Gate Guards, Is It For You?

Quick note about the toilet, the floor flange is ordered along with a new gasket as well. Once these parts come in I will put on my plumber's hat and go to work.

OK moving on. We have been at this gate now for about 3 months. This is a main gate to about 10 to 15 different wells. There is a constant flow of traffic day and night, so Sherry has the night shift and I have days. I often wonder what type of people can do this job. The job is not hard, come on signing people in and out requires about 30 seconds, but it can get hectic. So what does it take to man one of these gates? Going into this blind is one reason why I am posting what we have been through so far.

The first attraction is the money. You get paid $125.00 a day, which is the going rate now. Some companies pay more than that per day but we will stick with this figure. A check or direct deposit once every two weeks is pretty good cash. Now for you math wizards out there if you try to figure the hourly rate for 24 hours you will be disappointed. I have done it and it is below minimum wage, but figure the "actual" time that you are working and you might be surprised.

Next for us is that we are out in the boon docks, I mean in the middle of nowhere. I tell my older kids that we have found "BFE" and it has a zip code. I guess we are fortunate that we are close the interstate and we get decent cell phone signal but on the other hand my internet signal is very weak. That's why I haven't posted anything lately. Now if we were deeper back, like nine miles in, there isn't hardly any cell service at all. I have noticed on many trucks that they have some kind of booster for their phones, may have to check into this later. We are close to a small town but their grocery store is the only one and the prices are out of this world, imagine that. We are only about 50 miles from Laredo so I go into town to get groceries for two weeks and any other business as well.

Next up is the dirt and dust. We are right at the front gate and on a dirt road which leads back to the wells. The road is kalche (don't know if I spelled that right) and rock and this stuff gets into everything. If you happen to have your windows open because it is a beautiful day this would be a bad mistake. The dust is everywhere that you can imagine, I mean everywhere. Then it starts rain. This dust now turns into a pancake type mess, thank God for rugs.

Let me try to size this up for you, if you like the pay, don't mind the dirt and mud, don't have good good cell service and have to travel 50 plus miles to get food, I guess this is for you.

Next time I will try to give more info about this job. We are by no means an expert on the subject but just giving our experiences to you. I am trying to put it in perspective for anyone who is toying with this idea.

Until next time..........be safe.