Image courtesy of Terry Jones
The author (on right) with his brother, Larry, on a South Carolina pipeline in 1970.
Back in my high school and college days, July would find me working on a pipeline somewhere out of state. My father was a bending engineer who had to figure out how much to bend the pipe to make it fit into the ditch, and I usually worked for him. But on occasion I also served as a swamper (or laborer) assigned to a bulldozer, welder’s helper and member of the cleanup crew.
Pipelining can sometimes be dangerous work. One day, we went to a road crossing and found everyone there in shock. A sideboom had been carrying pipe back and forth under a highline with just enough clearance to be safe (they thought). Shortly before we arrived, however, the electricity jumped to the boom and electrocuted the two laborers guiding the pipe. No one onsite knew CPR, and both men died.
The worst incident I personally saw involved the tie-in gang. We visited them to check on something, and Daddy was talking to the foreman when I noticed two men walking up the hill towards us. One was holding his arms out away from his body, and it looked like his shirt was hanging off him in an odd way. Turned out, it was his skin.
The man was gassing up a water pump while it was still running, and the fuel ignited into a fireball that engulfed him and caused his skin to peel away in strips. He was rushed to the hospital and I assume recovered, although I never heard any more about him.
Sometimes, the pipeliners brought misfortune upon themselves. While crossing a hot, dusty Alabama cotton field one day, the welding crew amused themselves by throwing dirt clods at a crop duster whenever it came overhead. On his last run, the pilot lined up with the right of way and sprayed the entire crew with Lord knows what he was using. I sometimes wonder if it ever caused them health problems in their old age.
On occasion, it wasn’t the work itself that was dangerous but rather where we were working. In the summer of 1972, we were on Walden Mountain, north of Chattanooga. The incline was so steep that ropes had to be anchored to the right of way so we could pull ourselves up, all the while watching out for falling rocks knocked loose by backhoes working above us.
It was a very remote and impoverished region where some of the houses still had dirt floors, and I once found an old chopped up whisky still beneath a giant beech tree just off the right of way.
One dirt road that led to the pipeline was littered with burned out cars and piles of burned purses. We were told that a gang of thieves would steal cars, purses and whatever in Chattanooga and then strip and burn them along the road. One day a man stopped a crew and advised them to wait thirty minutes before proceeding any farther. They agreed and found a burning car on the side of the road when they continued on to the line.
Two memorable pipeline moments occurred near Clearwater, Florida. I was the rodman, and one day Daddy told me to wade out into a scummy pond with the rod to see how deep it was. I stripped down to my underwear, but as soon as I waded into the pond, an alligator appeared out of nowhere and began swimming towards me. It was the first wild alligator I had ever seen, and I beat a hasty retreat. We procured a boat for the pond, and another crew later captured the gator and brought it to the warehouse to show off.
That same summer, my brother Larry, another laborer, and I were measuring pipe across an old lady’s property. We had been warned that she did not like trespassers and rumor was that she once shot up a lineman’s truck while he was up the pole. We didn’t think too much about it, however, because the company had legal access to the right of way.
Sure enough, the woman quickly showed up and started berating us for being on her property. She calmed down a bit when she saw we were not much more than boys and were just following orders, but she told us not to come back. We had to return the next day to finish the job, so the company arranged to have a sheriff’s deputy be there, as well.
When we arrived, the old lady and her daughter walked up and the harangue began again. The deputy tried to pacify her, but the woman refused to back down and declared, “This is my land and I will die defending it.” She then dramatically pulled back the flap of her purse and added, “And I won’t be the first to go.”
The implied threat wasn’t lost on us. To his credit, the big deputy didn’t overreact, but kept his cool and finally made her realize that she could either let us do our job or she could go to jail. She finally left in a huff, and we never saw her again.
Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. An autographed copy of “Louisiana Pastimes,” a collection of the author’s stories, costs $25. Contact him at tljones505@gmail.com
