Shocking Slippery Slopes

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Oh, it's lovely here today. All clouded over and sprinkling rain persistently. "Set in for the day." is an old expression that has a positive ring to it. Implying that you're not really gonna be outside much today, or as it's said in the construction industry, "Rain out! Let's go find a bar and git drunk like sailors."

Two hundred men suddenly free to enjoy the unexpected. Sometime a thousand men in a fairly small town. Husbands, lock yo' wimmin in the house. One of my favorite places to have worked myself out of a job was Galveston, Texas. Galveston is the port city of Houston and a port of call for ships from all over the world. Going out on the town there can be an international experience.

Practically every seafaring country in the world has a specific bar they go to when they're in Galveston. Well, every country that has cargo and tanker ships sailing 'round the world. I don't really know how many bars in Galveston are set up to service foreign sailors, but dozens at least, and more than enough to make a night of it for a goodly number of nights in row.

I had joined my youngest brother and his helper in Galveston after I got run off from a job in the Cajun Riviera over in Louisiana. It was the first job I had after my second wife and our children abandon me for being an asshole. I decided to make a serious effort to become a real drunk and throw my life away. That's never worked for me, but it did get me fired.

Coming into work drunk was the excuse the Cajun clique that ran the job used to run me off. In truth, nepotism was at play, and they had some Cajun brother-in-law or cousin they wanted to be hired in my place, and I was in Louisiana.

Cajuns can be tight-knit and Catholic and a fun group to party with, but a Protestant working the petroleum industry construction in Louisiana is about like not being a cowboy in Texas and trying to keep a job there when family needs a job. They got shed of me for to hire they kinfolk. No blame. I knew that coming in.

Nepotism was not the reason me and my brother and Duke, his helper lost our jobs in Galveston. It was fundamentally the reason we got laid off sooner than expected. We just happened to be working in Texas when the oil industry itself went into a tailspin. Overnight there wasn't any money being spent on new construction in Texas, and even the native Texans couldn't find a job without being the friend of a friend.

Duke, my brother's helper was a young kid from around here. My brother got him hired on as a helper on a refinery job he was working in Utah. They traveled together out west for a while until I joined them in Galveston. The three of us hung around together after work, and over the next few months we toured the foreign bars around town.

Eventually, we began hanging out in this one fancy bar and grill that attracted a odd, but lively crowd of bar hoppers mostly from nearby Houston. They had a great buffet that offered seafood cooked in a variety of ways, and the food changed several times a night.

It was owned by an older homosexual who seemed fatally attracted to Duke. He constantly sent over drinks for the three of us in his attempt to seduce Duke. My brother and I lucky enough to drank free because we sat with Duke. It got to where we wouldn't go in there without him.

We should have left Galveston as soon as we got laid off. When we got there there were lots of construction jobs open. Particularly for pipefitters and pipewelders. You could literally quit one job and walk to the next job on the road and get hired the same day. We didn't realize at first how large the slowdown was, and that Texas had overnight become the worst state in the country to get a job. We hung out camping at a state park at the beach for a couple of weeks, and then we had to tuck our tails and slink outta there broke.
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