Interviewer: Preetam Prakash

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I had spoken with Mr. Brown’s wife, who worked at the Economic Development Agency in Waynesboro, when I was in the area during the summer 2010. When I returned to the area this time I stopped by the Agency to see how things had been in the area since I had left. After we had talked for a little while, Mrs. Brown mentioned that her husband and son-in-law both worked offshore and that she could call them and see if they might be willing to be interviewed. She contacted them, and both agreed to meet me at the Agency office for an interview.

Mr. Brown was born in Wayne County in 1950. He recalled that when he was growing up in the area many people in and around Waynesboro had worked on land rigs and that the decade of the 1950s was when the oil industry started to assume considerable local importance. He discussed how the entrance of many local people into both the onshore and offshore oil industries had been partially motivated by the lack of other work options in the region. Historically, work in the oil industry had been “the best job you could get”. Mr. Brown had begun to work onshore in the 1960s after he had served in the US Army, and had switched to working offshore in the 1970s. He described movement between the onshore and offshore oil industries as commonplace amongst people in the area during the 1970s. Following the downturn of the 1980s, Mr. Brown left the oil industry to run a parts shop in Wayne County. He went back to work offshore in 1990 and had worked for several different companies before leaving the industry in 2009. Since then, Mr. Brown has worked in construction.

Mr. Pitts joined myself and Mr. Brown after we had already been talking for some time. He had started working offshore in 1986, a period he called “the end of the old era” of offshore work. Mr. Pitts spoke about some of the changes which the industry had experienced since he had begun working. Such changes included increasing numbers of people from the area going overseas to work, as well as increased automation and the introduction of high technology in recent years. Mr. Pitts had worked both onshore and offshore in the course of his career and currently worked as a directional driller, which meant that he could end up either offshore or onshore. He professed being happy with his current position and described directional drilling as where he wanted to be.