This is my beat up, 30 year old Halliburton briefcase for the field that stays in my pickup's toolbox pretty much full time. Its covered in hard hat stickers from all over the world and its got crude oil splotches on it. Trust me, you would NOT want to lay your white bread sandwich on it during lunch. It's got a dent on the bottom from a dropped joint of 5 1/2 inch 23 pound pipe... but thats all I better say about that.
If the tailgate of my pickup is often my office desk, my briefcase is its drawers. It has my trusty Halliburton red book in it (different outfit), calculators, extra batteries, pencils, rubber bands, erasers (4), slide rules for flanges, well heads and down hole pump calculations, extra o-rings for the fluid level device and a flashlight for checking mud and reading pressure gauges. There is Grease Book tablet for checking last months production rates, tally books, note pads, straight edges, colored pens, band-aids, a list of all my cattle guard combinations and Boots and Coots decals to give to really good rig hands. It's got 67 cents of spare change in it at the moment; that pretty much represents our total net revenue for the entire month of April, or whatever month it was the price was -$37 a barrel. I am trying to forget.
The black light still there is from last year, when the world seemed normal and I shot sidewall cores in a new well. I need to clean this thing out. Nobody ever asks for business cards anymore, but I got 'em, just in case. There is a pair of calipers in there somewhere and a camera for gathering evidence. Back in the back there is graph paper for time drilling and a package of moldy beef jerky. I've got a half roll of duct tape and a big black magic marker for when I need to leave someone a nasty message, like... clean this damn mess up or keep the damn gate closed.
The maps of Texas and Louisiana are just in case I get lost, which does happen, and my phone book containing every service and supply company known to mankind is buried in the bottom. There is a blank check in a company envelope if I ever need to pay prompt damages to a pissed off landowner. The little flask looking thing is just that, in case I get snake bit and somebody has to amputate my foot. The most readily available item in the entire briefcase is Advil, naturally.
By the way, I make shit happen alrighty. I say about 65% of it is good, 15% of the time it is barely OK but can be fixed, 10% is bad but can be fixed with lots of money and 10% of it is so screwed up NOBODY could fix it for any amount of money.
For THAT 10% there is a bottle of scotch under the backseat of my truck.
I may be exaggerating about the 65%.
Next time we'll look inside my work bag but I need to let it air-out first. I unzipped it the other day and the wet, sweaty coveralls in it made my dog yelp and run back to the house.