What I personally know of roughnecking wouldn’t fill a thimble. J.D., however, says as a kid he slept in the Doghouse while his father and other male relatives roughnecked the oil rigs. He pointed me to this good article in, of all places, National Review. Worth a look.
Reminded me of my dear grandfather who managed the oil trucks for the old Magnolia back in the ’30s, around Laredo, Alice and Freer. He cowboyed for a while near San Angelo but he was never a roughneck. I always understood that he admired some of them, though.
Via Mouth of the Brazos.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
I don’t know much, from a kid’s perspective. I do remember the injuries my dad and uncles sustained on the job. They were lucky to live over some of them. My uncle being crushed between the derrick and traveling block (take too long to explain what that is). In a full body cast for some time. Gave him the opportunity to quit smoking, he said. My dad getting a smashed finger, broken into fragments by a wrench falling from the rig, falling from the rig deck to the ground and breaking his back. The filthy, greasy, dirty, coveralls, the coin landromats with signs segregating the clothes. Not racially, like “colored” and “white” but “oil field” and “normal”.
It’s a dangerous job, for sure, especially with all that weighty metal, much of it in constant motion.