Interviewer: Preetam Prakash

Affiliation: University of Arizona

During the latter part of fieldwork, Preetam met with Bobby Jones, the director of the Wayne County Vo-tech Center. Bobby himself had spent some time working offshore and mentioned Duane Clanton as one of the others in the area with experience in the oil industry whom Preetam should speak with, although the majority of the time that Duane had spent in the oil fields had been onshore. Duane invited Preetam to meet with him at his house immediately outside of Buckatunna, a small community close to Waynesboro, MS. The first meeting lasted only about an hour, as Duane had to help a family member with some work around the house. Preetam returned to Duane’s home the following week and this second interview went on for a considerably longer period of time. Duane had been born and raised in Waynesboro, and his father had worked in the oil fields. Although he had spent very little time offshore, Duane shed light on some of the connections in the area between onshore and offshore work. He related how seismic work in the onshore fields had been a major source of work for locals in the 1960s and had often led to jobs actually working on onshore and offshore rigs. He remembered the movement of large numbers of local workers into offshore oil jobs as coming later on in the 1970s, when offshore work became considerably more attractive in terms of benefits and pay. Duane and his wife had eventually moved to Shreveport, LA in the 1970s, where Duane eventually went into business for himself building oil rigs. He and his partner managed to sell their business in time to avoid the impacts of the 1980s downturn and Duane had remained in the industry until 1991. Since then he had made his money playing the stock market. He acknowledged that the oil industry had been good to him but also said that with all of the changes over the years, it was not work that he wanted to go back into.