Quiet Canuck gets his eyes opened

                                                                               By: Frank Jacques

The summer of 1978, and there was a mini invasion of Canadian seismic workers headed for the U.S., including me.

I had finished the winter season in Canada with Seiscom Delta, and they said they were sending me down to Afton, Wyoming, where Seiscom was starting up a heliportable crew that was going to work for Sohio.

In those days, I was a young, Sercel 338 observer, and this was going to be my first time on a set of DFS-V's. I had worked heli a couple of years before that, in Canada, but was not ready for what I saw down there in Afton.

We didn't have any people, as it was a new crew, so we found out what Mountain Geo was paying, upped it by a quarter, and found that half of Mtn Geo's juggies came over to us. So, we were lucky to get started with a not so green crew. We were staying in the old hotel in downtown Afton (damned if I remember the name). There was a bar downstairs that was full of seismic riff raff every night...Seiscom, Mountain Geo, and Mile Hi.

Now, those Mile Hi bunch were something. There were a group of them, wearing t-shirts blazoned with "Uncle Piss's Cowboy" or "Uncle Piss's Cowgirl". I just didn't get it, as "Uncle Piss" himself seemed to be nowhere in sight. I thought, at the tender age of 24, that I was a fairly hardcore partier and all around seismic animal, but Uncle Piss's gang damned near scared me! These folks were HARDCORE! I don't remember the names of too many...Diane Lee (RIP) was one. Finally, after a few days, Uncle Piss himself showed up. I don't know where he had been, but he wanted to get on with us at Seiscom. But he told us he wanted to get fit first, so for about a week, he would run from the hotel all the way out to the LZ at Smoot? and back? At least the way I remember it. After that, he joined on, following the shooters around with a 5 gallon piss pump on his back, and saved our ass more than once. But am pretty sure he wasn't called Uncle Piss because of the pump.

The company told us we could have the 4th of July weekend off, if our production was good, and I guess it was, cause we went up to Jackson. I was so wasted that weekend, I don't remember much...(and it has been nearly 30 years!). But, vague memories of the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar....Mosquito Creek Campground....Hell, me and a couple of other Canadians even made a trip up to Old Faithful. Old Faithful on acid. Cool.

We ended up moving up to Dillon, Montana a bit later, and to my horror, I got a call from Calgary saying I had to go back to Canada get get ready to bring a TRUCK CREW down to Williston N.D. A truck crew! In those days, if you weren't on a heli, surface crew, well, you weren't shit. But off I went, and it wasn't so bad......but Williston sucked.

It was back to Canada for the winter, and the next year I was back down to the States. This time with a new company called Skyline Exploration, out of SLC. I was supposed to go down for two months to train an observer, and ended up staying for 2.5 years. Took the first and last shot that company ever took. But that's another story.....