..."TRAGEDY AND TRIUMPH!..A CONTRADICTION OF TERMS!"
...As previously stated, there is always a tremendous battle being waged between the "Forces of Good and Evil"..."God and Satan"... "Right and Wrong"... or the "SuperNatural and the Natural"...
...Whatever makes you comfortable or is more Palatable to your sensibilities, the truth remains the same, and the concept is something that most reasonable people are in agreement about.
...Isn't that our experience in life?...
...Isn't that the tension or dynamic that most of us struggle with, encounter, as we wrestle seemingly with the unseen forces of our conscience's when trying to decide on a course of action...whether we will go one way or another, or deciding to do this thing or that?
..."We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against Principalities, Powers, Rulers of Darkness, Spiritual Wickedness in high places!"
..."The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God, to the pulling down of strongholds, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God!" {My Paraphrases}
...God was speaking to the whole cast of characters in this slice of dramatic life that I've been discussing... and working with each of us individually, as He does with all of us that are on this Journey and Adventure we call life!
...God moves different people in and out of our lives in an attempt to reveal His self and His love for us...He also Speaks to us sometimes Loudly through the Tempest of The Storms of life and through tragedies...And sometimes quietly with that still small voice He uses when we witness something wonderful and beautiful like the Birth of a newborn or the beauty of a sunrise or sunset...The beauty of a flower etc. and on and on add infiniteum...
..."God is not willing that any should perish, but that all would come to repentance and to the knowledge of the saving grace of Jesus, our Lord..."
...I've already shared with you many different examples of how God was working and moving in my life...Revealing Himself and His love for me...
...And as I look back on my new friend, Doug's life...I can only speak to that short portion of time that I was blessed to share with him...
...I must confess that I don't have a lot of Knowledge of how God was working in his life prior to us meeting, but I can only guess, and strongly believe that God Loved Doug very much and had demonstrated that Love to him in many ways...
...I know for sure one thing about his past, because he talked about it quite frequently with great affection, and that was that he had a great family back in Ohio and his face would just light up and his eyes would beam when he described them to me and what life had been like back there...
...Like I said, we didn't know each other that long, but we became fast and good friends, we went fishing together just the two of us a few times and we would sit there on the bank of this beautiful pond we had discovered drinking a few cold brews and maybe even smoked a joint or two while sitting there enjoying the beauty and the serenity of our surroundings...
...We also used this pond for a swimming hole being dumb ass Damn Yankees not even thinking about the fact that there are alligators lurking in just about every body of water there is in Louisianna and as anyone that has ever shared those kind of moments with a friend or a buddy knows...
...Sometimes, as was the case with us, you talk about all kinds of things, and Doug and I would talk about our families and our previous lives, our plans for the future and also about our new lives and experiences that we were going through in this new town that we both found ourselves living in...
...We were young guys, full of life and adventure and for all of our faults and failures we were working on building a lifelong friendship...
...And even though it was a short period of time I came to know him and love him and can easily say that Doug Tuttle was my friend and I was the better for it...
...The one thing that really sticks out in my mind is this one really cute blonde that he was dating and He actually seemed to be sort of serious about her, but it was a source of laughter amongst us fellows and we gave him some shit about it...
...She was the daughter of a Pentecostal Preacher! The reason I know that He was serious about her was because he had plenty of other girls that he was playing with so he put up with this girls Father's conditions to see her and date her by his own choice...
...Trust me, when I tell you there was a lot of conditions that came along with this chick...
...Her name totally escapes me even though I am sure That God spoke to her life in a very profound way through Doug as He has done with me...
...It was a hard and fast rule with her Preacher Daddy that any Boy that wanted to be a suitor had to come to Sunday School and Sunday Worship with her, and I know for a fact that for a month at least, Doug was there sitting under some very enthusiastic and exuberant pentecostal preaching...
...The Reason that is an important point to make is this...Most of us, if we would be honest would have to admit that God tries to get our attention on a regular basis, and that if we were to find ourselves suddenly in His presence for personal judgement...
...none of us could claim ignorance as an excuse...
...God is actively pursuing us for our own protection...
...Very much like a mother hen pursues her brood of chicks, to gather them under her wings to keep them safe.
...UNFORTUNATELY, JUST LIKE IN THE NATURAL WORLD...NOT ALL THE CHICKS SURVIVE...SOME FALL VICTIM TO THE MANY PREDATORS AND DANGERS THAT OUR NATURAL WORLD IS FRAUGHT WITH!...
...Like I said, we were all young guys, looking for work by day, and pretty much living it up like young bachelors...Drinking, partying, getting high, and chasing skirts by night and on the weekends...
...Along the way we would have some pretty profound, life lesson moments and conversations, but for the most part we all felt pretty bullet proof, and invinceable. After all we were young and had our whole lives in front of us to look forward to...So we thought...
...I'll never forget that Day that I finally got hired on at CRC Holston Well Services And Drilling, out of Jennings, La. I was ecstatic!...I was going to be a RoughNeck...Wow! My new life was really going to take off now and hopefully, very soon I would be able to bring my family down to live with me...
...It was during this time if My memory serves me right that Barry and Doug both were not working or were off on job related injuries...Being a RoughNeck on an Oilrig is no picnic in the park...Its very dangerous work especially for the new guys, or WORMS, as they called us rookies...It seems like that Doug Had injured both his wrists on the job even before I had moved down there...
...Anyways, as soon as I got the word that I was hired and I was supposed to show up next week, my whole world changed...The Yard as it was called where I got hireds was in Jennings. That was a little over a hundred miles from DeRidder, but the thing was that I was Going to be working on land on a Truck Rig. Most of our jobs were Workover Wells...
...In other words, we had to Rig Up on Land locations and repair natural gas and oilwells that had broke down and were no longer producing correctly or not at all...
...Although not quite as glamourous as working on a big "Offshore Drilling Platform" I always said that it was OK by me because at least I could run further than I could swim if something bad went wrong!...
...And believe me, stuff does and can go wrong very quickly in that line of work...The old Coon Asses always said that you couldn't even call yourself a real Rough Neck unless you had 3 or more fingers missing...I seen my share of guys with missing digits as well as a large variety of different war wounds...Some of them had pretty horrific scars...
...The day finally came when I was set to show up and meet my Driller and the rest of the crew so I could follow them to my first Well location in a little place named Paridis Louisianna out in the middle of the swamp about 30 miles west of New Orleans. The way our shifts were set up was, we worked 4 days on, and then we got 4 days off. Each shift was a 12 hour shift 6AM to 6PM for Days and vice versa for nights, and it switched every week form days to nights, and from nights to days...
...It actually seemed like a great Gig to me because you were guaranteed 48 hours a week which meant you got 8 hours overtime at time and a half...The part that sucked was you only got payed every 2 weeks, big paychecks but I thought that I had a lot of income taxes taken out. We really thought it was big money because I was making a little over $10.00 an hr. straight time and almost $16.00 an hr. for overtime...
...As I was saying, it was a very big deal in our little circle of friends and family that I had gotten this job...
...It was mission accomplished for my whole purpose in coming to Louisianna in the first place so again...
...Now we had a legitimate reason to throw a party and celebrate, I don't remember everything about how it all got started but I know that it was my plan to stay close to home, which was mine and Barry and Dougs apartment...
...I had to get up around 3:30AM because I had a long drive to meet those fellows for my first day on the job, and I wasn't about to screw that up...
...Anyways people just started to gather at the house all day long and we had plenty to drink, a few different bottles of hard liquor a twelve pack or two, somebody showed up with some Percodans, and there was a few different varieties of smoke, joints were being passed bowls of weed were being fired up, someone took on the role of playing DJ, we fired up a barbque grill and before you knew it... even a little more than usual...
...The party was on!...
...I can remember, at some point, later in the evening, Doug showed up with a date, a new girl...an attractive brunette, and again her name escapes me...maybe Lisa or Theresa anyways I remember Doug telling me tah they had just met recently and they had either been out to a movie or dinner maybe both, but anyways the barbeque or party had been on for quite awhile and I was thinking for myself that I wasn't going to get hammered and stay up all nigh because I had to be up and on the road early for my new job, and I was going to be gone for 4 days before I would be back in town...
...I do remember that Doug seemed to bew working on a pretty good buzz andf He was rather enthusiastic when he wondered over and gave me the heads up on his intentions with his date and he had a water glass about 12 ounces I would estimate full of some clear liquor that He said was some white lightning he got from somewhere, and he insisted that I take a good pull on it and check it out...
...I did in fact take a healthy swallow out of the glass but commented to him that it was about the nastiest moonshine I had ever tasted and he could keep the rest for himself...I also remember saying something like, "maybe if you mixed some orange juice or pineapple with it then it might be more tolerable,"...
...Simple fact of the matter was, there was plenty of varieties of adult Beverages and I had been taking it easy nursing some cold Coors Beers for the most part, dropped a couple of Percodans earlier in the day and smoked some weed that was occasionaly passed around but my day was quickly coming to an end around 10:00PM cuz I had a 3:30AM wakeup to head out on my new job at CRC Holston...I don't remember for sure how many folks were still hanging out when I excused myself to the Bedroom to crash for a few hours, but most of the commotion had died off to a dull roar and I crashed hard...
...READ PART TWO!
...As previously stated, there is always a tremendous battle being waged between the "Forces of Good and Evil"..."God and Satan"... "Right and Wrong"... or the "SuperNatural and the Natural"...
...Whatever makes you comfortable or is more Palatable to your sensibilities, the truth remains the same, and the concept is something that most reasonable people are in agreement about.
...Isn't that our experience in life?...
...Isn't that the tension or dynamic that most of us struggle with, encounter, as we wrestle seemingly with the unseen forces of our conscience's when trying to decide on a course of action...whether we will go one way or another, or deciding to do this thing or that?
..."We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against Principalities, Powers, Rulers of Darkness, Spiritual Wickedness in high places!"
..."The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God, to the pulling down of strongholds, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God!" {My Paraphrases}
...God was speaking to the whole cast of characters in this slice of dramatic life that I've been discussing... and working with each of us individually, as He does with all of us that are on this Journey and Adventure we call life!
...God moves different people in and out of our lives in an attempt to reveal His self and His love for us...He also Speaks to us sometimes Loudly through the Tempest of The Storms of life and through tragedies...And sometimes quietly with that still small voice He uses when we witness something wonderful and beautiful like the Birth of a newborn or the beauty of a sunrise or sunset...The beauty of a flower etc. and on and on add infiniteum...
..."God is not willing that any should perish, but that all would come to repentance and to the knowledge of the saving grace of Jesus, our Lord..."
...I've already shared with you many different examples of how God was working and moving in my life...Revealing Himself and His love for me...
...And as I look back on my new friend, Doug's life...I can only speak to that short portion of time that I was blessed to share with him...
...I must confess that I don't have a lot of Knowledge of how God was working in his life prior to us meeting, but I can only guess, and strongly believe that God Loved Doug very much and had demonstrated that Love to him in many ways...
...I know for sure one thing about his past, because he talked about it quite frequently with great affection, and that was that he had a great family back in Ohio and his face would just light up and his eyes would beam when he described them to me and what life had been like back there...
...Like I said, we didn't know each other that long, but we became fast and good friends, we went fishing together just the two of us a few times and we would sit there on the bank of this beautiful pond we had discovered drinking a few cold brews and maybe even smoked a joint or two while sitting there enjoying the beauty and the serenity of our surroundings...
...We also used this pond for a swimming hole being dumb ass Damn Yankees not even thinking about the fact that there are alligators lurking in just about every body of water there is in Louisianna and as anyone that has ever shared those kind of moments with a friend or a buddy knows...
...Sometimes, as was the case with us, you talk about all kinds of things, and Doug and I would talk about our families and our previous lives, our plans for the future and also about our new lives and experiences that we were going through in this new town that we both found ourselves living in...
...We were young guys, full of life and adventure and for all of our faults and failures we were working on building a lifelong friendship...
...And even though it was a short period of time I came to know him and love him and can easily say that Doug Tuttle was my friend and I was the better for it...
...The one thing that really sticks out in my mind is this one really cute blonde that he was dating and He actually seemed to be sort of serious about her, but it was a source of laughter amongst us fellows and we gave him some shit about it...
...She was the daughter of a Pentecostal Preacher! The reason I know that He was serious about her was because he had plenty of other girls that he was playing with so he put up with this girls Father's conditions to see her and date her by his own choice...
...Trust me, when I tell you there was a lot of conditions that came along with this chick...
...Her name totally escapes me even though I am sure That God spoke to her life in a very profound way through Doug as He has done with me...
...It was a hard and fast rule with her Preacher Daddy that any Boy that wanted to be a suitor had to come to Sunday School and Sunday Worship with her, and I know for a fact that for a month at least, Doug was there sitting under some very enthusiastic and exuberant pentecostal preaching...
...The Reason that is an important point to make is this...Most of us, if we would be honest would have to admit that God tries to get our attention on a regular basis, and that if we were to find ourselves suddenly in His presence for personal judgement...
...none of us could claim ignorance as an excuse...
...God is actively pursuing us for our own protection...
...Very much like a mother hen pursues her brood of chicks, to gather them under her wings to keep them safe.
...UNFORTUNATELY, JUST LIKE IN THE NATURAL WORLD...NOT ALL THE CHICKS SURVIVE...SOME FALL VICTIM TO THE MANY PREDATORS AND DANGERS THAT OUR NATURAL WORLD IS FRAUGHT WITH!...
...Like I said, we were all young guys, looking for work by day, and pretty much living it up like young bachelors...Drinking, partying, getting high, and chasing skirts by night and on the weekends...
...Along the way we would have some pretty profound, life lesson moments and conversations, but for the most part we all felt pretty bullet proof, and invinceable. After all we were young and had our whole lives in front of us to look forward to...So we thought...
...I'll never forget that Day that I finally got hired on at CRC Holston Well Services And Drilling, out of Jennings, La. I was ecstatic!...I was going to be a RoughNeck...Wow! My new life was really going to take off now and hopefully, very soon I would be able to bring my family down to live with me...
...It was during this time if My memory serves me right that Barry and Doug both were not working or were off on job related injuries...Being a RoughNeck on an Oilrig is no picnic in the park...Its very dangerous work especially for the new guys, or WORMS, as they called us rookies...It seems like that Doug Had injured both his wrists on the job even before I had moved down there...
...Anyways, as soon as I got the word that I was hired and I was supposed to show up next week, my whole world changed...The Yard as it was called where I got hireds was in Jennings. That was a little over a hundred miles from DeRidder, but the thing was that I was Going to be working on land on a Truck Rig. Most of our jobs were Workover Wells...
...In other words, we had to Rig Up on Land locations and repair natural gas and oilwells that had broke down and were no longer producing correctly or not at all...
...Although not quite as glamourous as working on a big "Offshore Drilling Platform" I always said that it was OK by me because at least I could run further than I could swim if something bad went wrong!...
...And believe me, stuff does and can go wrong very quickly in that line of work...The old Coon Asses always said that you couldn't even call yourself a real Rough Neck unless you had 3 or more fingers missing...I seen my share of guys with missing digits as well as a large variety of different war wounds...Some of them had pretty horrific scars...
...The day finally came when I was set to show up and meet my Driller and the rest of the crew so I could follow them to my first Well location in a little place named Paridis Louisianna out in the middle of the swamp about 30 miles west of New Orleans. The way our shifts were set up was, we worked 4 days on, and then we got 4 days off. Each shift was a 12 hour shift 6AM to 6PM for Days and vice versa for nights, and it switched every week form days to nights, and from nights to days...
...It actually seemed like a great Gig to me because you were guaranteed 48 hours a week which meant you got 8 hours overtime at time and a half...The part that sucked was you only got payed every 2 weeks, big paychecks but I thought that I had a lot of income taxes taken out. We really thought it was big money because I was making a little over $10.00 an hr. straight time and almost $16.00 an hr. for overtime...
...As I was saying, it was a very big deal in our little circle of friends and family that I had gotten this job...
...It was mission accomplished for my whole purpose in coming to Louisianna in the first place so again...
...Now we had a legitimate reason to throw a party and celebrate, I don't remember everything about how it all got started but I know that it was my plan to stay close to home, which was mine and Barry and Dougs apartment...
...I had to get up around 3:30AM because I had a long drive to meet those fellows for my first day on the job, and I wasn't about to screw that up...
...Anyways people just started to gather at the house all day long and we had plenty to drink, a few different bottles of hard liquor a twelve pack or two, somebody showed up with some Percodans, and there was a few different varieties of smoke, joints were being passed bowls of weed were being fired up, someone took on the role of playing DJ, we fired up a barbque grill and before you knew it... even a little more than usual...
...The party was on!...
...I can remember, at some point, later in the evening, Doug showed up with a date, a new girl...an attractive brunette, and again her name escapes me...maybe Lisa or Theresa anyways I remember Doug telling me tah they had just met recently and they had either been out to a movie or dinner maybe both, but anyways the barbeque or party had been on for quite awhile and I was thinking for myself that I wasn't going to get hammered and stay up all nigh because I had to be up and on the road early for my new job, and I was going to be gone for 4 days before I would be back in town...
...I do remember that Doug seemed to bew working on a pretty good buzz andf He was rather enthusiastic when he wondered over and gave me the heads up on his intentions with his date and he had a water glass about 12 ounces I would estimate full of some clear liquor that He said was some white lightning he got from somewhere, and he insisted that I take a good pull on it and check it out...
...I did in fact take a healthy swallow out of the glass but commented to him that it was about the nastiest moonshine I had ever tasted and he could keep the rest for himself...I also remember saying something like, "maybe if you mixed some orange juice or pineapple with it then it might be more tolerable,"...
...Simple fact of the matter was, there was plenty of varieties of adult Beverages and I had been taking it easy nursing some cold Coors Beers for the most part, dropped a couple of Percodans earlier in the day and smoked some weed that was occasionaly passed around but my day was quickly coming to an end around 10:00PM cuz I had a 3:30AM wakeup to head out on my new job at CRC Holston...I don't remember for sure how many folks were still hanging out when I excused myself to the Bedroom to crash for a few hours, but most of the commotion had died off to a dull roar and I crashed hard...
...READ PART TWO!
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