Reply #4: Thank you for your kind words and welcome to DU.

[Hubert Flottz]

Practically all my relatives on my mothers side were all either pipeliners, or worked at compressor stations on the big natural gas pipelines that run through here.(West Virginia) I had one cousin who retired from Halliburton about ten years ago and two of his sons sill work for them and have for several years. One of his sons runs a little power tong business too. I learned to weld on an old Lincoln Pipeliner that belonged to my great uncle. I still think a Pipeliner is the finest welder Gawd ever created.

When I was a boy, one of my uncles was a tool pusher on old time spud rigs and I'd go out to the locations and spend the nights sometimes, listening to all the drillers war stories.

The only oil and gas field work I've ever done, was servicing wellheads and painting them and blowin' drip valves on small connector pipelines. We would blow drip gas all over the woods back then and never even worry about the damage it was doing. I honed my driving skills when I was a boy in the drilling company's old power wagon, out running the ridges and working the drip lines. Had the close calls with the copperheads and hornet nests. Boy, what fun.

Good to have you on DU...We need all the help we can get!!!