In the summer of 1952, Chuck Good, a college football player, hitchhiked from Durham, N.C. to Southwest Texas where he worked as a roughneck on an oil rig. Like all rookie roughnecks, he was called a WEEVIL. The cotton eating boll weevil is the most despised and despicable insect in the south, so the most belittling and demeaning label that could be pinned on new workers by rig veterans. Chuck made the trip to earn money, but secretly hoped for some cowboy and Indian type adventures like those that thrilled him during Saturday movie matinees in his native Pennsylvania. Instead of finding a romantic interlude, he experienced some hard and valuable life lessons. Among these experiences were: -- Acquiring a wealth of practical education from drivers who gave him lifts. -- Being pushed into fights by other roughnecks who wouldn't let Chuck peacefully avoid fighting. -- Forming a friendship with a fellow college jock, also a summer roughneck, who was more worldly was than Chuck, especially about women. -- Getting his first real sexual experience, and surviving its complications.
About the Author: A Methodist preacher's kid, Charley Levergood grew up in 8 different locations, from Central Pennsylvania's coal regions to Philadelphia. The family moved so often that he earned 4 football letters in 3 years of high school. He played football to get girls and basketball and baseball because he enjoyed them. He also boxed since his father taught him from age 3, so he didn't know any better. Beginning his working life as a paper boy and farm laborer at age 10, he found it necessary to lie about his age at 13 and 14 (avowing he was 15) to work in a seashore resort restaurant. When 16 and 17, he lied about it again (18 required) to labor on a railroad section gang. At 18, he was a summer social director at a mountain resort where the owners did the lying, saying he was 25 so the guests would respect his authority, but creating an ongoing hassle with the bartender who knew he was too young to be served. During one summer, he had a job blowing up rocks, and nearly himself, in a stone quarry. He spent one college summer at a high risk job, at heights, on a bridge construction crew, while tending bar part time at a classy lounge nicknamed The Bucket of Blood, where a bartender needed only enough mixology expertise to serve the Pennsylvania working man's cocktail: a shot and a beer. Levergood hoped to play baseball at Duke University, but a dislocated shoulder in freshman football curtailed that goal. Charley was in the same Duke fraternity as William Styron and Reynolds Price. Reading "Weevil," one will gather his life has been less refined and earthier than those 2 literary giant brothers. Since graduation, his varied career has included selling insurance, owning an employment agency and functioning as a management consultant. He has officiated high school and college football and basketball, and coached various sports on high school and youth levels. Charley resides in Northeast Tennessee with wife Bunny and mutt BooBoo, a mixed breed like his master.