(This appeared in Newsday’s Act2 section)

Anyone here old enough to remember the song “Cool Water”? The tale of a parched man traveling a wasteland with his mule, tormented by mirages, it was written in 1936, first recorded in 1941 (still before my time), but revived occasionally, including during my youth in the 1950s.

The yearning refrain — “cool … clear … water” — pops into mind with what seems to be increasingly hot, humid weather, when I’m lucky enough to have plentiful access to transparent, tasteless, odorless H2O. The best liquid refreshment there is, really.

I was chatting by phone with my brother recently as he went about one of his typically physical labors amid the suffocating heat near his Texas home, when I recalled how my favorite part of the day — back when he and I worked in the West Texas oil fields during our high-school summers — was the water break.

“I kinda preferred quitting time,” he said.

Well, yes. It is certainly possible to overdo long hours of digging ditches, stringing pipeline, wrenching together various structures that — mysteriously to me — would deliver petroleum products to the public. My thoroughly informal title in that process was roustabout, defined as “an unskilled or semiskilled laborer, especially in an oil field or refinery.” I recently came across a survey by CareerCast, rating jobs based on environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress, that judged roustabout to be the absolute worst.

Still, that time is a pleasant recollection, for several reasons. First of all, that was before a climate-change awareness that the use of fossil fuels is wrecking the planet, so to have been a cog in that destruction is not something I had to struggle with.

The work was demanding enough — ever try to dig a trench in the sedimentary rock called caliche? — and hours in temperatures regularly near 100 degrees were long enough (10 a day, six days a week). There was, however, the favorable cost-benefit analysis that the gig would last a mere three months before high school classes resumed and the banked money would get me through college — thereby assuring a permanent farewell to oil field drudgery by the age of 18.

That’s the lesson, kiddos. Heavy toil isn’t so bad at that age; in fact, it reinforces a man-over-mouse self-worth so long as it solidifies the conviction that there are more fun ways to earn a living. In my case, a half century in journalism.

My boss then, the gang-pusher, was a 40-something gentleman of admirable work ethic, kindness and a sense of humor named Walter H. Cox. (“What’s the ‘H’ for?” we’d ask. “Hurry,” he always said, more a command than an answer.) Walter once told me how he had dropped out of high school to take an oil field job because of the good (comparatively) money available. He never expressly acknowledged regretting the decision, but all those years later the money hadn’t gotten much better and the work was just as physically demanding.

One summer, there were two older fellows on the crew — they seemed ancient; probably in their late 40s or early 50s — who occasionally wouldn’t show up Sunday mornings (our day off was Saturday). Walter guessed they might have relaxed from a long, sweaty week by spending too much of their pay on drinks (not water).

So, short on manpower one Sunday, Walter stopped the truck on the way to the oil patch and ducked into the local bar — this was at 5:30 in the morning — and fetched a young fellow lured by the promise of a quick single-day check. The lad lasted until about 1 p.m., then literally walked off the job, slowly disappearing over the flat horizon of barren mesquite and dust. I suppose he was able, after a mile or so to the nearest highway, to hitch a ride. Maybe right back to the bar.

The rest of us had just resumed duties after our usual half-hour lunch hour — which for me always included a quick 10-minute nap under the truck, the only place to find a little shade, after a hearty repast of four sandwiches and ice cream, kept cold in a small thermos. (God bless my mother.)

A few more chores and it was time for a break. And — no mirage — some cool, clear water.