There were lots of practical jokes, too, like short-sheeting beds. During the oil industry's infancy in Louisiana, however, safety concerns often took a distant second to production quotas. Edwin Duhon, who co-founded The Hackberry Ramblers back in 1933, also spent years working in the oilfields, beginning in 1927. Some of the roughnecks put Vic in a car and took him to the hospital, and the rest of them damn near lynched Bill. Such strong sentiments indicated the camaraderie which develops when a worker is accepted by his peers.
Nicknames serve as a symbol of insider status.
They called me 'College Boy' as a test, in a way, to see if I could handle the hardest dirty jobs, and really work. But basically it is a sign of acceptance if you get a nickname. More recently I've been called 'Mr. Coffee,' since I work 20 or 30 hours straight, and drink a lot of it to stay awake. Then there are always lots of guys called Slim, Chico, Skeeter, nicknames that you'd find in rural America. And people will write those names on their hard hats.