People the grew up during the Louisiana Oil Boom in the 1970/1980s, what was that like?

We travelled only in private jets and helicopters. Even to the grocery store.

Crawfish was $0.30/lb too! (Just wanted to remind all of us old people of the good old days)

Boom was good… free lunches and margaritas every day… Lafayette was rocking.. houses were overpriced … interest rates in mid teens…but we were well paid.. was there for the bust..
it was bad.. houses became slumlords dreams. First round of big layoff in the mornings.. management would have lunch to discuss how deep for the second round after lunch..

Mass exodus of staff.. many never made it back in.. once the first layoff hit we had them pretty much every year for a long time.. they were not as publicized ..oil industry sucks.

We all lived in giant mansions along the river and parked our exotic cars in our five-car garages.

quote:

---

houses became slumlords dreams

---

I was a little too young to remember anything about the boom, but I remember the bust. It seemed like it happened so fast too. Within like 6 months there were rent houses that popped up on our street like crazy. Trashy families moved in.

I still remember my best friend's dad owning a construction company that went pretty much bankrupt because companies couldn't pay them. And I'm assuming he must have owed people money too because they packed up and moved out of state with two days' notice.

Louisiana was doing good but nothing like Pasadena TX and the Urban Cowboy phenomenon at the same time .

My dad was at Avondale in Morgan City at the time and said it was pretty wild there.

A lot of money was rolling in but with that came a bunch of folks from out-of-state, housing shortages, overcrowding of schools, riff-raff, etc,

And then the bust came and Morgan City hasn't ever really recovered.

I was just a kid in the 80's, but my grandfather was a geologist. he did quite well for himself. we went to lafondas every friday and petroleum club every sunday with he and my grandmother. my grandfather had a nice house (by no means a mansion, but very nice). He had an amazing camp at cypremort point with two boats. his office at the petroleum club was exactly like episodes of madmen.

quote:

---

My dad was at Avondale in Morgan City at the time and said it was pretty wild there.

---

My dad moved down here to work as a commercial diver in '79. If you know anything about MC, it's an island so housing was at a premium. He said there were people living in tents on the levees.

After the bust, he was ready to leave the state, and he and a buddy went out for one last hoorah at Pat O's. On the way back home he got nailed head on by a drunk driver and was put up in the hospital for a while. After he got out, he had to make some more money to leave and ended up meeting my mom. I owe my life to a Hwy 90 (Blood Alley) drunk.

“it happened so fast too…”

. First one did… same story has repeated so many times… … oil prices went up … I was running economics on my projects with oil prices forecasted in the 100… this was in 1982…. Saudis lost market share… flooded the market to drive small companies out of business… it worked .. same story had been repeated many times since then.. everyone talks about the good days when we paid 2 dollars for gasoline back in trumps tenure.. they forget that was again the saudis driving out the independent because they lost market share…

… midland during the boom was crazy.. had a friend take a job there right out of school.. he had to live in a tent for a few months until he got an apartment… few years later you could by big house for small prices.. I was LSU petroleum eng.. CEBA job department was coming into our classes and asking us to please go sign up and interview with the service companies… we all wanted to just work for majors or big banks.. I even was able to get a job offer in November that was good for when I graduated in May.. they were desperate!