak and his face would get red as beet.

Folks are always finding hard hats on Texas beaches; above is a damn tree full of 'em on South Padre Island.

Some hard hats are famous and go into presidential libraries, like these I am very proud of in College Station...

Others you just want to keep for old time's sake...

Some hands can make wearing hard hats look really good.

Ozzie Hansen got his dad's hard hat from when Boots was with Red. You can bet your hard hat its in a safe place.

Joe Roughneck had a sort of non-descript hard hat and all the sculptures of him have the exact same hard hat, and the exact same Band-Aids.

Sometimes hard hats have more stickers on them than a Nascar. Rarely is it a good idea to ever ask the owner what this sticker means, or what that one over there means.

Nor should you, depending on how big the hand is. You might offend the fella and get knocked plum into next week.

The barbwire art work on this dude's sombrero is very cool. He probably drew that himself, WOC. He's got a drill bit necklace around his neck too. Those rings on his fingers will now have to be removed with a hacksaw.

Think you are a drilling hand? This fella on the left forgot more about being around a drilling rig before he went to the porta pottie this morning than most of us will EVER know.

Pregúntale si alguna vez lanzó una cadena giratoria... but best to ask the question with a smile on your face.

I worked in the oilfield since I was 13, the hot one in South Texas. The one where you better be wearing a glove when you pick up a 24 or you'll have 3rd degree burns on your hand. We never knew what the hell a cool down trailer was. I saw my first one in 2017. Amazing.

Now, look at this shit on the right, will ya?

This is an air conditioning unit on the back of this hand's hard hat. Good God Almighty ! I have now officially seen it all.

Some worms in the oilfield today don't even wear hard hats. The more time they spend on a stupid cell phone, the less they need a hard hat. Or maybe its just the opposite.

Laid-off hands go back home to do yard work, fix stuff and get all the honey-dos' out of the way. Then they paint stuff, re-stretch wire around the chicken coup, and clean all the leaves out the gutters...or take Christmas lights down from three years ago. When they get bored they make stuff out of hardhats, ring gaskets, whatever else they've scrounged up. Old hard hats make good pots for plants.

I worked with a coon-ass long ago who warmed his gumbo up in a tin hard hat set just right on the mud pump manifold.

Not too damn much anymore....

Hard hats that have big dents in 'em always make you wonder if the underlying subject didn't receive permanent brain damage when the incident occurred.

Indications of permanent brain damage by said subject might be a.) continuing to operate oil and gas wells at 70 years old or,

b.) writing dumb blog posts about hard hats from his pickup during tubing trips.