Each chapter of "Trippin' through the Oil Patch" is a story all by itself. But each story links with the next, as the book reveals the life of transient laborers in the Rocky Mountain oil fields during the 1940s and 50s. While war mounted and raged in Europe and the Pacific, oil field kids moved with their dads and moms to one oil patch and trailer camp after another, chasing black gold to fuel a nation at war.

With each story, the narrator, Raymond, moves closer to the end of his oil field days, when, at the age of twelve, his dad is killed in an oil rig explosion. In Trippin', Gayle, whose childhood is the basis of this memoir, says, "I was afraid that I would forget my father. I would never speak with him again. I would never hear his voice. With these stories, I could keep talking with my dad. I could hold on to his presence until I could walk on alone. His stories saved me."