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.