Roughneck - Cultural References

Cultural References

The Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League used to use an oil rigging roughneck with a hockey stick as one of their secondary logos. The roughneck, as a symbol of hard work and fortitude, was the inspiration for the Calgary Roughnecks lacrosse team, as well as the Tulsa Roughnecks North American Soccer League and United Soccer Leagues teams. The West Texas Roughnecks of the Indoor Football League also use this nickname.

Rubbermaid has used the name "Roughneck" for trash containers and storage totes since the mid 1970s.

In Chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby, on first meeting Gatsby, Nick describes him as looking like "an elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd."

The stage musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (and film of the same name) included in one its songs the line: "We used to get a lot of roughnecks when the oil boom was high...".

Johnny Cash wrote and performed a song called "Born to Be a Roughneck".

The "Black Gold" exhibit at the Herbert S. Ford Memorial Museum in Homer, Louisiana, features a young roughneck working for the Sinclair Oil and Gas Company during the Claiborne Parish strike of the 1920s and 1930s.

Numerous television programs have focused on the roughneck life, including Oil Strike North (1975), Roughnecks (1994), and Black Gold (2008).

The song "I Whipped Superman's Ass" by Wesley Willis contains the line "Superman was being such a roughneck".