Interviewer(s): A. Gardner. New Iberia, LA

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I met Maxie Giscliar at the Shell retiree's dinner in New Iberia, Louisiana. I was finally able to set up a time for an interview. The Gisclairs live in a nice house in one of the satellite subdivisions in New Iberia. Maxie had a stroke in 1995, and as a result, he has trouble with numbers. His wife sat in for the interview, participated, and helped Maxie through some of the questions. The Gisclairs talk about the impact of moving around for the oilfield work, and what it was like raising a family under such conditions. There's an interesting section about the Shell training program for engineers. Once that program ended, the engineers were inexperienced, and that was one of the reasons Maxie retired - he was scared. We talk about steam rigs for a while. They talk about what the oilfield meant to Cajun people. There's a great story midway through the tape about pollution, the drinking water, and a pond catching on fire. There's a nice discussion of the conditions from which they came at the end of the interview.

Both Maxie and his wife come from the greater Abbeville area. Maxie went into the service after high school, and when he returned home, he spent two years in college and then started working for a seismograph crew. Through the help of his brother, he was able to get on with Shell. He worked on drilling rigs for a while and then made the jump to production. He stuck with production for much of his career, but shifted to workover rigs at the end. He retired from Shell at age 62.