A few days before Christmas, 1978, Red had one of his accountants type out a letter to Boots and Coots telling them they were fired, effectively immediately. The letter was signed by Red and addressed the money that Boots and Coots would receive via their pension plans. I actually have a copy of the letter.
By early 1979 Boots and Coots got sorted out who's name would go first in the new company they were about to create and by June they got their first job. In truth 1979, their first year together, was an awesome year for gross revenue and by 1980-1981 Boots and Coots, Oil Firefighters and Blowout Specialists were rolling.
Their first coveralls were white, of course, and hand stitched. The pair that Boots has on in the photo above might very well be the same ones I have in my office, below. He liked short sleeves, so are the ones I have; they are special to me and when I get older (than 70) I am going to leave them to a museum some where. From a purely technical/engineering standpoint I believe Boots Hansen was a well control genius, as good, or better, than anyone in history:
The first B&C patches, left, had Houston, Texas on them and were a screen print of an actual photograph; that design stayed good to about 1984, then the company moved to the patch on the right, a sort of embroidered patch that was smaller but the colors were vivid.
White, of course, had its purpose. We also had dark blue coveralls that were hotter than hell around a blowing well. We would take 6-8 pairs of coveralls with us in a job and would get the laundered at hotels all the time. Depending on the job most coveralls got too nasty to wear after two washings and we would take them to a trash trailer, or a burn barrel, and leave them.
I suspect over the years there have been literally thousands of pairs of coveralls left on jobs all over the world that people snatched up and kept them, or cut the patches off them. I've seen lots of B&C patches for sale on eBay. We would almost always lose laminated business cards used as luggage tags from our work bags and luggage at airports. They were simply snatched off bags for souvenirs.
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