Paul Carter is Cooler Than You

Don't Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse 

by Paul Carter
p. 2005

I can’t remember how it was that I heard about this particular creative nonfiction book, but as soon as I read the punchy and absurdly long title, I knew I must have it.

I’m cheap so I didn’t go directly to Amazon to buy it; instead, I tried to find it in used bookstores and was pointedly surprised to realize that I was too embarrassed to say the full title to strangers. About the time I mumbled “Never mind, you probably don’t have it,” to the lady at John King Books and she pointed out that I was blushing, I decided to go right home and order it online the way I should have the first time.

Despite the awkward title, there is nothing to be ashamed of in the content of Don’t Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs… Published in 2005, it is a collection of stories from the life of on-off oil rig worker, Paul Carter. An Australian by birth but a roughneck at heart, Carter’s experiences with the wild side of the trade are many and varied; the oil trade truly is the flipside of civilization. And Paul Carter is at the heart of it all. He has traveled all over for the oil business, lived off the grid by choice, seen the darkest parts of people and lived to tell about it, and he actually seems tame compared to some of the personalities he comes across.

Though this collection of stories all are chiefly concerned with Carter’s work on the rigs and the interesting and dynamic characters that toil alongside him, this is the only connection they boast. My chief complaint with this book was simply that there wasn’t enough of a common thread weaved throughout the book. Carter tells one raucous story then moves on to the next without much transition and the stuff mentioned early isn’t relevant by the end. This isn’t really a problem, per se, as plenty of creative nonfiction writers will amass collections of their life’s little stories for an anthology with only loose connotations, but it does give the book a random, disconnected sort of feel. When grappling with the unspoken question, ‘What is the point of all this?’ the only idea I could come up with was that perhaps this book would be more appropriately renamed Paul Carter is Cooler Than You. Indeed, Carter’s stories are the stuff that young people stuck in humdrum lives or too afraid to go experience the world would salivate over. Though maybe I, as one of those people—and either explanation is befitting—am just projecting my frustrations onto Carter, who never really comes across as a braggart. In all likelihood, someone who has encountered Paul Carter in his travels has told him ‘You should write all these down and publish them!’ and Carter went for it, and thus this book was created.

Though I found the descriptions of the trade and life that accompanies it intriguing at the time, I admit to not remembering too much of this story months later. The one part I will inexplicably remember for a long time hence is sort of random, but it comes early on in Don’t Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs, in its second chapter. Carter is describing an old roommate of his from Leinster, Craig, who had two unfortunate run-ins with death, the first when he was nearly beaten to death by some Maori truckers in a dive bar and the second on his way back from the hospital six weeks later, when a kangaroo jumped through his windshield and crashed his truck. Though the descriptions of Craig’s injuries—both times—are gruesome and uncomfortable to picture, this chapter had an unexpected optimistic twist at the end.

“His good looks were gone but in his ever-positive style, life took on a new precious zest, even when he caught people staring. He just wasn’t supposed to die young.”

If there’s one lesson or theme that can be meted out of this collection, it’s that life in all its bizarre and colossal ways, can only be lived in if you do it with a bold heart and a tenacious sense of humor, and Carter possesses that in spades. Lesser men would shy away from the life he leads but Carter embraces it and manages to convey it all with humor. I did not find his sense of humor as appealing as other travel nonfiction writers I’ve read (most notably my dear departed, Pete McCarthy) but others will. Carter is a man’s man and this is a story geared towards the type who are eager to or have ventured out into the world to truly experience it. The way I understand it, Carter has written a second collection of tales ‘from the edge of civilization,’ as he calls it, and I wouldn’t be opposed to checking it out, if it’s anything like his first book.

One more thing:

Since Don’t Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs technically qualifies as ‘travel fiction,’ I couldn’t help but compare it to other works I’ve read in the same genre, and realized that this was the third book of its type that included a mention of macaque. And I’m not talking a throwaway line somewhere; I’m talking gratuitous description of macaques. Like, a whole chapter dedicated to this breed of monkey. In this book, the macaque is a chain-smoking pet who becomes kind of a jerk when he hits puberty and is eventually accidentally blown up with a homemade coconut bomb (don’t ask). What is it about macaques that have people talking anyway? They seem like the real assholes of the primate world.